9.1 Introduction
This chapter discusses the second subclass of relational adjectives, namely classificatory adjectives. As their name also indicates, these adjectives only introduce a domain which classifies the noun. In contrast to Th-adjectives, the most distinctive feature of Cl-adjectives is that they do not saturate thematic roles lexically licensed by the head noun (see Bosque & Picallo Reference Bosque and Picallo1996: 360). Their task is to incorporate different semantic functions into the N head.
Bosque & Picallo (Reference Bosque and Picallo1996) consider Cl-adjectives to be semantic adjuncts that function as restrictive modifiers. Therefore, Cl-adjectives serve to relate the noun to a domain according to which the NP is classified.
a.
análisis sintáctico/ estilístico / periódico Spanish
b.
analiza sintactică/ stilistică/ periodică Romanian syntactic/ stylistic/ periodical analysis
Regarding the adjectives in (9.1), they can intuitively be described as elements that add a restriction on the lexical head. The semantic links between Cl-adjectives and nouns can be regarded as a classification of relations between the entities expressed with theta-roles. However, analyzing Cl-adjectives as lexically licensed arguments would imply postulating that each N can assign as many theta-roles as the relations that can be established between entities (see Bosque & Picallo Reference Bosque and Picallo1996: 362).
In support of this view, in this chapter I show that unlike Th-adjectives, Cl-adjectives do not represent arguments of the noun and consequently, they are not DPs. This is proven by the following tests:
First, Fábregas (Reference Fábregas2007) showed that unlike Th-adjectives, classificatory adjectives (nonargumental) can be paraphrased with lexical prepositions with strong semantics:
a.
análisis microscópico ≈ análisis mediante microscopio Spanish analysis microscopic ≈ ‘analysis done using a microscope’
b.
tren pendular ≈ tren con péndulo ‘suspended train’ ≈ train with a pendulum
Moreover, in Romanian, nonargumental relational adjectives cannot be paraphrased with GenDPs:
9.3
analiză microscopică ≈ *analiza microcopului Spanish análisis microscópico ≈ *análisis del microscopio Romanian ‘microscopic analysis’ ≈ *the analysis of the microscope
Second, unlike Th-adjectives, Cl-adjectives can occur in the predicative position (see Cornilescu Reference Cornilescu2009, McNally & Boleda Reference McNally, Boleda, Bonami and Hofherr2004):
9.4
a. *Restructurarea este urbană. b. Concursul este international. *La estructura es urbana. La competencia es internacional. ‘The restructuring is urban.’ ‘The contest is international.’
Third, the most viable argument which demonstrates that unlike Th-adjectives, Cl-adjectives do not saturate theta-roles is their co-occurrence with complex event nominals:
a.
el análisis periódico de las publicaciones por parte del departamento Spanish ‘the periodical analysis of the publications by the department’
b.
*la producción petrolera por parte de China ‘oil production by China’
In (9.6) the Cl-adjective modifies the event of the nominalization – which can be either a transition or an activity:
a.
interpretarea matematică a teoremei de către student infinitive Romanian interpretation mathematical AL theorema.GEN by student ‘the mathematical interpretation of the theorem by the student’
Hence, Cl-adjectives behave like adverbs, emerging as sisters of the verb which later turn into adjectives through suffixation.
Fourth, as shown in Chapter 5, unlike Th-adjectives, Cl-adjectives correspond to bare plurals in Romance (see Marchis Reference Marchis2010, Marchis Moreno Reference Marchis Moreno2015). I demonstrate that Cl-adjectives can be substituted with de + bare nouns as Cornilescu & Nicolae (Reference Cornilescu and Nicolae2009) and Niculescu (Reference Niculescu2009) show that de can also introduce a bare noun as a modifier. Hence, Cl-adjectives are simple NPs:
9.7
dragoste de mamă ~ dragoste maternă Romanian amor de madre ~ amor maternal Spanish love DE mother ~ ‘maternal love’
A further test from Romanian provides more support for the predicativity of classificatory adjectives. Notice that like predicative adjectives but unlike Th-adjectives, Cl-adjectives can occur with cel in the case of nominal ellipses. With adjectives cel can occur in two main contexts: in the case of a lexically expressed N with postnominal predicative adjectives and in the case of nominal ellipsis only with predicative adjectives. So in both contexts cel can occur only with predicative adjectives which have a contrastive or a partitive meaning.
