Predication with _beautiful of face_

[Frederick Hoyt]

On Monday, November 24, 2003, at 10:46  AM, Claude.Boisson wrote:

> In Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic / Syriac, if we say "Mary is
> beautiful of
> face", the adjective agrees with the subject, and not with the
> following
> noun, as far as I know.

This is true in Arabic as well: we can say

(i)	Ahmad-un    jamiil-un                 bint-i-hi
	Ahmad-nom beautifulMS-nom daughterFS-gen-cl3MS
	"Ahmad's daughter is beautiful"
	"Ahmad has a beautiful daughter"
	(lit. "Ahmad is beautiful of daughter")

where the adjective _jamiil_ "beautiful" is agreeing with _Ahmad_, even
though it is predicated (semantically) of his daughter.

In LFG terms, this would seem to indicate that f-structure is NOT a
very "semanticky" representation, since agreement is an f-structure
constraint, and therefore that there is a real schism between
f-structure predication and semantic predication.

Also, ccording to Wright's "A Grammar of the Arabic Language" (one of
the most respected English  reference grammars for Modern Standard
Arabic), the adjectival construct serves the same function as a
measure- or degree adverbial. In MSA, nominal  stems in the accusative
can be used to indicate measure, degree, instrument, or any of several
other adverbial functions. Accordingly, (i) above might be paraphrased
as

(ii)	Ahmad-un jamiil-un bint-an
	AhmadMS-nom beautifulMS-nom daughterFS-acc.
	"Ahmad is beautiful daughter-wise."

This might be taken to support an analysis according to which the
genitive noun in the adjectival construct is interpreted as a modifier.

Thank you for the interesting discussion,

Frederick M. Hoyt
Linguistics Department
University of Texas at Austin
fmhoyt at mail.utexas.edu