Lexical Categories verbs nouns and adjectives phần 7 pdf

First, adjectives can be direct attributive modifiers ofnouns, but nouns and verbs cannot be section 4.2: 1 a ∗a smart woman b ∗a genius woman c ∗a shine coin Second, adjectives can be t

3.9 Are nouns universal? 185are ambiguously nouns or adjectives crosslinguistically The important point isthat some words apparently must have a referential index, and other words cannever have one; these are the unambiguous nouns and the unambiguous adjec-tives of Salish A similar range of complex predicates is found in Straits Salish(Jelinek and Demers 1994: 708, ex (28)) and in Wakashan languages (Jacobsen1979; Wojdak 2001).

Attributive constructions also reveal a noun–adjective distinction in

Austronesian languages For example, in Tukang Besi words like to’oge ‘big’ and woleke ‘rat’ can both be used with an article to form an argumental expres-

sion ((180a)), potentially causing one to doubt that there is a difference in

cat-egory But to’oge can modify a true noun directly, as shown in (180b), whereas

woleke cannot; a genitive particle is required between the two nouns ((180c)).

(180) a te to’oge; te woleke (Donohue 1999: 78, 80)

A R T big A R T rat

‘the big one; the rat’

b te woleke to’oge (Donohue 1999: 77)

A R T rat big

‘the big rat’

c te iku ∗(nu) woleke (Donohue 1999: 80)

A R T tail G E N rat

‘the rat(’s) tail’

The ungrammaticality of (180c) without the genitive marker shows that words

like woleke ‘rat’ must bear a referential index; this cannot be freely suppressed

to give it the distribution of an adjective as well as that of a noun.51

A second test of whether some words must have a referential index in theselanguages comes from verbalizing morphology Section 3.8 showed that inlanguages with a noun–adjective distinction, it is normal for predicate ad-jectives to correspond to stative, inchoative, and causative verbs, but not forpredicate nouns to do so The reason is that the referential index of the nouncannot coexist with the theta-marked subject added by verbalizing morphol-ogy, by the Reference-Predication Constraint If referential indices were onlyoptionally associated with noun-like words in a particular language, then thisasymmetry should disappear; all roots should be equally eligible for productive

51 Attributive constructions also point toward there being a noun–adjective distinction in Samoan, although the evidence is more subtle Nouns that modify other nouns do not require a geni- tive marker in Samoan But Mosel and Hovdhaugen (1992) point out an asymmetry in linear order: when a noun is modified by both a “noun” and an “adjective,” the order must be head noun-modifying noun-adjective, not head noun-adjective-modifying noun I interpret this as showing that nouns can only combine with other noun projections by way of nonsyntactic root compounding, whereas adjectives can combine with nouns by syntactic merge.

and semantically transparent verbalization But this is not what we find in any

of the languages with relevant derivational morphology Launey (1981: 275)

discusses two Nahuatl affixes – inchoative ya and causative –lia – which he

describes as attaching only to “adjectives.” His examples have glosses like

‘become white,’ ‘become sour,’ ‘become green/fresh,’ ‘become yellow,’ ‘makesomething white,’ ‘make sad,’ and ‘become big’:

(181) a Izt¯a-ya in tep¯e-tl

white-I N C H the mountain-N S F

‘The mountain became white.’

b O-quim-izt¯a-li in cepayahui-tl in t¯e-tepe’

P A S T-3pO-white-C A U S the snow-N S F the P L-mountain

‘The snow has made the mountains white.’

These affixes apparently cannot attach to roots with clearly nominal meanings–the same asymmetry we find in languages like English.52 Salish also has an

inchoative derivation, produced by adding a glottal stop infix or a –p suffix to a

root This derivation too can apply to “adjectives,” but not to nouns, as shown

in (182) (van Eijk and Hess 1986; Davis 1999).53

(182) a za7Xw ‘to melt’, from zaXw ‘melted’ (adjectives)

la7kw ‘get loose’ from lakw ‘loose, untied’

tsa-7-k ‘get cool’ from tsek.ts´ak ‘cool’

qwa-7-ez’ ‘go blue’, from qwez.qw´az ‘blue’

52 Andrews (1975) describes another Nahuatl morpheme, -ti, as being a verbalizing suffix that

can be added productively to nouns to create inchoative verbs meaning ‘to become (like) X.’

