<div dir="ltr">Hi Dan,<div><br></div><div>Thank you for the further elaboration. I have been taking "attributive" to mean "attaches via the head-modifier rule" (and in the case of intersective guys, does the LTOP identification thing) as opposed to predicative meaning "attaches via the head-subject rule/or as complement of the copula" and does not do any LTOP sharing. That is, in terms of a predominantly semantic distinction. This is the distinction that I'd expect to find active crosslinguistically. (In French, for example, there are pre-head and post-head attaching adjectives, but as far as I know, that distinction does not align with the ability to appear as the complement of the copula).</div> <div><br></div><div>Do the "a-" guys have the post-nominal modifier possibility? </div><div><br></div><div>"Anything ablaze should be put out immediately."<br></div><div>"Anyone still abed needs to get up now."</div> <div><br></div><div>(The second one of those two sounds better, but that could just be the weight thing again...) Also, isn't it true that the ordinarily pre-nominal ones can be post-nominal if they're phrasal, so:</div> <div><br></div><div>"Anything other than that is off-limits."</div><div>"Children teenage or younger must be supervised."</div><div><br></div><div>(Here the second one is maybe suspect to me...)</div> <div> <br></div><div>At any rate, it seems to me that there are two separate distinctions that happen to correlate in English (more or less) that I don't think we can count on correlating cross-linguistically. I'd rather use POSTHEAD to control the direction of modification (in the Matrix) and save PRD for can/can't appear as the complement of the copula (or as the head of a sentence, depending on the language). Do you see anywhere we'd run into trouble by using MOD < > to indicate adjectives that can't appear as modifiers?</div> <div><br></div><div>(You might then ask why call them adjectives if they can't appear as modifiers, either left or right, of nouns. I think the motivation would likely be morphological/relate to other distributional properties. That is, imagine a language that has a class of things that all inflect the same way, form comparative/superlative constructions the same way, and take the same kind of degree modifiers. But some of those guys can be adnominal modifiers and some can't...)</div> <div><br></div><div>Emily</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 4:55 PM, Dan Flickinger <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:danf@stanford.edu" target="_blank">danf@stanford.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I'm not quite sure, Emily, what you mean by "potentially attributive". There are adjectives like "mere" that can only appear prenominally, and it is this positional ability that I associate with "attributive" adjectives. The other common places for adjectives are either as postnominal modifiers, or in the copula construction, and both of these I take to be characteristic of "predicative" adjectives. Maybe I'm overlooking some other context in which an adjective like "mere" could occur, but I don't see it. Hence the property [PRD -] exactly means "I only appear as a prenominal modifier" (equivalent to "I am an attributive adjective"), and [PRD +] means "I do not appear as a prenominal modifier, but I can (potentially) appear either postnominally, or with a copula" (equivalent to "I am a predicative adjective"). Adjectives like "afraid" are lexically constrained to be [PRD +]. Most adjectives are underspecified for PRD, and hence can behave as either attributive or predicative. The ERG lexicon includes a large set of lexical entries of the attributive-adjective type, but the great majority of these are hyphenated phrases treated as multi-words (a kind of grammar hack), or are words like "downstream" that also have a predicative entry which might also serve as a VP-modifier, so I divide their work into "attribute adjective" and "lexical PP" (where PPs can only be post-head or appear with the copula). Some other `true' attributives include "everyday", "foster", "future", "inner", "kindred", "lone", "mock", "other", "overall", "teenage", "utter", and maybe "veritable". Some true "predicative-only" adjectives include "a-" guys like "abed", "afraid", "ablaze", etc., but also "galore" (probably not with copula), "so" meaning "true" as in "that is so", maybe "ready" meaning "prepared", where "a ready smile" has a different sense, and probaby "well" meaning "healthy".