Adjectives in spoken language discourse

Abstract

The status of adjectives as a universal lexical category has recently been questioned. This argument may take different forms. In its simplest form, it just points out the fact that there are languages without adjectives. In a subtler, more “foundational” form it submits that adjectives have no unique pragmatic function, but rather adapt themselves either to the pragmatic function of nouns (= reference/referent-introduction) or to the pragmatic function of verbs (= predication) (Hopper and Thompson 1984, Thompson 1989). It is possible, however, to postulate a pragmatic function specific to adjectives, namely distinguishing between already introduced referents. (Alternatively, the function may be said to consist in singling out and, thus, reidentifying one from among already introduced referents.) In English, for instance, adjectives in this function would be characterized by the fact that they occur in a definite noun phrase. It has been claimed that, whether or not such a function is to be found in artificially constructed sample sentences, it does not exist in spoken language discourse (Thompson 1989). In this article the pragmatic function of adjectives is investigated on the basis of Finnish spoken language data. It is shown that approximately 5–14% of adjectival phrases do distinguish (or re-identify), most often in the functions of intransitive subjects (11%), objects (14%) and adverbials (12%). Differences between narrative and conversational discourse are shown to be modality dependent.