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The deep structure of adjectives in noun phrases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Roland Sussex
Roland Sussex
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistic Science, University of Reading
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Extract

The syntax of adjectives is perhaps one of the less controversial issues in contemporary transformational generative grammar. Predicative adjectives are held to underly attributives (Harris, 1952; Chomsky, 1957: 72; Lees, 1960a), and are further embedded from underlying relative clauses (Smith, 1961, 1964; Lees, 1960b; Katz & Postal, 1964). This position has not apparently been seriously affected by several attacks on the primacy of predicative adjectives (Winter, 1965; Bolinger, 1967; Motsch, 1967) and on the relative clause source of restrictives (Annear, 1969); and it has if anything been strengthened by attempts to prove that adjectives are derived from deeper underlying classes (Lakoff, 1966, 1970: Appendix A; Bowers, 1968; Ross, 1969; Givón, 1970; and see Sussex, 1971: Ch. 2). The aim of the present paper is to present several objections to the analysis deriving attributive adjectives from predicative adjectives in relative clauses, on the basis of the formal and semantic characteristics of prenominal attributive adjectives like: (1) fine white Georgian house and to investigate some of the theoretical questions raised by these objections.

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Journal of Linguistics , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 111 - 131
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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