One important question regarding the analysis presented above is how it can account for the differences between predicative and attributive adjectives. There are adjectives that are inherently predicative; consider the examples in (50):
(50) a. The girl wasafraid.
b. * I saw anafraidgirl.
As can be seen, the adjectiveafraid, which is inherently predicative, can appear as a sentential predicate, as in (50a), but cannot be an attribute within a nominal expression, as demonstrated by the ungrammaticality of (50b). Similar adjectives includealive,asleeporillin English.
On the other hand, there are inherently non-predicative adjectives too, such asmainin (51):
(51) a. * The reason ismain.
b. That is themainreason.
Contrary toafraid, the adjectivemaincannot function as a sentential predicate, as shown in (51a), but may be an attribute, as in (51b). It is interesting to note that most attributive-only adjectives are also non-gradable, e.g.main,northern,mere, previousorutter. However, this is by no means a necessity, as demonstrated by the examples in (52):
(52) a. It is amore recenttheory than the traditional transmission model.
b. As he drinks, he gets into amore drunkenstate.
In fact, gradability and the choice between predicative and attributive uses are two independent properties which allow for six logical combinations: gradability is clearly binary and independently from this, adjectives may be predicative-only, attributive-only and may allow both options. Examples are given in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1: The classification of adjectives.
predicative-only attributive-only both
gradable afraid drunken tall
non-gradable alive main pregnant
This strongly suggests that apart from the fact that a Deg head may appear only with a gradable adjective, there are also further features to be considered.
It has to be mentioned that there are considerable cross-linguistic differences as to which adjectives qualify as predicative-only or attributive-only. In Russian, for instance, all the adjectives mentioned above can be both predicative and at-tributive. Consider the examples in (53).
(53) a. Eto this.n
glavnyj main
vokzal.
railway.station
‘This is the main railway station.’
b. Etot this.m
vokzal
railway.station
glavnyj.
main
‘This railway station is the main one.’
As can be seen, the adjectiveglavnyj ‘main’ can appear both as a predicate and as an attribute, contrary to Englishmain. This shows that although there are
general syntactic and semantic properties that play a crucial role in determin-ing whether a given adjective can be predicative and/or attributive, and which hold across languages, there are also important cross-linguistic differences, and individual lexical items may be idiosyncratic, too.
The fact that there are idiosyncratic properties to be considered as well is in-dicated by the existence of synonyms that behave differently, in spite of there being no differences in their morphological structure. Such a pair isillandsick in English: while sick may act both as a predicate and as an attribute,ill is li-censed only in a predicative position. Apart from such unpredictable properties, however, there are of course certain semantic and syntactic properties that make restrictions predictable. As pointed out by Kenesei (2014), relational adjectives tend not to occur in attributive positions (cf. Bally 1944, McNally & Boleda 2004 and Fradin 2007, among others). This has an interesting morphosyntactic corre-lation in Hungarian, where the denominal adjective-forming suffix -iproduces relational adjectives; therefore, as can be expected, adjectives formed with this suffix tend not to be allowed in attributive positions. Still, although most rela-tional adjectives are attributive-only, there are ones that can function as predi-cates, e.g.,English. Another semantic class that is known to be attributive-only is that of evaluative adjectives such asdamned. I cannot examine these issues in detail here; however, it is important to bear in mind that there are several factors that determine whether a given adjective is predicative or attributive, including both semantic and syntactic features and cross-linguistic differences.
I propose that the difference between predicative-only and attributive-only adjectives can be formalised with the help of features that are independent from gradability.4First, let us consider the following examples:
4Since the aim of the present discussion is to provide an adequate analysis for the structure of degree expressions, I do not venture into a detailed examination of a feature-based cate-gorisation of adjectives and will restrict myself to a basic distinction between predicative and non-predicative adjectives, which should suffice for the purpose of analysing degree expres-sions. As discussed by Fradin (2007), there are several criteria that have to be considered when examining the distribution of adjectives, including the syntactic position that they can take, gradability, and whether the adjective is denominal. These factors also interact with one an-other. Moreover, Fradin (2007) points out that, at least in languages that allow or even prefer postnominal modification, such as French, the distinction between a prenominal and a post-nominal adjectival modifier is also crucial. Again, this is a problem I am not going to address, especially because the postnominal appearance of adjectives in the languages under scrutiny is rather due to the presence of a reduced relative clause and not to true rightward attachment of the QP modifier. Finally, I am not going to deal with the issue of category shift, that is, when an adjective can be assigned two different feature matrices depending on the noun it modifies, e.g.,osseux‘bony’ is gradable in constructions such asvisage osseux‘bony face’ but not in ones such astuberculose osseuse‘bone tuberculosis’, see Fradin (2007: 84–85).
(54) a. Mary is pregnant.
b. Mary is a pregnant woman.
c. Mary is tall.
d. Mary is a tall woman.
The respective semantic representations of the adjectives in (54) are given in (55) below:
(55) a. pregnant(x)
b. ∃x[woman(x)&pregnant(x)]]
c. ∃d[tall(x,d)]
d. ∃x[woman(x)&∃d[tall(x,d)]]
As can be seen, the difference between non-gradable adjectives likepregnant in (55a) and (55b) and gradable adjectives liketallin (55c) and (55d) is that the for-mer simply denote sets of entities (x) that have a certain property, while gradable adjectives denote an ordered set of entities along the degrees (d) of an implied scale (see Kennedy & McNally 2005; Cresswell 1976; Heim 2000; Kennedy 1999). A gradable adjective equipped with a relevant syntactic feature, call it [+deg], con-tains information in its semantics with respect to a degree variable that quantifies over it; this is translated into syntax in such a way that the [+deg] feature must be checked against a Deg head. Non-gradable adjectives, on the other hand, are [–deg] and cannot enter into an agreement relationship with a Deg head; con-sequently, these adjectives are not supposed to be located within a DegP (and hence a QP).
On the other hand, there is a distinction between predicative and attributive adjectives: the latter do not take an individual but a variable (x), which is in turn taken by another predicate, both predicates being in the scope of the existen-tial quantifier. Syntactically, this difference should be the presence of a feature that can be checked off against a noun, call it [+nom]. Attributive-only adjectives are inherently [+nom] and if they do not appear in an attributive position, this feature cannot be checked off by agreement. By contrast, predicative-only adjec-tives are inherently [–nom] and if they appear as attributes, there is a feature mismatch with the noun head, which causes ungrammaticality.
Adjectives that can be both predicates and attributes allow for both [+nom]
and [–nom]. This may be manifest in distinct forms between the two uses; that is, in certain languages (such as German) there are inflected forms in the attributive position that overtly show agreement, while this is not so in predicative uses.
Since non-gradable adjectives can also be both [+nom] and [–nom], it should be clear that the choice is primarily not encoded in the Deg head, but rather on the AP itself: in the case of APs without a DegP projection, this syntactic information cannot be introduced elsewhere.
Naturally, in the case of gradable adjectives these features percolate up within the QP. First, the [±nom] feature of the AP percolates up to the DegP via specifier–
head agreement (cf. Yoon 2001; Ortiz de Urbina 1993; Horvath 1997). Second, the movement of the Deg head to the Q head assures the percolation of the feature to the Q head. Hence a [+nom] QP can and must enter into a further agreement relationship with a nominal head.
Feature percolation is summarised in the diagram in (56):
(56) QP
Q′ Q Xi
DegP AP[+nom] Deg′
Deg ti
[+nom] …
[+nom]
Predicative QPs can function as predicates in the clause or as postnominal modifiers and the Deg head is equipped with a [–nom] feature. Attributive QPs, by contrast, are modifiers of NPs and the Deg head is equipped with a [+nom]
feature.
In the cases I have looked at so far, it was invariably the AP that defined the [±nom] nature of the degree expression, the Deg head itself being underspec-ified for this feature. However, it is possible that certain Deg heads are inher-ently [+nom] or [–nom]. This is the case of the Russian comparative head -eje as given in (41), which appears exclusively as a predicate: it takes a [–nom] AP in its specifier, uninflected for gender, and can never appear as an attribute. On the other hand, superlative constructions seem to be universally attributive-only (cf. Matushansky 2008, based on Heim 1999) and therefore it is justifiable that superlative Deg heads are inherently [+nom].
I do not wish to elaborate on the syntax and the semantics of superlatives here and to present an account for why superlatives are inherently [+nom] in partic-ular. Note that the obligatory presence5of the definite article in superlatives is due to the presence of a nominal projection and is not required by the QP itself, as indicated by (57):
(57) This hypothesis is*/⁇(the) best.
As indicated, the definite articlethecannot be left out without affecting the grammaticality of the clause; still, there is no overt noun required. This is not the case for absolute and comparative adjectives such as (58a) and (58b):
(58) a. This hypothesis isthe good *(one).
b. This hypothesis isthe better *(one).
In (58), there has to be either an overt lexical noun or at least the proform one, otherwise the structure is ungrammatical. By contrast, in simple predicative structures the article is absent and so is the noun (orone):
(59) a. This hypothesis isgood.
b. This hypothesis isbetter.
Such constructions are not readily available for superlatives, however, as shown in (60):
(60) */⁇This hypothesis isbest.
Note also that different languages may behave differently with respect to the obligatory overtness of the noun head. In Hungarian, for instance, no such re-quirement is attested. Consider:
(61) a. Ez this
az the
elmélet theory
a the
jó.
good
‘This theory is the good one.’
5The picture is in fact somewhat more complex in this respect, and the article may be omitted in certain cases, see Heim (1999) and Croitor & Giurgea (2016: 423–426) for discussion. Note, however, that definite DPs do not always require an overt definite article either, and the fact that the article does not always occur when a superlative is present reinforces the assumption that the article is not part of the degree phrase.
b. Ez
‘This theory is the better one.’
c. Ez
‘This theory is the best one.’
As can be seen, all the cases in (61) involve the sequence of an overt definite article and an adjective but there is no phonologically visible noun head. I will not examine why this option is available for the absolute and the comparative degrees in Hungarian but not in English. What is important to note is that in the absence of a nominal projection, the superlative is not possible in Hungarian either:
‘This theory is good.’
b. Ez
‘This theory is better.’
c. * Ez
‘This theory is the best.’
In structures such as (62), there is no covert noun head and the QP functions as a predicate in the clause. This is possible with the absolute and the comparative degree, as in (62a) and (62b), respectively, but since the superlative degree is licensed only if there is a noun head in the structure, (62c) is not grammatical.
One of the obvious advantages of the analysis presented so far is that it pro-vides a unified approach that covers both predicative and attributive structures.
Recall that this was precisely one of the chief concerns expressed by Izvorski (1995). However, her analysis was shown to be problematic for several reasons.
Contrary to her assumptions, I claim that the inner syntactic structure of degree expressions is the same in both cases, but the features determining whether the entire QP may function as a predicate or an attribute are indeed QP-internal.