9.8
analiza morfologică şi cea sintactică Romanian the analysis morphological and CEL syntactic ‘The morphological analysis and the syntactic one’
Nevertheless, simple event nominals with objects realized as Th-adjectives and de phrases can occur with cel.
a.
Producţia de alcool şi cea de droguri Romanian production DE alcohol and CEL of drugs ‘the production of alcohol and that of drugs’
b. producţia alcoolică şi cea narcotică
production alcoholic and CEL narcotic
Recall, however, that e-nominals can be ambiguous between an event interpretation and a result one:
a.
Exprimarea adevărului de către politicieni cere curaj. (event) Romanian ‘Expressing the truth by the politicians requires courage.’
b.
Exprimarea artistică îi lipseşte acestui scriitor. (result) ‘The artistic manner of expressing fails with this writer.’
a.
la constante pesca de ballenas por parte de los japoneses (event) Spanish The constant fishing DE whales by the Japanese
b.
La pesca ballenera daña el medio ambiente. (result) The fishing whales.TH-ADJ destroys the environment.
Given this, I argue that those relational adjectives and de phrases that can occur with cel in nominal ellipses are not arguments of the elided noun. This is due to the fact that the noun is a result, lacking the event layer. One argument in favor of this is the ungrammaticality of the object arguments of complex event nominals with cel:
9.12
*citirea de romane şi cea de reviste de către studenţi Romanian reading DE novels and CEL DE magazines by the students ‘the reading of novels and that of magazines by the students’
This is not the case with result nominals:
9.13 Industria de petrol şi cea de automobile au avut de suferit din cauza crizei.
the industry of oil and CEL of cars suffered due to the crisis
‘The oil industry and the car industry have suffered due to the crisis.’
Moreover, note that those relational adjectives and de phrases that can be modified by cel in (9.8) can be copulative. This is not the case with Th-adjectives and de arguments:
a.
*Această produciţie este de alcool. Romanian this production is DE alcohol.
b.
*Această producţie este petrolieră. this production is oil.TH-adj.
a.
*Esta producción es de petróleo. Spanish this production is of oil.
b.
*Esta producción es petrolera. this production is oil.TH-adj.
Crucially, these deverbal nouns have a different interpretation than simple result nouns. The noun “production” refers to the resulting product of the act of producing and the entire product is classified according to a specific domain, the domain of “oil, cereal, drug, alcohol industry” and so on.
So far I have shown that Cl-adjectives classify nominals according to a specific domain. In the following, I bring more supporting evidence for the contrastive interpretation and restrictive meaning of Cl-adjectives.
9.2 The Contrastive Context: Classificatory Adjectives and CEL
Bartning (Reference Bartning1980) shows that there is a correlation between the predicative position of classificatory adjectives and their contrastive interpretation. Note that classificatory adjectives can occur in the following structure:
9.16 NP – be- N- Cl-Adj.
a.
Aceasta este o problemă politică. Romanian
b.
Este es un problema político. Spanish ‘This is a political problem.’
Semantically speaking, these constructions involve new information in the discourse and contain the entailment that “the problem belongs to the political problems, and not, for instance, to cultural problems” (Bartning Reference Bartning1980: 75).
Moreover, explicitly classificatory adjectives are licit in predications like in (9.17):
a.
Aceasta problemă este politică si nu culturală. Romanian
b.
Este problema es político y no cultural. Spanish ‘This problem is political and not cultural.’
These contexts, in which Cl-adjectives appear, show that they have a particular behavior in comparison to other predicative adjectives.
a.
?Aceasta fată este o fată frumoasă. Romanian
b.
