Occasional, odd and rare are different from other frequency adjectives (such as daily or frequent) in that they are able to pluralize a verbal event outside its immediate scope. While attempts have ...been made to capture this association to the event (Morzycki 2016; Gehrke & McNally 2011, 2015; Gehrke 2021; Schäfer 2007; Zimmermann 2003; Stump 1981; Sæbø 2016; Bücking 2012), none of them capture all the relevant empirical facts, namely that these sentences are distributive, stage-level and can optionally involve a verbal or a nonverbal event plurality. We present an analysis in which occasional-type frequency adjectives quantify over stages, following Barker’s (1999) definition of a stage as an ordered pair of an event and an individual <e,x>. This analysis better accounts for the data and leads to a larger discussion of the nature of stages.
THE COURSE OF ACTUALIZATION De Smet, Hendrik
Language (Baltimore),
09/2012, Volume:
88, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Actualization is traditionally seen as the process following syntactic reanalysis whereby an item's new syntactic status manifests itself in new syntactic behavior. The process is gradual in that ...some new uses of the reanalyzed item appear earlier or more readily than others. This article accounts for the order in which new uses appear during actualization. Five corpus-based case studies are presented involving reanalysis and actualization in different functional domains of grammar. These include the reanalysis of all but, far from, and Dutch verre van to adverbial downtoners, and the reanalysis of fun and key from nouns to adjectives. It is shown that actualization proceeds from one environment to another on the basis of similarity relations between environments. The similarity relations may involve broad syntactic generalizations but also superficial similarities to existing patterns, including even an item's uses prior to reanalysis. Because actualization is guided by local and global analogies to existing uses, one determinant of the course of actualization is the locus of reanalysis, as it defines the first uses of an item under change, on which subsequent uses can be modeled. It also follows that the course of actualization is both item-specific and language-specific. The findings presented challenge the concept of reanalysis, which appears less abrupt than usually assumed. Further, it is argued that the findings fit best with usage-based models of language, which attribute a prominent role to similarity-based organization in grammar, and in which an item's use can be subject to multiple, potentially conflicting generalizations.
Abstract
The article describes the behavior of aesthetic adjectives (
bonito
‘beautiful’) in the so-called
innovative constructions with estar
‘be
estar
’, documented in some American varieties of
...Spanish. These innovative structures (
El poema está bonito
‘The poem is beautiful’) do not compare stages of the
subject with respect to an aesthetic property (as would be their meaning in general Spanish), but rather express a perspectivized
assertion, linked to the subjective judgment of the speaker about a particular quality. The article explains this pattern of
variation on the basis of the work by
Gumiel-Molina, Moreno-Quibén and Pérez-Jiménez
(2020)
and
Moreno-Quibén (2022)
, according to which the classes of
adjectives that appear in perspectivized
estar-
sentences have undergone a process of argument augmentation.
Aesthetic adjectives in innovative
estar-
construction have an experiencer in their argument structure in the
varieties of Spanish where this construction is possible. This experiencer serves as the basis for establishing the comparison
required by
estar
and ultimately gives rise to the subjective/perspectivized meaning of the copular
structure.
Although the use of binominal groups with a proper name and no article is increasing rapidly, there is no common opinion as to their structure. I argue that the way adjectives behave in these groups ...gives an indication of the structure.
В статье анализируются названия семантических групп и категорий степени прилагательных в первых трудах показахскому языкознанию. На основе сравнительно-сопоставительного анализа, а также изучения ...научных трудовисследуются проблемы терминотворчества. Первыми работами по казахскому языкознанию являются труды показахской грамматике, написанные в начале ХХ века. Как известно, начало ХХ века является периодом становленияотечественного языкознания, в частности, формирования лингвистической терминологии казахского языка. Одной изхарактерных особенностей термина является то, что он четко определяет понятие и понятен простому народу.Рассматривая названия прилагательных, авторы ищут ответ на вопрос, соответствуют ли их термины правильномуграмматическому значению. В этой связи с многие труды начала ХХ века сыграли важную роль в формированиилингвистической терминологии. На основе результатов исследования и обсуждения делаются соответствующиевыводы и рекомендации. Статья написана в рамках исследовательского проекта «BR 11765619 «РазработкаНационального корпуса казахского языка как информационно-инновационной базы государственного языка: научно-исследовательский и обучающий интернет-ресурс».
Sequences of multiple modifying adjectives are subject to poorly understood lexical ordering restrictions. There are certain commonalities to these restrictions across languages, as well as ... substantive language variation. Ordering restrictions in Spanish are still under empirical debate, with some proposing strict ordering for direct modifier adjectives; others proposing broad ordering restrictions based on the contrast between intersective and non-intersective adjectives, and yet others raising the possibility that adjectival order is fully unrestricted. The goal of the present study is to examine corpus evidence for adjectival sequences. We look at both sequences of two postnominal adjectives (Noun +Adjective + Adjective, NAA sequences) as well as sequences of one prenominal, and one postnominal adjective (Adjective + Noun +Adjective, ANA sequences). The results from the NAA datasets clearly categorically confirms that relational adjectives are structurally closer to the noun. There is some evidence for an ordering bias along the line of the intersectivity hypothesis, but little else in term of hard evidence for restrictions. Additional ordering constraints appear once we incorporate the ANA datasets into the empirical picture. One interpretation is that these restrictions can be subsumed under an approach where evaluative adjectives have to occupy the prenominal restriction. In sum, the evidence is most compatible with the middle ground approach, but not with a fully articulated set of ordering restrictions.
PDF
