Abstract
This paper is an investigation into the criteria for establishing syntacitc categories, and more specifically, into the problem of distinguishing between the categories of Adjective and Preposition. I will argue that in the history of English, at least two adjectives, like and worth, were reanalyzed as prepositions. Two questions come to mind: Why did the categorial reanalysis take place? What were the grammatical consequences of the reanalysis, i.e. what change(s) in the words’ use followed as a result? The answers to these questions provide evidence as to the grammatical function of complements of different syntactic categories. They also show how very little of the evidence traditionally used by linguists to establish categories is strictly syntactic in nature.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Allen, C.: 1977, Topics in Diachronic Syntax, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, U. Massachusetts, Amherst.
Baker, C. L. and J. McCarthy (eds.): 1981, The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Baltin, M.: 1978, Toward a Theory of Movement Rules, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation M.I.T.
Berman, A.: 1974, ‘Adjectives and Adjective Complement Constructions in English’, Report No. NSF-29, Department of Linguistics, Harvard University.
Bosworth-Toller: 1898, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford University Press.
Bowers, J.: 1975, ‘Adjectives and Adverbs in English’, Foundations of Language 13, 529–562.
Bresnan, J.: 1973, ‘Syntax of the Comparative Clause Construction in English’, Linguistic Inquiry 4, 275–344.
Bresnan, J.: 1978, ‘A Realistic Transformational Grammar’, in M. Halle, J. Bresnan, and G. Miller (eds.), Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Bresnan, J.: 1980, ‘The Passive in Lexical Theory’, Occasional Papers No. 7, MIT Center for Cognitive Science; to appear in Bresnan (in press).
Bresnan, J.: 1981, ‘Control and Complementation’, to appear in Bresnan (in press).
Bresnan, J. (ed.): in press, The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, MIT Press (to appear 1982).
Chomsky, N.: 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordrecht.
Crystal, D.: 1967, ‘Word Classes in English’, Lingua 17, 24–56.
Dik, S.: 1968, Coordination: Its Implications for the Theory of General Linguistics, North-Holland, Amsterdam.
Emonds, J.: 1976, A Transformational Approach to English Syntax, Academic Press, New York.
Grimshaw, J.: 1975, ‘Evidence for Relativization by Deletion in Chaucerian Middle English’, NELS V, pp. 216–224.
Grimshaw, J.: 1981a, ‘Form, Function and the Language Acquisition Device’, in C. L. Baker and J. McCarthy (1981), pp. 165–182.
Grimshaw, J .: 1981b, ‘Subcategorization and Grammatical Relations’, paper presented at the Harvard Mini-Conference on the Representation of Grammatical Relations, December 12,1981.
Grimshaw, J.: in prep., ‘Theories of Subcategorization’, Linguistics Program, Brandeis University.
Hendricks, R.: 1978, ‘The Phrase Structure of Adjectives and Comparatives’, Linguistic Analysis 4, 255–299.
Heny, F.: 1979, Review article, Chomsky, N., The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, Synthese 40, 317–352.
Jackendoff, R. S.: 1972, Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Jackendoff, R. S.: 1973, ‘The Base Rules for Prepositional Phrases’, in S. Anderson and P. Kiparsky (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, pp. 345–856.
Jackendoff, R. S.: 1977, X-bar Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph Two, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Kaplan, R. and J. Bresnan: 1980, ‘A Formal System for Grammatical Representation’, Occasional Papers No. 13, MIT Center for Cognitive Science; to appear in Bresnan (ed.).
Lightfoot, D.: 1980, ‘The History of NP Movement’, in T. Hoekstra, H. van der Hulst, and M. Moortgat (eds.), Lexical Grammar, Foris, Dordrecht, pp. 255–284; also in C. L. Baker and J. McCarthy (1981), pp. 86–119.
Lyons, J.: 1968, An Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge University Press.
Maling, J.: 1979, ‘Adjective Phrases and the Order of Constituents’, unpublished generals paper, MIT.
Maling, J. and A. Zaenen: 1981, ‘Germanic Word Order and the Format of Surface Filters’, in F. Heny (ed.), Binding and Filtering, Croom-Held, London and MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., pp. 255–278.
Oxford English Dictionary, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Nanni, D.: 1980, ‘On the Surface Syntax of Constructions with Easy-type Adjectives’, Language 56, 568–581.
Perlmutter, D. (ed.): to appear, Studies in Relational Grammar, Chicago University Press.
Peterson, P.: 1981a, ‘Problems with Constraints on Coordination’, Linguistic Analysis 8, 449–460.
Peterson, P.: 1981b, The Progressive Construction in English, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Newcastle, N.S.W., Australia.
Pinker, S.: 1980, ‘A Theory of the Acquisition of Lexical-interpretive Grammars’, Occasional Papers No. 6, MIT Center for Cognitive Science; to appear in Bresnan (ed.).
Platzack, C.: 1980, ‘Adjectives with Noun Phrase Complements in Swedish — A Phenomenon with Implications for the Theory of Abstract Cases’, unpublished ms., Institute for Nordic Languages, University of Lund, Sweden; revised version to appear in The Linguistic Review.
Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik: 1972, A Grammar of Contemporary English, Seminar Press, New York; Longman Group Ltd., London.
Riemsdijk, Henk van: 1983, ‘The Case of German Adjectives’, this volume. An earlier version appeared in J. Pustanowsky and V. Burke (eds.), Markedness and Learnability, U. Mass. Occasional Papers in Linguistics 6, pp. 148–173.
Ross, J. R.: 1972, ‘The Category Squish: Endstation Hauptwort’, CLS 8.
Schachter, P.: 1977, ‘Constraints on Coordination’, Language 53, 86–103.
Siegel, D.: 1977, ‘Nonsources of Unpassives’, in J. Kimball (ed.), Syntax and Semantics 2, Seminar Press, New York, pp. 301–317.
Siegel, E.: 1976, Capturing the Adjective, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Spevack, M.: 1973, The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare, the Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Tatlock, J. S. P. and A. G. Kennedy: 1963, A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Peter Smith.
Visser, F.: 1963, A Historical Syntax of the English Language, Vol. I-IIIb, E. J. Brill, Leiden.
Waksberg, J.: 1977, ‘The Structure of Prepositional Phrases in the X-bar Theory’, unpublished ms., Brandeis University.
Wasow, T.: 1977, ‘Transformations and the Lexicon’, in P. Culicover, T. Wasow, and A. Akmajian (eds.), Formal Syntax, Academic Press, New York, pp. 327–360.
Wasow, T.: 1980, ‘Major and Minor Rules in Lexical Grammar’, in T. Hoekstra, H. van der Hulst and M. Moortgat (eds.), Lexical Grammar, Foris, Dordrecht, pp. 285–312.
Williams, E.: 1980, ‘Predication’, Linguistic Inquiry 11, 203–238.
Williams, E.: 1982, ‘Another Argument that Passive is Transformational’, Linguistic Inquiry 13, 160–163.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1983 D. Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Maling, J. (1983). Transitive Adjectives: A Case of Categorial Reanalysis. In: Heny, F., Richards, B. (eds) Linguistic Categories: Auxiliaries and Related Puzzles. Synthese Language Library, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6989-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6989-6_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-009-6991-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-6989-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive