TY - JOUR
T1 - The subject of adjectives
T2 - Syntactic position and semantic interpretation
AU - Meltzer-Asscher, Aya
N1 - Funding Information:
I am extremely grateful to Tal Siloni and Julia Horvath for countless helpful discussions throughout all stages of work on this subject, and to a TLR reviewer for many important and interesting comments and insights. The paper owes much to questions and comments of the audiences at the “Adjectives and Relative Clauses” workshop in Venice, the 18th Colloquium on Generative Grammar in Lisbon, and the Department Seminar of the Foreign Literatures and Linguistics Department of Ben-Gurion University. Research for this paper was supported by the Israeli Science Foundation, grant 44/05.
PY - 2012/7
Y1 - 2012/7
N2 - It is widely accepted that subjects of verbs are base-generated within the (extended) verbal projection. In this paper I argue that the same is not true for predicative adjectives. In line with Baker (2003), I argue that while subjects of adjectives originate below spec,TP, they are not generated within the AP (or aP), but rather in the specifier of a higher functional projection, PredP. I further propose that the semantic relation between an adjective and its subject is not established by direct θ-role assignment. Unlike in the verbal domain, one of the adjective's θ-roles is lexically marked to undergo λ-abstraction in the semantic interface, and cannot be assigned syntactically to the subject. The discussion has consequences for the debate over the base position of subjects of verbs, providing evidence that they are generated in the specifier of the lexical verb, rather than in that of a higher little-v head.
AB - It is widely accepted that subjects of verbs are base-generated within the (extended) verbal projection. In this paper I argue that the same is not true for predicative adjectives. In line with Baker (2003), I argue that while subjects of adjectives originate below spec,TP, they are not generated within the AP (or aP), but rather in the specifier of a higher functional projection, PredP. I further propose that the semantic relation between an adjective and its subject is not established by direct θ-role assignment. Unlike in the verbal domain, one of the adjective's θ-roles is lexically marked to undergo λ-abstraction in the semantic interface, and cannot be assigned syntactically to the subject. The discussion has consequences for the debate over the base position of subjects of verbs, providing evidence that they are generated in the specifier of the lexical verb, rather than in that of a higher little-v head.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84870200718&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/tlr-2012-0007
DO - 10.1515/tlr-2012-0007
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:84870200718
SN - 0167-6318
VL - 29
SP - 149
EP - 189
JO - Linguistic Review
JF - Linguistic Review
IS - 2
ER -