The Typology Of Parts Of Speech Systems: The Markedness Of Adjectives (outstanding Dissertations In Linguistics)

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company. Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Abbreviations 10 Note on phonological transcriptions 12 Chapter 1 Introduction 16 Chapter 2 Definitions of lexical classes 24 2.1 Semantic characterizations 25 2.2 Morphological diagnostics 27 2.3 Syntactic distribution 31 2.4 Extended roles and syntactic markedness 33 2.4.1 Criteria for markedness 34 2.4.2 WFM and markedness 37 2.4.3 Rigid versus flexible languages 41 2.4.4 Measures of contextual markedness: De- and recategorization 44 2.4.5 Markedness and prototypical mappings 49 2.5 The semantics of parts of speech 54 2.5.1 Prototypicality and peripherally in lexical classification 55 2.5.2 Semantic NAMEs 58 2.5.3 Semantic predicates 61 2.5.4 Property concepts 65 2.5.5 HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS 67 2.5.6 Why semantic NAMEs are not linguistic predicates 76 2.5.7 Non-prototypical semantic predicates and implicit arguments 78 2.6 Syntactic markedness and semantic prototypes 84 Chapter 3 Semantics, syntax, and the lexicon 88 3.1 Some basic terminology 89 3.2 Lexicalization and syntactic structure 93 3.3 Adjectives, markedness, and iconicity 96 3.4 Relations between semantic NAMEs: Attribution and possession 98 3.5 Minor lexical classes 104 Chapter 4 Types of lexical inventory 108 4.1 Verb-Adjective conflating inventories 114 4.1.1 Noun, verb, and adjective in Salishan 116 4.1.1.1 Nominal predicates and nominal actants 117 4.1.1.2 Verbs as actants 126 4.1.1.3 Verbs as unmarked modifiers 135 4.1.1.4 Modification in Bella Coola 138 4.1.2 Cora 144 4.1.2.1 Modification and relative clauses in Cora 145 4.1.2.2 Nouns and modification in Cora 147 4.1.2.3 Flexibility and rigidity as syntactic parameters 150 4.2 Noun-Adjective conflating inventories 153 4.2.1 Quechua 155 4.2.2 Upper Necaxa Totonac 162 4.2.2.1 Property concepts in Upper Necaxa 163 4.2.2.2 Adjectives and nouns as syntactic predicates 166 4.2.2.3 Adjectives as actants 170 4.2.2.4 Nouns as modifiers 175 4.2.2.5 Secondary diagnostics: Quantification and pluralization 179 4.2.3 Hausa 185 4.2.4 The N[AV] inventory reconsidered 198 Chapter 5 Conclusions 202 References 218 Index 226 This book presents rigorous and criterial definitions of the major parts of speech - noun, verb, and adjective - that account both for their syntactic behaviour and for their observed typological variation. Based on an examination of languages from five different groups - Salishan, Cora, Quechua, Totonac, and Hausa - this book argues that parts of speech must be defined by combining the criteria of syntactic markedness, which characterizes lexical classes in terms of unmarked syntactic roles, and semantic prototypicality, which delimits their prototypical meanings. Adjectives are shown to be the marked (and, hence, most variable) class because of their inherent non-iconicity at the semantics/syntax interface. The four-member typology of parts of speech systems (languages with three open classes, those that group adjectives with verbs, those that group adjectives with nouns, and those that conflate all three) current in the literature is easily generated by free recombination of these two criterial features. Closer examination of the data, however, casts doubt on the existence of one of the four possible language-types, the noun-adjective conflating inventory, which is accounted here for by replacing free recombination of semantic and syntactic features with an algorithm for the subdivision of the lexicon that gives primacy to semantics over syntax.