He implies that this is a relatively common process in Nahuatl, citing examples like tl¯ac-ti

‘to become a person, to be born’ and te¯o-pix-c¯a-ti ‘to become a priest.’ Launey’s (1981: 274)

discussion of the same affix, however, gives a different impression He lists ‘become’ as only the fourth gloss of this affix when it attaches to nouns; other glosses that he puts first are ‘to do,’

‘to be for the moment,’ and ‘to behave like a.’ A typical example of his is ni-tequi-ti ‘I work’ (from tequi-tl ‘job, task’), which means ‘I do work,’ not ‘I became a job.’ I assume that Launey’s

discussion is the more accurate and complete one.

53 Davis (1999) mentions briefly that there is another inchoative affix in Salish that attaches

exclu-sively to nouns, the so-called “developmental” affix –wil’c:

(i) a sama7-w´ıl’c ‘become a white person’

b sk’uk’mi7t-w´ıl’c ‘become a child’

While this further supports the point that there are category differences in Salish, it does call into question my generalization that nouns cannot productively form inchoative verbs The striking difference between this affix and the one in the text is that the developmental affix is phonologically heavier, constituting a full syllable Perhaps this shows that it is lexically a verb rather than a Pred, and it combines with the noun by true incorporation rather than conflation.

In that case, the N root and the V morpheme count as two separate nodes in the syntax, and the noun root can continue to bear its referential index (cf also note 41 on Yidin).

The verbalization of predicate nouns is perfectly productive in Greenlandic; see note 42 for data and a tentative suggestion toward an analysis.

3.9 Are nouns universal? 187

b ∗q´a-7-y’ecw ‘become a man’, from s-qaycw ‘man’ (nouns)

∗k’u-7-k’wm’it ‘become a child’ from s-k’´uk’wm’it ‘child’

There may not be a clear difference in the productivity of verbalizing tives” and “nouns” in the Austronesian languages, both apparently being verycommon But there is a predictable difference in the meaning of the verbali-zed form Verbs that correspond to inherently adjectival roots in Tukang Besihave very simple and regular meanings, in which the state denoted by the root is

“adjec-predicated of the subject The verbal form of to’oge ‘big’ means (unremarkably)

‘to be big,’ for example (Donohue 1999: 77) In contrast, the verbal form of a

nounish word like ha’o ‘hammer’ means not ‘to be a hammer,’ but ‘to use a hammer.’ In the same way, the verbal form of ba’e ‘fruit’ means ‘to bear fruit,’ and the verbal form of hoti ‘food’ means not ‘to be food’ but ‘to give food

or clothing to the poor’ (Donohue 1999: 81–82) This reconfirms that the twoclasses of roots have different grammatical properties, the one being free to take

on a specifier directly, the others doing so only as the result of more complexand indirect lexical manipulations that remove or satisfy their referential index.This difference is detectable even in Huallaga Quechua, the discussion inWeber (1989) notwithstanding Weber cited the two examples in (183) as evi-dence that there is no morphological difference between “nouns” like ‘stone’and “adjectives” like ‘big’ in Quechua:

(183) rumi-ya-n; hatun-ya-n

stone-I N C H-3S big-I N C H-3S

‘It becomes stone’ ‘It becomes big’

But ‘stone’ is a material-denoting word, which one expects to be ambiguousbetween noun and adjective To clarify the situation, David Weber (personalcommunication) performed a computer search on a large text (the Bible) to pullout examples that contained the morpheme –ˇca, an affix that creates transitiveverbs This affix is commonly glossed as ‘cause to be,’ but this gloss turned outnot to be very accurate In four cases, it attached to a root that English eyes see

as an adjective In these cases, it does consistently mean ‘cause to be’; (184a)

‘to salt (meat), to put salt on’ (not: ‘to cause to be salt’)