¿Esta chica este una chica bella. Spanish ‘This girl is a beautiful girl.’
An explanation for the unusual predicativity of classificatory adjectives is given by Sleeman (Reference Sleeman1996), who claims that they have inherent partitive/contrastive meaning as they relate the noun to a specific domain and, at the same time, exclude other domains. In Romance all predicative adjectives are ambiguous between a restrictive and a nonrestrictive interpretation (see Cinque Reference Cinque2005). However, in Romanian predicative adjectives can have an unambiguously partitive/constrastive meaning if they pattern with cel which introduces a reduced relative clause with function similar to the adverb namely in English (see Cornilescu Reference Cornilescu, Doetjes and Gonzales2006, Marchis & Alexiadou Reference Alexiadou2009):
a.
fata frumoasă (ambiguous interpretation) Romanian girl-the beautiful ‘the beautiful girl’
b.
fata cea frumoasă, (nu cea urată) (the restrictive interpretation) girl CEL beautiful one, not the ugly one ‘the girl, namely the beautiful one, not the ugly one’
As classificatory adjectives have an inherent contrastive interpretation they cannot occur with cel with a lexically expressed noun:
a.
industria alimentară (nu petrolieră, nu agrară etc.) Romanian industry-the food.CL-adj (not oil.CL-adj, not agrarian etc)
b. * industria cea alimentară
‘food industry’
However, they are licit with cel in the context of nominal ellipses, i.e., with a not lexically expressed noun:
9.21
industria alimentară şi cea agrară. Romanian the industry food.TH-adj and CEL agrarian ‘the food industry and the agrarian one’
Importantly, in Romanian only predicative adjectives can occur with cel in nominal ellipses:
a.
fostul preşedinte Romanian ‘the former president
b. *Preşedintele este fost.
‘The president is former.’
c. *preşedintele actual şi cel fost
the current president and CEL former
‘the current president and the former one’
Sleeman (Reference Sleeman1996) provides an explanation for the correlation between the predicative nature of adjectives and their acceptability in nominal ellipses: noun ellipsis is licensed by those elements which have a partitive/contrastive meaning. She asserts that partitivity entails inclusion in a set and the most important thing is the distinction between elements that always imply inclusion in a set and elements that do not.
Sleeman (Reference Sleeman1996) provides us with a strong argument for considering classificatory adjectives predicative adjectives. However, I argue that unlike predicative qualifying adjectives, Cl-adjectives are unambiguously restricted and, therefore, they are illicit with cel in the presence of a lexically expressed noun.
Thus, the occurrence of cel with Cl-adjectives and its ungrammaticality with Th-adjectives lead us to the following hypothesis:
If there is a grammatical relation between the relational adjective and the noun head, the relational adjective cannot occur with cel in Romanian in nominal ellipses.
For Spanish, the restrictive meaning of classificatory adjectives is also observed by Bosque & Picallo (Reference Bosque and Picallo1996), who regard them as restrictive modifiers.
Their argument is also supported by the fact that Cl-adjectives correspond to de modifier phrases (see Fábregas Reference Fábregas2007, Marchis Reference Marchis2010). This idea is further developed in the following section.
9.3 Classificatory Adjectives and de Modifier Phrases
As presented in Section 6.2.3 there are two types of de phrases in Romance, i.e., de arguments and de modifiers (Bosque & Picallo Reference Bosque and Picallo1996, Cornilescu & Nicolae Reference Cornilescu and Nicolae2009, Niculescu Reference Niculescu2009). In Romanian, this difference is more obvious as this language preserved the inflectional genitive apart from the prepositional genitive available in all Romance languages (the arguments illustrated in Chapter 6 are repeated below):
a.
citirea obligatorie a romanului de către studenţi Romanian read.INF obligatory AL novel. GEN by students ‘the obligatory reading of the novel by the students’
b.
