[Lingtyp] Call for expressions of interest: theme session at ALT 2019 - "Adjectives, Property concepts, and Beyond"

[Ye Jingting]

Call for expressions of interest: theme session at ALT 2019 - "Adjectives, property concepts, and beyond"




Convenors: Jingting Ye (Leipzig University, jingting.ye at studserv.uni-leipzig.de)
                   Pernilla Hallonsten Halling (Stockholm University, pernilla.hallonsten at ling.su.se)
                   Laura Becker (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, lbecker.berlin at gmail.com)


Theme session description:

Adjectives are notorious for their heterogeneity and have been claimed to make up a mixed category, with [+N] and [+V] as its characterizing features (Chomsky 1970). Cross-linguistically, strong variation can be observed regarding the size, semantic scope, and syntactic behavior of adjectives. In many Indo-European languages, adjectives are considered to constitute an open word class, while in some other languages, only a restricted set of words are regarded as adjectives. The counterparts of many adjectives in English are then either coded as nouns (e.g. in many Australian languages) or as stative verbs (e.g. in many African languages), which Wetzer (1992, 1996) terms ‘nouny’ and ‘verby’ adjectives respectively. Even in languages where adjectives are found as a sub-category of nouns or verbs, careful in-depth studies still reveal certain characteristics of this adjectival sub-category, however small it may be (Dixon & Aikhenvald 2004). It is clear that the nature of adjective as a potential language-independent category can only be captured through cross-linguistic study.

Though the semantic scope of adjectives varies across languages, Dixon (1977) identifies seven semantic types (DIMENSION, AGE, COLOR, VALUE, HUMAN PROPENSITY, PHYSICAL PROPERTY, SPEED), which tend to be coded as adjectives. Dixon (1977) also shows that DIMENSION, AGE, COLOR and VALUE are core semantic types for adjectives. However, according to Hallonsten Halling (2018), VALUE is a core semantic type also for adverbs. In addition, Ye (forthc.) shows that adjectives in the semantic type VALUE tend to exhibit different syntactic behavior.

Different semantic types may further exhibit coding discrepancies shown in different subclasses of adjectives (Dixon & Aikhenvald 2004). When examining cross-linguistic patterns of the attributive use of adjectives, it can be observed that further measures (e.g. adding an attributive marker) are taken only for adjectives from certain semantic types, while adjectives from other semantic types are unmarked. This coding discrepancy in different semantic types points to a cross-linguistic hierarchy, called the attributive prominence hierarchy following Ye (forthc.), which can be used to predict the coding patterns for different semantic types. For instance, adjectives from the AGE type (e.g. ‘old’) are less likely to be marked by an attributive marker in the attributive position than adjectives from the VALUE type (e.g. ‘good’).

This theme session aims at bringing together scholars interested in adjectives, attempting to shed new light on our understanding of adjectives. For this purpose, the theme session will discuss the following topics, but is also open to other related ones:

(i) Cross-linguistic studies on the lexical semantic variation of adjectives: Can the semantic variation of adjectives be connected to their encoding in single languages? What are the prototypical semantic types of adjectives? Which semantic types are less likely to be marked in the attributive or predicative position? Do the semantic types exhibit differences in time-stability (Givón 1984)? Attributive adjectives can often also host definiteness marking; can they mark other semantic properties of the referent as well?

(ii) The morphosyntactic properties of adjectives: What is the range of inflectional categories for adjectives? Which categories are typologically uncommon for adjectives? What are typical word-class-changing strategies (e.g. vaguebecomes vagueness by adding -ness, whereasrare becomes rarity by adding-ity)? Do adjectives from different semantic types show different behavioral potential (Croft 2001)? Is there any (implicational) interaction between the inflection of adjectives and the inflection of other elements (e.g. determiners, possessives and nouns)?

(iii) Word order: What cross-linguistic generalizations can be drawn concerning the word order of adjectives from different semantic types? How do such findings relate to the word order correlations pertinent to adjectives presented by e.g. Greenberg (1963) and Dryer (forthc.)?

(iv) Adjective-specific constructions (e.g. comparatives, superlatives, elatives): What are the morphosyntactic properties of adjective-specific constructions? What cross-linguistic generalizations can be drawn concerning adjective-specific constructions?

(v) In-depth grammatical descriptions about adjective subclasses: Grammatical descriptions about adjective classes (Dixon & Aikhenvald 2004) of less documented languages are also welcome.



Submissions: Potential participants are invited to send a preliminary title and a short abstract to the conveners by November 12th.



Contact:

jingting.ye at studserv.uni-leipzig.de

pernilla.hallonsten at ling.su.se

lbecker.berlin at gmail.com



Other important dates:

November 15th: Notification of inclusion of the title in the theme session proposal.

November 25th: Notification of acceptance/rejection of the theme session by the ALT organizers.



References:

Chomsky, N. 1970. Remarks on nominalization.Readings in English Transformational Grammar. Ginn, Waltham, Massachusetts. Blaisdell: 184-221.

Croft, W. 2001.Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dixon, R.M. 1977. Where have all the adjectives gone? Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”,1(1):19-80.

Dixon, R. M. & Aikhenvald, A. (eds.) 2004.Adjective classes: A cross-linguistic typology. Oxford University Press.

Dryer, M. forthc. On the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective and noun. Language.

Givón, T. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Greenberg, J.H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. Universals of language, 2, 73-113.

Hallonsten Halling, P. 2018. Adverbs: A typological study of a disputed category. Ph.D thesis, Stockholm University.

Wetzer, H. 1992. “Nouny” and “verby” adjectivals: A typology of predicative adjectival constructions. Meaning and grammar: crosslinguistic perspectives, Walter de Gruyter: 223-262.

Wetzer, H. 1996. The typology of adjectival predication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Ye, J. forthc. Property concepts and the attributive prominence hierarchy: a typological study. Ph.D thesis, Leipzig University.

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