Weber also found approximately fifteen cases in which –ˇca: attached to a typical noun root In none of these examples does –ˇca: have a simple causative

proto-meaning, as shown by the representative examples in (184b,c,d) These havethe same kinds of argument-like readings that nouns zero-derived into verbs

have in English: (184c) is like Hale’s and Keyser’s (1993) location verbs (to

corral the horses) and (184d) is like Hale’s and Keyser’s locatum verbs

(to salt the meat) Quechua derivational patterns are thus sensitive to the same

difference in categories as Nahuatl and Salish derivations are, once one digsbeneath the surface

Summarizing all this material, I have shown that there is evidence that somewords in each language considered may not have a referential index, and there

is evidence that some words in each language must have a referential index.For each language considered, there are at least two converging lines of evi-dence for this Often there are also a few roots for which a referential index

is optional, but that is true even in languages like English Therefore, nounsseem to exist as a universally distinct lexical category after all Furthermore,the grammatical consequences of being a noun are quite stable over this widerange of languages These consequences can be masked in some situations bythe presence of functional categories – Preds that make nouns look more verbal,and pronouns / determiners that make adjectives and verbs look more nominal

In languages in which both Pred and pronouns are systematically null, it iseasy to get the impression that there is no difference in the lexical categories.For Salish, some Wakashan languages, and some Austronesian languages, thisimpression is magnified by two other quirks of the grammar: the fact that deter-miners happen to be required even with nouns, and the fact that tense and subjectagreement are clitics rather than true affixes The obligatoriness of determinersmeans that verbs and adjectives seem to be just as good arguments as nouns,since the crucial contrast in (171) does not show up as such The clitic nature oftense and agreement means that they attach just as well to predicate nominals as

to verbs, the extra Pred projection that usually blocks the attachment of T-relatedaffixation to nouns having no effect on clitics attached in the PF component.This magnifies the impression that nouns are just as good predicates as verbs

3.9 Are nouns universal? 189None of these properties – null Preds, null pronouns, obligatory determiners,and tense particles that are PF clitics – is remarkable in itself, but appearing alltogether in the same languages they largely conceal the otherwise obvious dif-ferences in categories Nevertheless, for each language, a clearly recognizableclass of nouns emerges once we know where to look, guided by the fundamentaldefinition of nouns given in (1).

4 Adjectives as neither nouns

nor verbs

4.1 The essence of having no essence

In chapter 2, I considered what distinguishes verbs from nouns and adjectives.The difference, I claimed, was that only verbs take a specifier, a syntacticposition that is normally assigned a theme or agent theta-role This is a sharpenedversion of the widespread intuition that verbs are the prototypical predicates ofnatural language (see, for example, Croft [1991] and Bhat [1994]) In chapter 3,

I turned to nouns, asking what distinguishes them from adjectives and verbs.The answer was that nouns alone have criteria of identity, which allows them

to bear referential indices This is a sharpened and generalized version of thecommon intuition that nouns are uniquely suited to the task of referring Now it

is time to look more closely at adjectives, not as a foil for the other categories,but in their own right What distinctive property do adjectives have that underliestheir various morphological and syntactic characteristics?

The strongest and most interesting answer to this question would be to say thatthere is nothing special about adjectives They are already distinguished fromverbs by not licensing a specifier, and from nouns by not having a referentialindex Ideally, this should be enough to completely characterize their behavior.Such a theory would preserve an important aspect of the Chomskian insight thatone needs only two binary features to distinguish three or four categories (+/−Nand+/−V from Chomsky [1970], or +/−Subj and +/−Obj from Jackendoff

[1977]) Any additional features would be logically superfluous and would raisequestions about why there are not more categories than there are My particulartheory contains an axiom that stipulates that there cannot be the equivalent of

a+N, +V category, the Reference-Predication Constraint of chapter 3 Onecan, however, have a category that is −N, −V, and in this chapter I arguethat is what adjectives are; one needs no new features and no new principles toaccount adequately for their basic properties across languages This sharplydistinguishes my approach from the descriptive and functionalist traditions,which often see adjectives as being by definition the prototypical modifiers of190

4.1 The essence of having no essence 191natural language (Croft 1991; Bhat 1994) My view is also distinguished fromformal semantic attempts to characterize adjectives as being inherently gradablepredicates (e.g Larson and Segal [1995: 130–32], see also Kamp [1975] andCroft [1991]) Adjectives can be used as modifiers in many languages, and theycan be compared, but I argue that these are derived properties of adjectives, notbasic defining ones.