Citirea obligatorie de romane de către studenţi. reading.INF obligatory DE novels by students. ‘the obligatory reading of novels by the students’
c. producţia de petrol
production DE oil
d. interpretarea de maestru
interpretation DE master
‘the master interpretation’
Essentially, in (9.23a,b,c) there is a grammatical relation between the noun and the de phrase while in (9.23d) de maestru only qualifies the interpretation, i.e., it does not mean that the interpretation was made by a master but rather in a masterful way. Hence they do not represent the argument of the deverbal noun.
The de phrase is only a modifier of the noun that behaves more like an adjective. The differences between de arguments and de modifiers are also syntactic. Unlike de arguments, de modifiers can occur in the predicative position:
a.
Această interpretare este de maestru. r-nominal this interpretation is DE master
b.
*Citirea este de romane. complex event nominal reading is DE novels
c.
*Consumul este de alcool. simple event nominal consumption-the is DE alcohol ‘The consumption is of alcohol.’
Crucially, like in the case of relational adjectives, the status of the de phrase as a modifier or an argument is relativized by the noun it modifies, i.e., if it is an event noun, the de phrase represents an argument of the underlying verb; if it is a common noun or an r-noun, the de phrase functions as a restrictive modifier. Observe the parallel to relational adjectives:
a.
producţia petrolieră Romanian simple event nominals producción petrolera Spanish simple event nominals ‘oil production’
b.
analiza literară Romanian r-nominal el análisis literario Spanish r-nominal the literary analysis
Furthermore, Cl-adjectives can be substituted with de phrases which act as restricted modifiers. This is also observed in Marchis Moreno (Reference Marchis Moreno2015) and Fábregas (Reference Fábregas2007).
a.
dragoste de mamă ~ dragoste maternă Romanian amor de madre ~ amor maternal Spanish love of mother ~ ‘maternal love’
b.
lucru de mâna ~ lucru manual Romanian trabajo de mano ~ trabajo manual Spanish work of hand ~ ‘manual work’
Unlike de arguments, de modifiers occur with cel – the hallmark of predicativity in Romanian:
a.
dragostea de mamă şi cea de tată Romanian love DE mother and CEL DE father ‘the mother love and that of the father’
b.
*producerea de maşini şi cea de avioane. production DE cars and CEL DE planes. ‘The producing of cars and that of planes.’
9.4 The Syntactic Analysis of Classificatory Adjectives
On the basis of Sleeman's (Reference Sleeman1996) approach, according to which classificatory adjectives have an inherent partitive meaning, I propose that they stand for a relative clause with restricted meaning. Note that Cl-adjectives act as restrictive appositional clauses which build a complex unit with the noun they specify.
9.28
Hence, I propose that the relative clause which stands for the classificatory adjective is the right-hand sister of the nominal head (NP), with which it forms a complex lexical unit. Cel in Romanian introduces the reduced relative clause with a specifying function, rendered in English via the use of e.g. the adverb namely (Marchis & Alexiadou Reference Alexiadou2009) or according to Cornilescu (Reference Cornilescu, Doetjes and Gonzales2006), cel is a predicative head introducing intersective adjectives:
9.29
analiza sintactică ‘syntactic analysis’ 
When the first NP is lexically expressed in (9.29), the relational adjective moves up to the specifier DP position in order to agree in phi-features with the head noun (through a c-command relation); the syntactic relation looks like a noun-to-noun conjunction (NP & DP) as the set of the noun intersects with the set of elements expressed by the denominal adjective: in the above structure the adjective is generated in the predicative position within the relative clause. Importantly, the second conjunct is co-indexed with the first one; hence, they both agree in all features and have unique reference.
In the second context, nominal ellipsis with cel, when the first conjunct has previously been mentioned in the discourse, it can be elided; ellipsis is licensed as the remaining part is partitive/contrastive (Marchis & Alexiadou Reference Alexiadou2009). In this case the classificatory adjective cannot move to SpecDP due to its lack of case, so cel must be spelled out in order to check case.
