The adjective

Three major issues emerge when one surveys the linguistic literature on adjectives. Bhat (1994) points out that criteria for the identification of an adjective as a distinct category are the most contentious issues recurring on much work done on adjectives. Over the past few decades, semantic and morpho- syntactic criteria for the identification of this class have been proposed (Dryer, 1992). However, none of these criteria seems satisfactory for the identification of the class of the adjective particularly in the languages where the line between this category and nouns and/verbs is marginal.

Various scholars such as Dixon (2004) and Tucker (1998) view an adjective as a word class which assigns a property or quality to a noun it occurs with. However, Carnie (2010) points out that exceptions can be found with such characterization of adjectives. While in many languages the majority of the words regarded as adjectives conform to this notional definition, Carnie argues that the existence of nouns which exhibit property-like words such as ‘whiteness’ or ‘height’ exposes this definition as inadequate.

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Bhat (2004) argues that adjectives in languages such as English can take degree modifiers (e.g. very hot). Rugemalira (2007) terms this property the ‘phrasal property of adjectives’. It is assumed that nouns and verbs do not have this property. Mpofu (2009) points out that nouns, for example, inflect for number and verbs inflect for tense and mood but adjectives do not have these inflectional morphemes. However, Bhat points out that in many languages not all members of the adjective can take degree modification. In Bantu languages, Mpofu (2009) and Creissels (2004) assert that a prototypical adjective can be distinguished from nouns based on class range. According to Creissels, “noun stems can only occur with a selected number of affixes whereas adjectives can be prefixed on any noun of any class”. In other words, adjectives can occur with nouns from all classes.

According to Haspelmath (2012: 109), it is not possible to find universal categories. He continues to say that each language has its own categories that are distinguished based on the language-specific criteria. The identification of the adjective class in Chimakonde is motivated by this observation. Adjectives in this study, include both morphological and descriptive items which assign some property to the head noun. Morphological adjectives are those which are not derived from other words classes and which, may or may not, display concord with the head noun. If an adjective is derived, it is, thus, descriptive. My characterization of adjectives in this manner echoes Quirk, et. al. (1972) who classify English adjectives into central and peripheral ones. According to them, an adjective is central if it can occur both attributively, before a noun, and predictively after a copular verb; it can be intensified and compared. According to them, peripheral adjectives lack some of these features. Another contentious issue emerging in the linguistic literature is the universal nature of adjectives. Dixon (1982) argued that not every language has the adjectival category, a statement which has been contested. Dixon (ibid.) argues that many languages make use of nouns and verbs to express properties. Supporting Dixon’s idea, McGregor (2009), as cited in Flanagan (2014: 13), states that, in most Australian languages, it is stative verbs which encode properties. Hale and Keyser (2002) assert that adjectives in Navajo (Southern Athabaskan) are verbs whereas those in Warlpiri are nouns. However, many studies done in the last few years have recognised an independent adjectival category in individual languages.

Dixon (2006) and Baker (2003) are some of the recent studies which support the idea that the class of adjectives occurs in each natural language. Dixon (ibid.), rejecting his own 1982 idea that adjectives are not universal, advances the view that adjectives should be recognised in terms of each language’s internal grammatical criteria. Prototypically speaking, Dixon argues that the roots of each major word class can be associated with a semantic type. For example, roots with concrete reference, are usually nouns. The roots which are associated with dimension (big, tall, wide, etc), age (old, new,

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young, etc), colour (white, black, dark blue, etc), value (good, bad, wrong, etc), to mention but a few, are usually adjectives.

Baker (2003), challenging Chomsky’s 1970 feature system of identifying major word classes, proposes changing the way of recognizing this class. Baker (ibid.) points out that the adjectives class cannot be characterised in terms of having nominal [+N] or verbal [+V] features but it is better to view them as possessing none of these two features. Adjectives, according to Baker (ibid.), are unmarked lexical categories used when nouns and verbs cannot be used. Adjectives, unlike nouns and verbs, can occur in predicates and modifying positions.

The third issue concerns the order of adjectives relative to head nouns and the corresponding interpretational possibilities they bring about in a DP. Bolinger’s (1967) classical study explored attributive and predicative adjectives in English. Bolinger advanced the view that attributive and predicative adjectives in English assign different interpretations to the head noun. As a result, he distinguished between reference modification and referent modification. According to him, attributive adjectives (for example, a navigable river) assign a permanent characteristic to the head noun and therefore they have ‘reference modification’. Predicative adjectives, (for example, a river is navigable), on the other hand, assign a temporary characteristic to the head noun and therefore they have ‘referent modification’. In alternative terms, reference and referent modifications are referred to as individual-level and stage-level interpretations, respectively (Carlson & Pelletier, 1995).

3.3.1.1 The adjective from the generative perspective

Generative linguists assuming the Minimalist approach hold no consensus about the merging point of adjectives in a DP. However, two factors seem to emerge as suggestive of the point at which an adjectival modifier is merged in a DP. These concern whether an adjective is viewed as optional, and thus non-substantial or whether it is viewed as contributing to the semantic interpretation of a lexical noun it modifies. Considering these factors, Leu (2015) points out there are four approaches through which adjective modifiers are analysed in the generative syntax, namely the adjective as an adjunct, a specifier, a head and a relative clause.

