The syntactic classes of antenominal adjectives in English

Abstract

The generative grammarians' problem of the derivation of ante-nominal ‘attributive’ adjectives largely stems from the assumption that all such adjectives have the same syntactic relationship with their head nouns. Jespersen's distinction between ‘restrictive’ and ‘non-restrictive’ adjectives, given scant attention by contemporary linguists, cannot be shown by I.C. analysis or by any other kind of structural analysis unless extra-sentential relationships are considered. There are three classes of ante-nominal adjectives: (1) determinative-constituent adjectives, which occur with nominals having cataphoric determinative markers ( the, that, those); (2) epithetic adjectives, which occur with nominals having anaphoric determinative markers ( the, that, these, my, etc.) or partitive determiners ( a, some); and (3) nominal-constituent adjectives, which occur with determinative markers or partitive or categorial ( φ, a, any, no, every) determiners. Indeterminate adjectives occur when classification as (1) or (3), or (2) or (3), is uncertain; and ambiguous adjectives occur when classification as (1) or (2) is uncertain. Implications are that generative grammarians must furnish quite separate derivations for these three classes; and that stylistic analysis should benefit from this type of ‘delicate’ classification.