This book explores the uses of adjectives in different constructions, and of the problems that arise in their analysis, both in terms of syntactic theory and philosophy of grammar. Professor Matthews also examines a variety of other issues relating to individual adjective positions, including the basic structure of noun phrases and the justification for binary constituents; the status of the copular and its uses in the progressive; the indeterminacy of what were once described as raised constructions; and the function of postmodifying adjectives and adjective phrases in relation to others.
The book revisits the notion of deontic modality from the perspective of an understudied category in the modal domain, viz. adjectives. It analyses extraposition constructions with English adjectives like essential and appropriate, and uses this to refine traditional definitions of deontic modality. Together with dynamic and evaluative meanings, this category is integrated into a conceptual map, for which diachronic and synchronic evidence is adduced.
Employs a lively question-and-answer format to illumine the origins of common words, the excesses of sports journalism, the most overused expressions, the advertising arsenal of adjectives, and other persnickety language matters.
This monograph sets out (i) to establish criteria for differentiating adjectives from other word-classes for languages in which they form a distinct category, and (ii) to establish criteria for determining their (non-)identity with words from other categories for languages in which they do not. As languages show various gradations in the extent to which adjectives can be distinguished from other word-classes, the author discusses idealized language types, thereby providing a model for the analysis of natural languages.
