34.3234, Review: A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives: Panagiotidis, Mitrović (eds.) (2023)

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Subject: 34.3234, Review: A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives: Panagiotidis, Mitrović (eds.) (2023)

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Date: 31-Oct-2023
From: Projita Giri [giriprojita at gmail.com]
Subject: Lexicography, Ling & Literature, Syntax: Panagiotidis, Mitrović (eds.) (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.80

EDITOR: Phoevos Panagiotidis
EDITOR: Moreno Mitrović
TITLE: A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives
SERIES TITLE: Language Faculty and Beyond   17
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Projita Giri

SUMMARY
A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives is edited by Phoevos
Panagiotidis and Moreno Mitrović and published in 2022. It consists of
8 chapters including an introduction. The main seven chapters are
categorised into 3 themes: (i) Part I: Adjectives as a lexical
category, and beyond; (ii) Part II: Adjectives and the nominal domain,
and (iii) Part III: Adjectives and the interfaces. The first part
contains 3 chapters and the others have 2 chapters each. The book is
directed at a large audience of students, researchers, and field
linguists who are interested in and working on the grammar of lexical
categories, with especially adjectives.
Before entering into the main themes, the editors Panagiotidis and
Mitrović present an Introduction titled To adjectives, lexical
categories, and this volume (Chapter 1). At the very outset, they
specify their position that they are following generative grammar to
discuss ‘adjective’. They set their stance against the (latest)
typological literature (Dixon 2004 & 2010, v. 2), which identifies
adjective as a universal category; having category-defining
properties; and bearing either verb-like features (e.g. Thai),
noun-like features (e.g. Latin), both noun- and verb-like features
(e.g. Bangla - see Giri 2023) or neither (e.g. English). But the
editors highlight two research problems where adjectives lack specific
properties and categorical unspecificity while discussing the lexical
triplet (noun, verb, and adjective). Then, they offer a generative
theory of lexical categories and an overview of the present volume.
Part I: Adjectives as a lexical category, and beyond
Chapter 2, Universal and language-specific aspects of adjectives:
Absolute categories and relational molds, is written by Volker
Struckmeier. The author begins with the theoretical notions of word
classes, starting from traditional grammar and extending to generative
syntax through categorical features and featurized categories. He
presents definitions of ‘essentialist’ word class of which ‘abstract
semantico-logical notions’ fail to match cross-linguistic difficulty.
He argues against ‘grammar-wide’ categories. He proposes categoriality
as a multi-layered notion. Not all the properties of categoriality are
universally available in all languages. There are cross-linguistic
differences in the case of linguistic categorization. Some properties
of lexical items are not categorial. Here Struckmeier introduces the
notion of molds which denote morpho-syntactic contexts where lexical
items can appear. Therefore, the categoriality of an item is not
‘absolute’ but rather a ‘relational’ notion. He defines molds as “sets
of supporting items related to an item in question in derivations, can
be made to predict the grammatical behavior of sets of items in a
given language” (p. 70). In support of this idea, he examines
attributive and predicative molds of adjectives in German. Struckmeier
stretches this discussion in view of language acquisition, and certain
sociolinguistic phenomena like lexical borrowing and code-switching.
To conclude, he reconsiders the properties that make the profile of
‘adjective’ and that are associated with ‘adjectivity’ via distinct
molds.
Chapter 3, Adjectives, case and concord, by Richard Larson, focuses on
the status of adjectives in relation to case and concord. The author
reviews the concept concord in light of the modern minimalist program.
He introduces descriptive notions via feature instance type. Later he
delineates a visual analogy (that of “lighting”) for them. He raises
the question of case-category mapping. Larson attempts to answer two
research questions: firstly, “Could nouns behave like adjectives with
respect to case, without becoming adjectives?” (p. 85), and secondly,
“Could adjectives behave like nouns with respect to case, without
becoming nouns?” (p. 85). He explains examples from Iranian languages
to answer the above. He call the phenomenon concordialiser, where
nouns behave like adjectives with respect to case. Besides, he
discusses case concord in the verbal domain by exemplifying Kinande.
