Interaction and Grammar: Predicative Adjective Constructions in English Conversation

This article studies the function of Copular Predicate Constructions in everyday English conversation. We compare predicate adjective constructions (PA) and constructions with a predicate nominal containing an adjective (PAN). We ask whether the attributive function of the adjective or the presence of a noun in the PAN leads to a difference in function in the two constructions. We propose that in most cases the adjective determines the function of the construction, leading to many parallels in usage between the PA and PAN constructions. A comparison with predicate nominal constructions (PN), in contrast, shows that not including an adjective in the constructions leads to a different set of meanings and implications. The conversational usage of these constructions provides evidence for a partial correspondence of form to function: Copular Predicate Constructions often constitute a complete turn in conversation, and if not a full turn, form their own prosodic units. Other properties of these constructions—the definiteness of the NP and the presence or absence of a N—correspond to different interactional work. A comparison of all three constructions shows that the adjective plays a determining interactional role, despite differences in syntactic configuration.

Essentializing Inferences

Predicate nominals (e.g., ‘is a female’) seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their predicate adjective correlates (e.g, ‘is female’) merely attribute a property. Further, predicate nominals elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential as well as stable explanatory membership. Semantic data and research from developmental and cognitive psychology support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated semantic account that takes predicate nominals to involve attributing kind membership and to trigger a presupposition that underpins our essentialist judgments.

Philebus 11b: Good or the Good

The sentence setting the stage for the philosophical investigation within the Philebus is, naively translated, “He says that to enjoy is good.” Instead of the predicate adjective “good,” most interpreters prefer to translate with a definite description, “the good,” with consequences that affect the interpretation of the dialogue as a whole. Part one defends the naïve translation, both in the context of Socrates’ first seven speeches and viewing the dialogue as a whole. Part two considers and rejects the reasons given against the naïve translation on the basis of grammar, idiosyncratic Platonic style, immediate context, and later restatements.

Distributivity

This chapter introduces the related topics of distributivity, collectivity, and cumulativity. Evidence is reviewed for the availability of multiple readings of ambiguous sentences that support distributive and collective interpretations, and the constrained interpretation of sentences arising from the lexical semantics of a universal quantifier, a predicate (adjective), an adverbial modifier, a determiner, or quantification scope. Off-line tasks with child and adult participants reveal a developmental comparison in the availability of these readings and the predication of individuals and groups of individuals, while on-line processing tasks with adults provide fine-grained behavioural evidence for the role of lexical and structural factors in facilitating or suppressing such readings.

What secondary predicates in Russian tell us about the link between tense, aspect and case

In this paper I show that the different case marking possibilities on predicate adjectives in depictive secondary predicates in Russian constitute the uninterpretable counterpart of the interpretable tense and aspect features of the adjective. Case agreement entails that the predicate adjective is non-eventive, i.e., it occurs when the event time of the secondary predicate is identical to the event time of the primary predicate. The instrumental case, however, entails that the secondary predicate is eventive: some change of state or transition occurred prior to or during the event time of the primary predicate. I claim that case agreement occurs in conjoined tense phrases in Russian, while the instrumental case occurs in adjoined aspectual phrases. In English, secondary predication is sensitive both to the structural location of its antecedent and to the event structure of the primary predicate. I suggest that depictives with subject antecedents in English are true adjunction structures, while those with direct object antecedents occur in a conjoined aspectual phrase. This hypothesis finds support in the different movement and semantic constraints in conjunction versus adjunction phrases in both English and Russian.

Property Items and Predication in Sranan

This paper revisits the long-standing controversy over whether so-called predicate adjectives like bigi 'big', bradi 'wide', etc. in Sranan (and other creoles) are truly adjectives or a subclass of verb. Using a variety of diagnostics, it concludes that such items are in fact verbal in their predicative function. Moreover, it argues that such items are best referred to as "property items" which display flexible categoriality, behaving like intransitive as well as transitive verbs, and also as adjectives which can either modify nouns or head adjectival phrases of degree. So-called predicate adjective structures in Sranan fall into two categories — those where property items function as intransitive verbs, and those involving predicate phrases in which the copula de precedes either adjectival phrases of degree or true adjectives, including those derived via reduplication from property items and others imported from Dutch. These conclusions apply more specifically to the variety of Sranan spoken as a native language by the majority of the African-descended population of Suriname. Another dialect of Sranan, associated primarily with non-native speakers, appears to treat property items in their predicative function as adjectives rather than verbs.

Marking in discourse: “Birds of a feather”

ABSTRACTSubject/verb agreement and subject/predicate adjective agreement in spoken Brazilian Portuguese are subject to a parallel processing effect, such that marking leads to further marking and lack of marking leads to further lack of marking. For example, semantically plural verb tokens preceded by marked plural subjects in the same clause or other marked verb tokens with the same subject in the preceding discourse are more likely to be explicitly marked for plural than similar tokens preceded by unmarked subjects or verbs. This phenomenon is in direct contradiction to the principle of linguistic economy, since marking tends to occur precisely in those contexts in which it is most highly redundant and could therefore be discarded with no loss of information. Furthermore, the marking of successive plural tokens cannot be considered statistically independent events, since the outcome of previous marking decisions effects future marking. We propose that the parallel processing principle is a universal of language use.

Copula Variability, Accountability, And the Concept of "Polylectal" Grammars

This paper examines variation in the use of copula forms and copulative structures in the Guyanese Creole (GC) continuum. A previous analysis by Bickerton (1973a, 1973b), who presented a polylectal grammar based on implicational relationships in the introduction and use of copular be, is examined in light of Labov's "principle of accountability." The primary focus of the paper is on so-called "predicate adjective" structures in basilectal GC (dipikni bin sik; dipikni a sik; dipikni go sik, and so forth) and their counterparts in the lower and mid-to-upper mesolects of the continuum {dipikni did sik; dipikni doz (bii) sik; dipikni go (bii) sik, etc.). It is argued that the range of contexts relevant to the analysis of copula variability in these structures is far wider than B's analysis accounted for. Moreover, there are substantial differences between basilectal and mesolectal varieties in phrase structure and in the organization of tense-aspect oppositions — differences overlooked in B's earlier treatment. As a result of these limitations, B's polylectal grammar provides an incomplete picture of the patterns of variation in these structures, and of the grammatical systems underlying them. The paper concludes that the claim that a polylectal grammar represents the workings of a unified system is not borne out by the evidence presented here. While an implicational scale may provide useful insight into patterns of variation and change in créole continua, the information contained in it cannot be translated directly into a synchronic grammar.