3.3.1.1.1 The adjective as an adjunct

An adjective is viewed as an adjunct because it is possible to have more than one instance of it in a construction, suggesting that it is optional, just like adjuncts are (Leu, 2015). Leu (ibid.), however, challenges the view that adjectives are optional by providing evidence from the concept of ‘double definiteness’ exhibited in Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Swedish and Danish). In these languages when the adjective modifies the NP specified by a single determiner, another determiner, which immediately precedes the adjective becomes obligatory. This suggests that adjectives are

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obligatory in some languages in expressing the definiteness of NPs. Furthermore, in assuming that adjectives are merged as adjuncts, thus iterative, the implication is that multiple adjunction is permissible. However, Leu holds that such a view is not consistent with Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry which disallows multiple adjunction and multiple specifiers. As adjuncts, it is claimed that adjectives are phrasal categories adjoined to NP (Bernstein 1993, Valois, 1991, among others), as illustrated below:

(1) DP

D NP

AdjP NP

In (1), the adjectival phrase is sister to the maximal nominal projection, suggesting that it is viewed as an adjunct. However, it can be noted that adjunction can occur with heads and intermediate projections.

3.3.1.1.2 The adjective as a specifier

Cinque (1994; 2010) is a proponent of the view that adjectives are specifiers. Taking the semantic- functional point of view and drawing evidence from Romance languages, Cinque points out that in Romance languages, adjectives can occur prenominally and postnominally, each assigning various semantic interpretations to lexical nouns they modify. According to him, prenominal adjectives assign a non-restrictive/non-intersective/relative reading, among others, to the noun they modify, and postnominal adjectives assign restrictive/intersective reading, among others, to the noun with which they occur. He refers to the non-restrictive reading of prenominal adjectives as ‘direct modification’ and restrictive reading of postnominal adjectives as ‘indirect modification’. Invoking these interpretive properties of adjectives, Cinque argues that a clause exhibits dedicated functional projections whose specifiers are adjectives. He maintains that prenominal position is the base position for adjectives. Postnominal adjectives are derived by raising nouns through heads of functional projections and the agreement features between nouns and adjectives are checked in a Spec-head configuration. The structural representation of adjectives as specifiers can be illustrated as follows:

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(2) DP

D FP

AdjP F’

F NP

In this structural representation, the adjectival phrase is sister to an intermediate functional phrasal category (F’), suggesting that it is viewed as a specifier. According to Cinque (ibid.), a functional projection (FP) which hosts an adjectival modifier in its specifier is related to the semantic notion of the adjective merged. For example, if an adjective denotes colour, then its functional projection will be a colour phrase. In this approach, deriving multiple adjectives denoting the same meaning (e.g. two colour adjectives) is accounted for through coordination (ibid.).

3.3.1.1.3 The adjective as head

Abney was the first scholar to propose that adjectives are functional-like items heading their own phrases. The essence of his conclusion comes from the observation that adjectives in English can occur immediately before a noun (a difficult question) or before an article (too difficult a question). He argues that in both structures the noun is the complement of the adjective. However, the complement is an NP in the former, but it is a DP in the latter. He adds that an adjective can take degree words only if it occurs before an article (too large a discrepancy) but not before a noun (*too large discrepancy). Since in the DP hypothesis, NPs are selected by a determiner category, Abney concludes that prenominal adjectives which immediately occur before nouns are heads in English, as illustrated in the following structure:

(3) DP

D AdjP

A NP

However, Svenonius (1994) challenges this view by asserting that proper heads such as determiners cannot be modified by other linguistic expressions. In contrast, he points out that degree modifiers can modify adjectives, as in his example ‘a barely hot black coffee’. According to him, the adverb ‘barely’ in this example, modifies ‘hot’ but not ‘black’ because coffee is either black or not black but not barely black. This implies that the analysis in which adjectives are assumed to be heads is inadequate as it cannot accommodate such modifying relations adjectives exhibit. Svenonius (ibid.) proposes that adjectives be viewed as phrasal categories which are adjoined to a maximal projection. Abney’s analysis of adjectives as functional heads has also been criticised for being counter-intuitive, as adjectives have substantive content cross-linguistically.

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3.3.1.1.4 The adjective as a relative clause

One way in which relative clauses are analysed is to assume the head of a relative clause as originating inside a relative clause and then moves to its surface position to become head (cf. Kayne, 1994). In this analysis, a Determiner (D) selects a CP relative clause to project a DP, an idea that goes back to Smith (1964). This is termed raising or head internal analysis of relative clauses. Analogously, in an approach that views adjectives as relative clauses, adjectives are analysed as predicates which start out in a relative clause structure and then derived through Wh-deletion and adjective (predicate) fronting (cf. Leu, 2015). The key aspect of adjectival derivation in this approach is adjectival fronting. However, the critics of this approach (cf. Alexiadou & Wilder, 1998) point to the fact that in some languages, among them English, some adjectives occur only in attributive position (e.g. the adjectives former and late), implying that they strictly originate in prenominal position. Furthermore, they point out that there some adjectives that may occur following a copular verb, yet they cannot be fronted (e.g. the adjectives elect and alive), suggesting that the analysis may be faulty. Adjectival phrases generated under this system may be represented as follows:

(4) DP D CṔʹ Spec Cʹ C IP DP AdjP

What (4) says is an adjectival phrase (AdjP) is a constituent of a relative clause (CP) that starts out as a predicate constituent of an inflectional phrase (IP) and it is then fronted to the specifier position of CP to derive its surface order.