Download Abstract: The Adjectival “fluidity” and its linguistic implications

Title: The categorical “fluidity” of adjective and its linguistic implications
Yurie Tsuruhara Okami
Since the pioneering study of Dixon (1977, 1982), the adjective is the most controversial and
problematic category for the definition of parts of speech systems. Some languages, like
English, have open classes of adjectives, whereas others (Yoruba, Hausa, Mandarin, etc.) only
have a few, and the category is closed. In addition, some languages do not make clear
distinctions between nouns and adjectives or between verbs and adjectives.
In this article, based on the definition of the parts of speech systems in terms of “prototype”
(Croft 2001) (1), I propose that even in languages whose parts of speech systems are well
established, when we examine them carefully, the “fluid” nature of adjectives can be observed
in various ways, and bring consequences to the acquisition of language.
For example, in Japanese there is a non-productive, closed class of adjectives. They behave
more like verbs with their own inflection paradigms and do not require a copula in predicative
use. On the other hand, Japanese is provided with another type of open classed adjective,
namely the adjectival nouns (Miyagawa 1987), and they are more productive. Although they
can also be a predicate in a sentence by itself, their inflectional paradigm is much closer to
that of a noun plus copular verb “da” (2). In other words, Japanese has two types of
adjectives; one is a less productive “verbal” adjective, and the other is a more productive
“nouny” adjective.
In the case of Romance languages like Spanish, they have a well-distinguished syntactic
category of adjectives as in English. However, further examination reveals that also in
romance languages, there are various cases where the boundary of adjectives is ambiguous
between nouns and verbs. One of the examples is the noun-drop construction in Spanish
(Snyder et al. 2001) (3). In this construction, the adjective gets the reference property without
the noun head. The other example is the alternation of two types of copular (ser/estar) (4).
When adjectives appear with estar, the whole sentence assumes a more dynamic,
non-persistent interpretation. That is to say, the adjective is the “fluid” category even within a
language, like Japanese or Spanish.
One of the implications of this intra-linguistic fluidity of the adjective will be found in the
field of the language acquisition of children. First, when children begin to learn the
word-to-world mapping, the proportion of adjectives to nouns and verbs in children‟s early
lexicon is smaller (Blackwell 2005). That is to say, the acquisition of the adjectives is wholly
dependent upon the acquisition of nouns and verbs. Second, some phenomena like the
overgeneration of the genitive case marker -no in the acquisition of Japanese noun phrases
(Murasugi, et. al. 2009) (5), or the time lag of the acquisition of Spanish and Italian adjectives
(Waxman and Guasti 2009) can be explained if we suppose that at this stage, children can not
separate adjectives from nouns, and miscategorize them into nouns. We may contend that
these errors are owed to the typological fluidity of the adjective category as an input to the
language acquisition.
Although the prototype of each syntactic category will be a clue to acquire the parts of
speech systems for children, the typological variation of particular language will often lead
them to the stage of miscategorization. The errors made by children in the course of the
language acquisition will be settled within a possible range of the typological (or
parametrical) variation. Thus, the overgeneration of the genitive case marker –no in Japanese
and the delay of the acquisition of the adjective category in Spanish will be explained if we
assume the typological “fluid” nature of the adjective category.
Data
(1)Croft‟s mapping between semantic class and pragmatic functions (Croft 2001)
Semantic class
Pragmatic function
Noun
object
reference
Adjective
property
modification
Verb
action
predication
(2)
non-past tense
non-past negative
past
past negative
Noun + copula “da”
hon-da
hon-dewa/zya nai
hon-dat-ta
hon-dewa/zya na-kat-ta
tentative
hon-daroo
Adjectival Noun
kirei-da
kirei-dewa/zya nai
kirei-dat-ta
kirei-dewa/zya
na-kat-ta
kirei-daroo
Adjective
ooki-i
ooki-ku nai
ooki-kat-ta
ooki-ku na-kat-ta
ooki-i-daroo
(3) a. La camisa que quiero comprar es la roja ø.
b. The shirt that I want to buy is the red *(one).
(4) a. Juan es guapo. “Juan is handsome by nature”
b. Juan está guapo esta noche. “Juan looks more handsome than usual tonight”
(5)a. atarasii *no
kami
new
GEN paper
„a new paper‟
b. siroi *no
gohan
white GEN
rice
„white rice‟
c. Tiisai *no
buubuu
small GEN
car
„A small car passed.‟
(Yuta 1;11)
(Yuta 2;0)
tootta yo
passed
(Sumihare 1;11)
Selected References:
Baker, Mark C. (2003): Lexical Categories Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press
Beck, David (2002): The typology of parts of speech systems: the markedness of adjectives,
New York, Routledge
Croft (2001): Radical Construction Grammar, Oxford, Oxford University Press
Dixon, R.M.W. (1982): Where have all the adjectives gone? Berlin, Mouton
Kato, Shigehiro (2009): “Nihongo keiyoushi saikoo”, HUSCAP 129, 63-88
Murasugi, Keiko, et al. (2010): “A Trihedral Approach to the Overgeneration of “no” in the
Acquisition of Japanese Noun Phrases”, in press.
Snyder, William, Ann Senghas, and Kelly Inman (2001): “Agreement Morphology and the
Acquisition of Noun-Drop in Spanish”, LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 9 (2), 157-173
Waxman, Sandra R. and Dana B. Markow (1998): “Object properties and Object Kind:
Twenty-One-Month-Old Infants‟ Extension of Novel Adjectives”, Child Development
vol.69, Num.5, 1313-1329
Waxman, Sandra R. and Maria Teresa Guasti (2009): “Nouns, Adjectives, and the Acquisition
of Meaning: New Evidence from Italian-Acquiring Children”, Language Learning and
Development 5, 50-68