Larson mentions that the adjective is an independent category that
lacks sufficient evidence in traditional versions of grammar. Western
grammarians like Thrax and Priscian as well as Eastern grammarians
like Yāksa and Tolkāppiyam either recognized it as a sub-class of
noun or did not recognize it. The author leaves these questions for
future studies: How do concordializers function within grammatical
theory, precisely in syntax? Can the visual (lighting) analogy be
developed later to shed light on how syntactic objects are processed
in the human mind?
Chapter 4, Adjectives as a lexical category: A story of striving for
extension, is authored by Boban Arsenijević. The author argues that
adjectives and adverbs with prepositions comprise one lexical
category, PAd. Lexical categories are classified into three, N, V, and
PAd, based on the modes of reference. The first two stand for
referential specification (presence of extensional meaning) and the
last one is for referential underspecification (absence of extensional
meaning). Arsenijević proposes that lexical categories are uniform
while the presence of semantically light and heavy members of the
class is in question. The light members show minimal projections due
to their unvalued classifier feature and heavier members possess
structural complexity internally, resulting in phrasal projections. In
this discussion, he takes the approach of Distributed Morphology into
consideration. He presents seven differences between adjectives and
prepositions following Maling (1983). These are: (a) Adjectives occur
as direct complements of verbs like to seem; (b) Adjectives can take
degree modification and have synthetic comparatives/superlatives –
prepositions cannot; (c) Adjectives may take the negative prefix un-,
prepositions not; (d) Adjectives may inflect and agree, prepositions
not; (e) Adjectives occur prenominally, PPs do not (in English!); (f)
Adjectives can be intransitive, prepositions cannot; and (g)
Adjectives are more easily stranded than prepositions. (pp. 140-145).
Arsenijević sums up all the findings and arguments in the section
Explanations, predictions, leaving the research agenda open to be
developed and examined further.
Part II: Adjectives and the nominal domain
In Chapter 5, Nominal Attributive Modifiers (NAMs) in Ògè, by
Priscilla Adenuga, the author denotes attributive adjectives as
Nominal Attributive Modifiers (NAMs). She presents four research
questions and a language-particular analysis in the case of Ògè (a
Nigerian language). Firstly, she analyses ‘adjective’ as a lexical
category in the given language. She implies that adjectives come under
the nominal category. Secondly, she explores the internal and external
structure of NAMs morphologically and syntactically. Attributive
adjectives are free nominals. Predicative forms are stative verbs and
they are nominalised. The grammaticality of NAM depends on the
modified noun in attributive expressions. Thirdly, she investigates
the structural location of NAMs in the nominal phrase. NAMs possess
dual functionality as a head when occurring either in genitive or a
possessive expression and as an adjunct. Adenuga also discusses the
problem of the traditional analysis and the Minimalist Program of
treating NAMs as adjuncts. Fourthly, she analyses the reasons why
predicative and attributive modifiers are structurally and
categorically different. To discuss her views, she illustrates data
taken from Ògè and also uses data from English and Dutch as required.
Chapter 6, Property, possession, and adjectives, is by Xuhui Hu. The
author’s arguments build on Chinese data. He provides examples from
English, Hausa, and Huitoto to present cross-linguistic variation. He
revises the semantic approach to the possessive property concept
(henceforth PC) predication, as proposed by Francez and
Koontz-Garboden and summarised in ‘The Lexical Semantic Variation
Hypothesis’. The author presents the nature and syntactic pattern of
Possessive PC predication. Hu explores whether the possessive PC
construction (John has strength) and adjective PC construction (John
is strong) are both grammatical and whether both of them have the same
function. The author raises two issues: “(a) whether the possessive PC
construction is always identical with the ownership possessive
construction; (b) whether there is deeper underlying syntactic reason
responsible for the variation.” (p. 209). Deviating from the semantic
factor, Hu aligns his view with morpho-syntax and hypothesizes:
“Whether a possessive PC construction (in nature an adjectival
constituent) is attested or not in a language depends on the
morphological property of the VI exponent of the Poss feature.” (p.
210)
This implies parametric variation in the case of PC constructions. The
author proposes that this variation can be reduced to the features and
morphological properties in the lexicon in conformity with Minimalism
(the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture and Roberts 2019). He argues that an
adjective is formed by a bilateral functional structure following the
proposal made by Mitrović and Panagiotidis (2020), for A to be [+V,
+N] (the traditional feature breakdown, going back to Chomsky 1970).