To defend this view, I consider three syntactic environments in which only

an adjective can appear First, adjectives can be direct attributive modifiers ofnouns, but nouns and verbs cannot be (section 4.2):

(1) a ∗a smart woman

b ∗a genius woman

c ∗a shine coin

Second, adjectives can be the complements of degree heads like so, as, too, and

how in English, but neither nominal nor verbal projections can be (section 4.3):

(2) a Mary is too smart for her own good

b ∗Mary is too a genius/a too genius for her own good

c ∗If you polish it, the coin will too shine in the dark to miss

Third, adjectives can be resultative secondary predicates, unlike nouns and verbs(section 4.4):

(3) a They beat the metal flat

b ∗They beat the metal a sword

c ∗They polished the coin shine

These, then, are contexts in which adjectives do not form a natural class witheither nouns or verbs

How can these environments select for adjectives, if adjectives have nodistinctive properties to select for? The logic of my theory permits only oneanswer to this question: these must be structures in which the theta-role as-signing property of verbs and the index-bearing property of nouns causes them(independently) to run afoul of general conditions When that is the case, ad-jectives emerge as the only category that can be used, not because of any posi-tive feature that the adjective has, but by default, because nothing disqualifiesthem I develop this type of theory in the next three sections Section 4.5 thenconsiders the relationship between adjectives and adverbs, claiming that theyare essentially the same category Finally, section 4.6 looks at the question ofwhether all languages have one and only one category of adjective I argue thatthe answer is “yes,” in spite of the conventional wisdom that this category is

the most prone to crosslinguistic variation (Dixon 1982; Schachter 1985; Bhat1994).

4.2 Attributive modification

4.2.1 Framing the issues

The most obvious distinctive characteristic of adjectives is that they modifynouns directly, in the so-called attributive construction Nouns and verbs cannot do this (4) gives more examples illustrating this in English:

(4) a a rich man; a shiny coin

b ∗a wealth man; a genius man (OK: a man of wealth, a boy-genius)

c ∗a shine coin; a hunger man (OK: a coin that shines, a shining coin)The same generalization holds in Edo ((5)), in Tukang Besi ((6) [Donohue1999]), and in a great many other languages

(5) a `okp`ı´a z`ur`o.z`ur`o (Edo)

man lazy/foolishA

‘the/a lazy man’

b ∗`okp`ı´a z`ur´o (OK: `okp`ı´a n`e ´o z´u!r´o.)

man be.foolishV man that he be.foolish(R E L)

‘the laze man’ ‘the/a man that is foolish’

c ∗`okp`ı´a `oz`ur`o (OK: `okp`ı´a ´o.gh´e `oz`ur`o.; eke.n-`o.kh´o.kh`o.)

A R T rat big

‘the big rat’

b ∗te woleke tode (OK: te woleke t-um-ode)

A R T rat flee A R T rat R E L-flee

‘the flee rat’ ‘the fleeing rat’

c ∗te iku woleke (OK: te iku nu woleke)

A R T tail rat A R T tail of rat

‘the rat(’s) tail’ ‘the tail of the rat’

This is, indeed, the most common way for descriptive grammars to recognize adistinct class of adjectives: see, for example, Smeets (1989) on Mapuche, Heath(1984) on Nunggubuyu,1Feldman (1986) on Awtuw, Renck (1975) on Yagaria,Dixon (1977) on Yidin, Daley (1985) on Tzutujil, among others