<br> <span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br> - Dan<br> </font></span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br> ----- Original Message -----<br> From: "Emily M. Bender" <<a href="mailto:ebender@uw.edu">ebender@uw.edu</a>><br> To: "Dan Flickinger" <<a href="mailto:danf@stanford.edu">danf@stanford.edu</a>><br> Cc: "Woodley Packard" <<a href="mailto:sweaglesw@sweaglesw.org">sweaglesw@sweaglesw.org</a>>, "developers" <<a href="mailto:developers@delph-in.net">developers@delph-in.net</a>>, "T.J. Trimble" <<a href="mailto:trimblet@me.com">trimblet@me.com</a>><br> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 4:08:44 PM<br> Subject: Re: [developers] MOD value in predicative only adjectives<br> <br> Thanks for the clarification Dan. I'm a bit puzzled about the distinction<br> that PRD +/- marks then. PRD - apparently doesn't mean "can't be<br> attributive" (which is what we were taking it to mean) but rather "can't be<br> a pre-nominal modifier". Do you think that all adjectives must be<br> potentially attributive, just not necessarily pre-nominally?<br> <br> (I don't have any examples of non-attributves off the top of my head. I'm<br> looking here for the counter part to "mere", which is attributive-only.)<br> <br> Emily<br> <br> <br> <br> On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 3:50 PM, Dan Flickinger <<a href="mailto:danf@stanford.edu">danf@stanford.edu</a>> wrote:<br> <br> > Hi T.J. (and Woodley) -<br> ><br> > As Woodley notes, there are two contexts in which predicative adjectives<br> > can appear:<br> > (1) in copula constructions as in |the ships are afloat|<br> > (2) as postnominal modifiers as in |the ships afloat reappeared|<br> ><br> > While you're right that the MOD value is unneeded for the copula use, that<br> > non-empty value is necessary for the postnominal use, since the ERG<br> > combines "ships" with "afloat" using a head-modifier construction. Hence<br> > the boolean PRD feature is used to distinguish attributive from predicative<br> > adjectives, and not the MOD value.<br> ><br> > Woodley's example |the dogs awake arise| might sound awkward, but |anyone<br> > awake at that hour must be crazy| is impeccable, suggesting that there is a<br> > "heaviness" element involved in the acceptability of single-word<br> > post-nominal adjectives, and hence maybe something about information<br> > structure is at play. However, even the single-word ones can sound fine:<br> > |the only rooms available are doubles|<br> > |the first person awake was the old man|<br> ><br> > As for Woodley's |I found the dogs awake|, this has several readings which<br> > may obscure the issue of postnominal modification -- one with the<br> > three-argument "find" as in |I found him (to be) amusing|, and one with<br> > transitive "find" and a "depictive" adjective, as in |I found the keys<br> > (while I was) blindfolded|. Perhaps more to the immediate point is an<br> > example like |I fed the children awake at dawn an early breakfast|. The<br> > awkwardness of |I fed the children awake an early breakfast| is, on my<br> > current view, not an issue of grammaticality, but something (mysterious) to<br> > do with pragmatics.<br> ><br> > Dan<br> ><br> > ----- Original Message -----<br> > From: "Woodley Packard" <<a href="mailto:sweaglesw@sweaglesw.org">sweaglesw@sweaglesw.org</a>><br> > To: "T.J. Trimble" <<a href="mailto:trimblet@me.com">trimblet@me.com</a>><br> > Cc: <a href="mailto:developers@delph-in.net">developers@delph-in.net</a><br> > Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 2:16:32 PM<br> > Subject: Re: [developers] MOD value in predicative only adjectives<br> ><br> > Interesting question, T.J.; I would also like to know the answer to this<br> > one. One side effect seems to be the prediction that the following string<br> > is grammatical:<br> ><br> > The dogs awake arise.<br> ><br> > i.e. the predicative-only adjective "awake" is allowed to modify<br> > post-nominally. To me this is a surprising prediction; but maybe those on<br> > the list with more flexible minds won't have an issue with it. Other<br> > constructions such as "I found the dogs awake." get their own analysis,<br> > with the "awake" predicate a scopal argument of "find," so they can't be<br> > the explanation here.<br> ><br> > -Woodley<br> ><br> ><br> > On Apr 24, 2014, at 1:57 PM, "T.J. Trimble" <<a href="mailto:trimblet@me.com">trimblet@me.com</a>> wrote:<br> ><br> > > So, two related questions about the ERG or about these sort of<br> > constructions in other grammars/languages:<br> > ><br> > > 1) Are there any examples of the MOD value of these predicative only<br> > adjectives being utilized?<br> > ><br> > > 2) Is there any compelling reason to use PRD +/– to constrain this<br> > instead of MOD < >?<br> ><br> ><br> ><br> <br> <br> --<br> Emily M. Bender<br> Associate Professor<br> Department of Linguistics<br> Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>Emily M. Bender<br>Associate Professor<br>Department of Linguistics<br>Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br> </div>