Hu highlights the need for a cross-linguistic study to verify the
hypothesis in the future. He raises the question of why a degree
intensifier is needed when a sentence expresses PC. He claims that N.
Zhang (2021) proposes useful diagnostics to test adjectival status
that can be examined in future research.
Part III: Adjectives and the interfaces
Chapter 7, On the extended projection of German adjectives, is written
by Remo Nitschke. The author presents the Extended Projection
(henceforth EP) of German adjectivals. He gives an overview of EP and
follows the idea of EP put forward by Biberauer et al. (2014). He
discusses EPs in Dutch and English adjectives. He follows Corver
(1997a, 1997b) and Neeleman et al. (2004), in which degree phrases
(DegP) and quantifier phrases (QP) are considered EPs of adjectives
and later deviate from them. Nitschke shows that comparatives and
superlatives are morphologically marked. Comparative morphemes are
functional heads of class-1. On the other hand, superlative morphemes
are class-1 functional heads taking morphological comparative as a
complement based on the lexicalist view of the Containment Hypothesis
by Bobaljik (2012). The author discusses the nature of the German
degree head viel. Additionally, he presents German excessive (zu) and
equative (so) in alignment with comparatives. He discusses the class-2
modifier German sehr (similar to English very) and differentials.
Finally, Nitschke summarises that comparative, superlative, equative,
excessive, and viel are part of the EP; and sehr, differentials, and
other adverbs are not part of the EP. The author concludes with six
research questions relating to the functional head viel ‘much’, other
parts of EP, genau ‘exactly’, analytical comparatives and
superlatives, and sehr ‘very’ in German.
In Chapter 8, First-phase semantics, by Moreno Mitrović, the author
highlights the importance of semantics and syntax with thematic
structures in the case of lexical categories. He explores the
applicability of sort-theoretic property theory as the central model
of first-phase semantics. He presents six assumptions made in
Distributive Morphology and generative morpho-syntax, two of which are
presented here: “A lexicon contains roots and features” and
“Categorisers ‘make’ roots visible by virtue of categorising them” (p.
260). He discusses categorial labels and isomorphism. Also, he sheds
light on the Property Theory (following Chierchia 1984 and Chierchia
and Turner 1988). Mitrović elaborates on the idea of microsemantics
and postulates ‘The Microsemantic Principle’, stated as follows:
“Compositional analysis cannot stop at the word level. (Since there is
no word-level boundary.” (p. 263)
Mitrović presents the conditions on explanatory adequacy of the
syntax-semantics mapping with totality/partiality of structure
reading. He proposes roots as properties and categories as kinds and
their relation is structural syntactically. Sub-categorial meanings
are composed horizontally or property-theoretically and
supra-categorial meanings are derived vertically or
type-theoretically. He sketches a working Biversal Property Theory
(BPT), demonstrating how first-phase semantics proceeds with nouns and
verbs. Then, he assumes that adjectives are decomposed bicategorically
from both nouns and verbs. For future research, Mitrović suggests the
treatment of gerunds as non-first-phase phenomena and adjectives as
first-phase phenomena while gerunds/infinitives and adjectives show
morpho-semantic similarities.
EVALUATION
The volume under review focuses on adjectives based on the generative
view against the typological literature. The book develops an
understanding of the existence, nature, and characteristics of
adjectives. It attempts to answer the question of what adjectives are
while they are heads of the lexical category, as indicated in the
title of the volume. It is concerned neither with whether adjectives
are universally available nor with where they appear.
The compilation of this book neatly achieves the goal mentioned in its
Introduction (Chapter 1). It will function as complementary to the
descriptive and typological studies of adjectives. I think this book
is the first of its kind to present such studies with respect to
Minimalism. However, to read and understand this book demands specific
kinds of knowledge in distributed morphology, minimalist syntax, and
formal semantics throughout. Still, it will be extremely advantageous
for readers who work on lexical categories and grammatical constructs.
The editors have done an excellent job in selecting the contributing
authors. They have organised the chapters in a logical thematic manner
with no repetition found. Therefore, I consider this volume to be a
groundbreaking work. The major themes which are original in nature are
its strengths. These are briefly mentioned below.
Introduction (Chapter 1) offers an overview of the status of the
adjective in generative theory.