1 In Nunggubuyu there is the interesting wrinkle that the attributive adjective–noun combination

shows up as a morphological compound Thus, Heath says that N–A compounds like runggal ( -word-big) ‘big words’ are found in the language, but N–N compounds are rare.

ani-dunggu-4.2 Attributive modification 193Nouns and verbs can, of course, modify nouns in less direct ways, if theyare embedded in the right additional functional structure For example, verbscan be the main predicate of a relative clause that modifies the head noun inall three languages Nouns can become modifiers when they are embedded in

a prepositional phrase headed by of in English, ´o.gh´e (which often reduces to just a floating high tone) in Edo, or nu in Tukang Besi Nouns can also modify

other nouns within a compound, where compounds can often be distinguishedfrom syntactic modification on morphological and phonological grounds (e.g.the special stress pattern of many English compounds) Finally, nouns andverbs can modify nouns if they are transformed into adjectives by derivational

morphology, as in a wealthy man or a shiny coin.2 This range of options isavailable to adjectives as well: they can modify a head noun by being embedded

in a relative clause (a man who is rich), by forming a compound (a blackbird),

or by being derived into another adjective (a reddish flower) But adjectives also

have an option that is unique to them: that of being merged directly with the headnoun, with no obvious functional structure mediating the relationship.3 (5a)

shows that even the Pred head (spelled out overtly as y´e in Edo) is not present in

the attributive construction This then gives us a descriptive characterization ofthe attributive construction: it consists of a(n almost) bare head in tight syntacticconstruction with a noun or noun projection And the only heads that can, inpoint of fact, be in such a configuration are adjectives

I already mentioned in section 4.1 that some functionalist authors like Croft(1991), Hengeveld (1992), and Bhat (1994) take the ability to modify nouns to

be the defining – or at least the characteristic, prototypical – property of jectives In this, they follow traditional grammar When medieval grammarianssuch as Peter Helias and Thomas of Erfurt first began to distinguish “adjectivalnouns” from “substantive nouns,” it was precisely because their new emphasis

ad-on syntax led them to realize that the ad-one word class is essentially syntactically

2 Participial forms of the verb can also modify nouns, as in a shining light Two analyses of these

are compatible with my theory: the participle suffix could be (among other things) a derivational affix that forms adjectives (Borer 1990), or the participle could be a kind of reduced relative clause (Kayne 1995) I leave a detailed study of participles to future research.

3 There are languages such as Tagalog (Norvin Richards, personal communication) and Tzutujil (Daley 1985) in which a linking morpheme appears between an attributive adjective and a mod- ified noun:

bitter- L K thing

‘a bitter thing’ (compare k’ay ‘it is bitter’)

One might think this is a functional head involved in modification somehow In Tzutujil, however, the presence of this linker is phonologically conditioned: it appears after one syllable adjectives but not after longer ones It could thus be purely a PF phenomenon None of the languages I know well has a linker, so I take it to be of marginal significance and ignore it here.

independent whereas the other occurs essentially in construction with anothernoun (Robins 1989: 95).4 Bhat (1994: ch 12) legitimately criticizes genera-tive grammar for being preoccupied with predicate adjectives, in which theadjectives are partially “verbalized” (for me, by the presence of a Pred) whileneglecting the attributive construction that is more characteristic of adjectives.Pursuing this intuition would presumably lead one to identify some special pos-itive property of adjectives that underlies their ability to be attributive modifiers.Nevertheless, I believe that it is wrong to make the ability to modify nouns thedefining or characteristic property of the category adjective It is well known thatEnglish has adjectives that cannot be used as attributive modifiers, but only aspredicates, as shown in (7a) and (7b) Other adjectives can be used attributively

or predicatively, but only with a substantial change of meaning (Bolinger 1967;Siegel 1980)

(7) a The dog is asleep

∗The asleep dog.

b Mary is ready

#The ready woman

c John is responsible (e.g for losing the report)

=The responsible man

Such purely predicative adjectives are not uncommon across languages TheAthapaskan language Slave is an extreme case, in which all adjectives arerestricted to predicate position, as complement to the copular verb; adjectivesare never used as attributive modifiers in direct construction with a noun (Rice1989: ch 21)