9.30 [&:P [NP analiza] i &: [DP ceai [CP [C’ [IP Øi sintactică]]]]]
According to Marchis (Reference Marchis2010), this construction corresponds to attributive compounding; this new perspective on Cl-adjectives is discussed in Chapter 10. As presented in the previous section, classificatory adjectives can also occur with complex event nominals. As expected, these constructions are amenable to a different syntactic analysis.
a.
interpretarea matematică a teoremei de către student interpretation mathematic AL theorem.GEN by student ‘the mathematical interpretation of the theorem by the student’
b.
cântatul îngeresc al corului bisericii singing.INF angel.CL-adj AL choir church.GEN ‘the angelic singing of the church's choir’
In line with Borsley & Kornfilt (Reference Borsley, Kornfilt and Borsley2000), I assume that the nominalization of a verbal form projects a VP in the low part of the tree, but it can be modified by nominal functional projections in the higher part. In other words, the nominal functional categories precede the verbal functional categories.
9.32 [NP [NP [NP [VP [VP]]]]]
On the basis of the interpretation of Cl-adjectives with deverbal nouns, one can easily observe that they modify the event underlying the verbal projection within the nominalization. For instance, (9.31b) receives the interpretation that “the choir sang in an angelic way” or (9.31a) has the interpretation that “the student interpreted the theorem in a mathematical way.” Thus, I argue that the Cl-adjective modifies the lowest v in the tree.
9.33
Within the Distributed Morphology approach, (9.33) shows that the root of the classificatory adjective modifying the e-nominal merges first with a null realized adverbial head and then moves further in the agreement domain, to SpecNumber or AgrP, where it turns into an adjective through the suffix -esc. The two layers within the structure of Cl-adjectives with e-nominals explain both their morpho-syntactic form as agreeing adjectives and their function as event modifiers. However, since all relational adjectives are denominal, they must have a nominal layer before turning into adverbs and then into adjectives. Due to simplicity reasons, the nominal layer underlying all relational adjectives has been omitted in (9.33) but the complete morpho-syntactic structure of this type of classificatory adjective is presented below:
9.34
It is worth mentioning that the Cl-adjective îngeresc ‘angelic’ has the same morphological form as an adverb modifying the verb a cânta ‘to sing’:
a.
cântatul îngeresc/îngereşte al corului bisericii. ‘the angelic singing of the church's choir’
b.
Corul bisericii a cântat îngeresc/îngereşte. ‘The church's choir sang angelically.’
That is the reason why we could analyze this relational adjective in two ways: either to assume that the aP can be both adjective and adverb in the structure above or that there is an adverbial layer distinct from the adjectival one, marked with a null morpheme.
9.5 Conclusions
In this chapter I have discussed the subclass of classificatory adjectives. The goal of this section has been to show that they contrast with their thematic counterparts not only with respect to their semantics but also in their syntactic analysis. Explicitly, I have shown that unlike Th-adjectives, Cl-adjectives are not arguments of the noun but rather they relate the noun to a domain according to which the NP is classified. Hence, they are restrictive modifiers of the noun they modify.
This is demonstrated on the basis of several tests: Cl-adjectives do not correspond to genitives, they are predicative, they can occur with cel and they correspond to de modifier phrases in Romance.
On the evidence of all this, I have proposed that a restricted relative clause stands for the classificatory adjective which is the right sister of the nominal head (NP), with which it forms a complex lexical unit. This is proven by the fact that Cl-adjectives can occur with cel in Romanian, which is argued to introduce a reduced relative clause with a specifying function, rendered in English via the use of e.g. the adverb namely (see Marchis & Alexiadou Reference Alexiadou2009).
A different structure has been given to the constructions with an e-nominal modified by a Cl-adjective. On the basis of the interpretation of Cl-adjectives with deverbal nouns, I have argued that they modify the event underlying the verbal projection within the nominalization. Hence, they involve an adverbial layer before turning into adjectives. Essentially, the two layers within the structure of Cl-adjectives with e-nominals capture both their dimensions: as adjectives agreeing with the nominal and as adverbs modifying the event underlying the deverbal noun.