Part I introduces the idea of mold, which indicates morpho-syntactic
contexts, for lexical items with German examples (Chapter 2); presents
the status of adjectivity in relation to case providing data from
English, Icelandic, Iranian, and Kinande (Chapter 3); and the
discovery of PAd, where adjectives with adverbs along with
prepositions make a single category with a cross-linguistic study
involving data from Serbo-Croatian, Italian, Bafia, Cantonese,
Mandarin, Russian, Greek, Celtic and Ripano (Chapter 4).
Part II looks at the nature and structure of attributive adjectives
which are called Nominative Attributive Modifiers in Ògè (Chapter 5),
and argues that the possessive PC construction is adjectival in
Chinese (Chapter 6).
Part III sketches the status of the Extended Projection of German
adjectives (Chapter 7), and finally, a narrow-syntactic view of
lexical categories, especially of the adjective (Chapter 8).
It is evident that this volume presents language-particular as well as
cross-linguistic analyses to build a theoretical base in generative
grammar. The authors provide data collected from both primary and
secondary resources.
All the chapters, excluding the first one, contain footnotes for
presenting relevant information. There are no endnotes. The tables and
figures are numbered serially. Each chapter ends with a reference list
which is invaluable for related study and research. All the chapters
except the introductory one and the fifth one raise some pertinent
research questions to be addressed in the future.
Some shortcomings are found in this edited volume. It begins with an
introduction but there are no closing remarks by the editors in a
conclusion as such. It also misses a preface. It does not have a list
of the tables and figures. A major lapse is the absence of a list of
abbreviations in the book, which might cause difficulty for readers.
Chapter 2 by Larson has no abstract or keywords. The author could take
Dixon’s (2010, v. 2) four-way typological classification of languages
for adjectives based on grammatical properties into consideration in
Chapter 4. Besides, the reference list in this chapter mistakenly
cites Dixon, R.M.W. 2004 as Dixon, Mark 2004 (p. 150). No space is
used between words in the case of ‘NAMoccurs’ (p. 169). Though the
book possesses an index at the end, it is always useful to have
separate indexes for languages, language families, and concepts.
Moreover, it would be beneficial if profiles of contributing authors
and editors were added to the book. This can certainly lead readers
and researchers to further reading/research accordingly.
I definitely recommend this book to students, field linguists,
grammarians, and researchers of linguistics.
REFERENCES
Arsenijević, Boban. 2022. "Adjectives as a lexical category: A story
of striving for extension." Chap. 4 in A0 – The Lexical Status of
Adjectives, edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis and Moreno Mitrović,
121-152. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
doi:10.1075/lfab.17.
Chomsky, Noam. 1970. “Remarks on nominalization”. In: R. Jacobs and P.
Rosenbaum (eds.) Reading in English Transformational Grammar, 184-221.
Waltham: Ginn.
Dixon, R. M. W. 2004. "Adjective Classes in Typological Perspective."
Chap. 1 in Adjective Classes: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, edited by
R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, 1-49. Oxford/New York:
Oxford University Press.
—. 2010. Basic Linguistic Theory. Vol. 2. Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press.
Giri, Projita. 2023. "Adjective Class in Verb-Adjective-Noun
Continuum: A Case of Bangla." Vaak Manthan (ISSN: 2426 2149) 8 (I):
61-72.
Hu, Xuhui. 2022. "Property, possession, and adjectives." Chap. 6 in A0
– The Lexical Status of Adjectives, edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis and
Moreno Mitrović, 187-216. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/lfab.17.
Larson, Richard. 2022. "Adjectives, case and concord." Chap. 3 in A0 –
The Lexical Status of Adjectives, edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis and
Moreno Mitrović, 73-120. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/lfab.17.
Mitrović, Moreno. 2022. "First-phase semantics." Chap. 8 in A0 – The
Lexical Status of Adjectives, edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis and
Moreno Mitrović, 257-291. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/lfab.17.
Struckmeier, Volker. 2022. "Universal and language-specific aspects of
adjectives: Absolute categories and relational molds." Chap. 2 in A0 –
The Lexical Status of Adjectives, edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis and
Moreno Mitrović, 15-72. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/lfab.17.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Projita Giri is a Research Scholar at Jadavpur University. She earned
her M. Phil. from the same. Her research interests include descriptive
linguistics, language typology and translation studies among others.



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