(8) a Yenene (be-gho) sho hili (Rice 1989: 389–90)

woman 3-of proud/happy 3-is

‘The woman is happy/proud (of him/her).’

b ∗yenene sho (Keren Rice, personal communication)woman proud/happy

‘a proud/happy woman’

In order to use a word like sho as a restrictive modifier of the noun, one must

use a relative clause – the Slave equivalent of ‘a woman that is proud’ – whichcontains a copula and a complementizer as well as the adjective One canvery well say that the adjectives in (7) and (8) are not prototypical adjectives,

4 In antiquity, the parts of speech were distinguished primarily on the basis of inflection, and adjectives happen to take the same range of number, gender, and case forms as nouns in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit For this reason, the distinction between nouns and adjectives was usually not noticed before the Middle Ages.

4.2 Attributive modification 195and (at least for (7)) that the properties they denote are not canonical ones.Nevertheless, they are adjectives.

It is not even clear that the attributive use of adjectives is the most commonone statistically In Croft’s (1991) study of how adjectives are used in texts,attributive modification was the most common use, but the predicative use wasfar from rare: fully 33 percent of the tokens were predicate adjectives Croftacknowledges that this is only weak support for his view that modification is thedefining function of adjectives Other counts put the percentage of predicativeadjectives even higher: Thompson (1988: 174) and Hengeveld (1992: 59) foundthat 68 percent of adjectives were used predicatively, and only 32 percent wereused attributively Some functions of adjectives are doubtless more commonthan others, but no one use constitutes such an overwhelming majority that it

is certain to hold the key to the category as a whole This suggests that it iswrong to build a theory of adjectives around the property of noun modification

It would be better to do it the other way around, and derive the possibility ofnoun modification (for most adjectives) from a more general theory of whatadjectives are

4.2.2 Explaining the basic restrictions

On my conception, adjectives are simply lexical heads that are not nouns orverbs Within my system, that adjectives alone can be attributive modifiers can

be derived directly from this The range of structures to consider is shown in (9),where a word of each category is merged directly with a noun projection to create

a larger noun projection that functions as the argument of a verb (I use a barenominal without a DP projection for simplicity, but nothing significant changes

if a determiner projection is added above the NP projection.)

(9) a Attributive noun b Attributive verb c Attributive adjective

must correspond to a maximal projection, and that every constituent of a phraseother than its head must be a maximal projection These axioms of X-bar theoryhave led most previous researchers to say that the structure of attributive mod-ification is either [DP D [NP AP [NP N]]] (the standard view) or [DP D [AP A[NP N]]] (Abney [1987] and a few others after him) Both of these structuressquare with X-bar theory by positing a maximal projection that the adjectiveheads Chomsky (1994; 1995), however, points out that these conditions aremerely conventions of the theory, with little true substance He suggests thatone should not make a principled theoretical distinction between minimal, in-termediate, and maximal projections, and that any two phrase-structural objectsshould be allowed to “merge” to form a new phrase, as long as no independentcondition is violated This less constrained “Bare Phrase Structure” perspective

is very much to be welcomed when it comes to the study of attributive tion, because there is plenty of straightforward evidence that (9c) is essentiallycorrect On the one hand, the attributive adjective cannot take a complement( the proud of Mary parent), nor can it be preceded by a degree element (∗the too/so proud parent) If the structure is really [DP D [NP AP [NP N]]], as theorthodox theory would have it, then it is completely mysterious why the APcan contain little more than a bare A, and not the other usual ingredients of an

modifica-AP.5 On the other hand, it is very clear that the A+ NP constituent has theexternal distribution of an NP, not that of an AP It can be the complement of

a determiner but not a degree head, for example (the proud parent,∗too proud parent), and it can be the argument of ordinary NP-selecting verbs but not of

AP-selecting verbs like seem (I respect proud parents,∗John and Mary seem proud parents) These facts are problematic for Abney’s [DPD [APAP [NPN]]]structure There are thus compelling reasons to take (9c) to be the correct struc-ture for attributive modification, and its existence gives empirical justificationfor the move from X-bar theory to Bare Phrase Structure My theoretical task,then, is to take up the Bare Phrase Structure challenge of saying why the com-bination in (9c) is possible, but the combinations in (9a) and (9b) – which can

be formed just as easily by an unconstrained operation of merge – run afoul ofgeneral principles

5 Whereas it is true that attributive adjectives cannot take complements, and cannot appear with a fully fledged degree system, they can be a little more than just a head: the attributive adjective

can be modified by an adverb (an extremely tall man) or by very (a very tall man) Apparently it

is possible for one head to adjoin to another to make a new head within an attributive modifier,

but that is all I discuss the adjunction of adverbs to adjectives in section 4.5 below Very has

properties that distinguish it from all other words in English, but I tentatively assume that it is a specialized adverb that falls under essentially the same analysis Why A can merge with NP but

AP cannot is unclear and the basic facts seem to vary from language to language; see note 12.

4.2 Attributive modification 197Consider first (9a), in which a noun is merged with another noun (projection).Both nouns bear a referential index, by definition Moreover, the two indicesmust be distinct, given that neither noun is inherently anaphoric Elements withlittle or no intrinsic lexical content, such as pronouns, null operators, NP-traces,and theta-roles, have dependent indices A noun projection that c-commandsany of these items can bind it, so that they share an index, which helps to licensethe noun in accordance with the Noun Licensing Condition of chapter 3 Theindices of lexically specified nouns, however, are not dependent in this way As aresult, one noun phrase cannot bind another one that it c-commands (Condition

C of Chomsky’s [1981] Binding theory), giving the contrast between (10a) and(10b) (Lasnik 1989: ch 9)

(10) a ∗Mary{i,n}thinks the genius{k,i}will win big on the quiz show

b Mary{i,n}thinks that she{i}will win big on the quiz show

c Mary’s{i,n}mother thinks the genius{k,i}will win big on the quiz show

(10a) is bad even though it is perfectly possible for the same person to be bothMary and a genius; indeed, the two phrases can refer to the same person as long

as neither one c-commands the other, as in (10c) Because one lexical nouncannot bind another, lexical nouns cannot license each other for purposes of theNLC, as shown in (11)

(11) a That woman{j,n}will win<Agn> big on the quiz show

b That woman{j,n}, she{n}will win big on the quiz show

c That woman{j,n}, Op{n}they are sure to pick t{n}to be on the quiz show

d ∗That woman{j,n}, the genius{k,n}will win big on the quiz show

These considerations also imply that genius cannot be licensed by being dexed with woman in (9a) Therefore, both nouns must be coindexed with

coin-something else in the c-command domain of their maximal projection, in order

to pass the NLC One of the nouns can fulfill this requirement by being chosen

as the head of the phrase at the time of its construction Whichever noun ischosen as the head of the newly formed category provides the label of the cat-egory as a whole (Chomsky 1995: sec 4.3), and the referential index is part ofthis label, I assume Indeed, since being a noun reduces to having a referential

index in my system, it is natural to say that the referential index is the label N.

The index of the head is therefore visible to the outside world and can be censed, for example by being coindexed with the theta-role of the nearby verb

li-fall in (9a) The elementary operation merge is, however, unable to combine

two indices into a new index.6The index of the noun that is not chosen as thehead is thus trapped inside the noun phrase; it is unable to enter into a bindingrelationship with anything else in the structure, because it does not c-commandanything but the head noun.7It therefore violates the NLC This explains theungrammaticality of the attributive noun construction in (9a).

There are, of course, other syntactic resources that can achieve approximatelythe intended effect A noun can modify another noun if it is first theta-marked

by a preposition, as in expressions like a man of sorrows Such constructions

are particularly common in African languages, including Edo and Chichewa

A noun can also be transformed into an adjective by derivational ogy, after which it can be used attributively But a pure attributive noun con-struction is impossible The minimally different representations are compared

morphol-in (12)

(12) a ∗a [N{i,j}power] [N{k,l}man]

b a [N{i,j}man] [of<Thl> [N{k,l}power ]]

c a [Apowerful] [N{i,j}man]

Consider next the possibility of an “attributive verb” configuration, in which

a verb is merged with a noun to form a noun projection, as in (9b) The teristic property of verbs is that they have a specifier, to which they generallyassign an agent or theme theta-role If this theta-role is not properly assigned,the structure is ruled out by the theta criterion What could the verb assign itstheta-role to in (9b)? Theta role assignment is a very local relationship: a verbcan only discharge its theta-role to a maximal projection that is a structural sister

charac-of the verb or its projection The verb does not, however, project a phrase in (9b),

by hypothesis Therefore, the only expression that the verb hunger could ceivably assign its theta-role to is the head noun woman But this element is not a

con-6 In this respect, pure merge contrasts with a conjunction head like and, which can combine the

indices of the two conjuncts into a new, plural index which is the sum of the two constituent

indices Thus, a tentative representation for the woman and the genius would be:

(i) [ NP{m=i+k, n=j+l}The woman{i,j}and the genius{k,l}] fell <Th n >

7 The attributive noun certainly could never get a theta-role It is conceivable that it could c-command a pronoun, however, if the NP it modified contained a complement The attribu- tive noun probably does c-command the pronominal possessor of the complement in (i), for example.

(i) ∗The [genius{i,j}[sister{k,l}of his{j}best friend{m,n}]]

But even if genius could technically be licensed by binding his as a kind of resumptive pronoun

in (i), it could not thereby be interpreted as a modifier of sister Thus, even this odd structure is

ruled out by the theory.

4.2 Attributive modification 199maximal projection according to the Bare Phrase Structure principles ofChomsky (1995), since it provides the label for the phrase as a whole, and non-

maximal projections cannot be theta-marked The noun phrase hunger woman

as a whole is a maximal projection, but hunger cannot theta-mark this phrase

because it is contained in it There is no phrase that is both a maximal projection

and the sister of a projection of hunger; hunger thus cannot assign its theta-role,

and the structure is ruled out

Things would come out differently if merge took the verb to be the head of

the projection in question, rather than the noun Then the noun woman would

count as both a maximal projection and a sister of the verb, and theta-markingcould take place But the resulting structure would be a VP, not an NP at all Assuch, it could not bear a referential index, and could not serve as the argument

of another verb, such as fall It follows, then, that verbs cannot be attributive

modifiers either.8 They can be modifiers of nouns if they are part of a morecomplex structure, such as a relative clause, in which there is an additionalnoun phrase that the verb can assign its theta-role to (see (13b)) Alternatively,verbs can become modifiers of nouns by losing their theta-role in the process

of being transformed into an adjective (see (13c)) But a pure attributive verbconstruction is as impossible as an attributive noun construction ((13a))

(13) a ∗a [N{k,l}[Vshine<Th??> ] [N{k,l}coin]]

b a [N{k,l}coin] [Oplthat [tlshines<Thl>]]

c a [N{i,j}[Ashiny] [N{i,j}coin]]

Let us turn then to the possibility of merging an adjective with a noun ornoun projection, as in (9c) The adjective does not have a referential index thatneeds to be equated with something else in the structure, so it is not in danger

of violating the NLC Nor does it have a theta-role that it must assign, so it isnot in danger of violating the theta criterion This structure thus violates none

of the basic principles, and it is grammatical (subject to the lexical semanticproperties of the heads involved) This completes the explanation of why onlyadjectives are suited to being attributive modifiers Adjectives have no specialproperty that equips them to be attributive modifiers, but neither do they have

8 This reasoning can be extended to verbs like seem and appear, which do not theta-mark their

specifier position, but do have a subject-matter theta-role to assign to a complement Weather

verbs like rain are the only ones that might not have any theta-role to assign at all (but see Rizzi

[1986a] on quasi-argumental theta-roles) But even they are subject to a related requirement: they

must have an expletive it subject There is no such subject in∗a rain day, and this can be used to

explain why this combination is bad, as compared to a rainy day.