Cover not available
Part of
Word Classes: Nature, typology and representations
Edited by Raffaele Simone and Francesca Masini
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 332] 2014
► pp. 203–226

Between adjective and noun

Category/function mismatch, constructional overrides and coercion

ORCID logo | Ghent University

This contribution examines the issue of non-canonical usages of lexical items in French, which, as a result of their use in a construction typical of another word class than the one they are usually associated with, exhibit mixed word class properties. Starting from two case-studies: (i) a. le simple et le beau “the simple and the beautiful” (ii) a. voilà comment on fait du très beau avec du simple “that is how you can make beautiful things with simple things” b. des costumes très ‘théâtre’ “very theater-like costumes” it will be shown that both alleged cases of respectively (i) ‘nominalization’ and (ii) ‘adjectivization’ display categorial deficiency with respect to the target category, which should lead to reject all accounts based on null elements or ‘full’ recategorization (morphological conversion, lexical relisting, etc.). Instead, I propose a syntactic (constructional) account based on constructional overrides and coercion that captures both restrictions and meaning effects.

Published online: 24 September 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332.11lau
References (48)
Alexiadou, Artemis
2011 Adjectival Nominalizations: Qualities and properties. Paper presented at the Workshop on the Syntax and Semantics of Nounhood and Adjectivehood, Barcelona, 24–25 March 2011.Google Scholar
Apothéloz, Denis
2002 La construction du lexique français: principes de morphologie dérivationnelle. Gap: Ophrys.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C
2003 Lexical Categories: Verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bally, Charles
1944 2 . Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Bern: Francke.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit & Isabelle Roy
2010 “The Name of the Adjective”. Adjectives ed. by Patricia Cabredo Hofherr & Ora Matushansky, 85–114. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bresnan, Joan
1997 “Mixed Categories as Head Sharing Constructions”. Proceedings of the LFG97 Conference ed. by Miriam Butt & Tracy Holloway King. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Corbin, Danielle
1987 Morphologie dérivationnelle et structuration du lexique. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Corbin, Danielle & Pierre Corbin
1991 “Un traitement unifié du suffixe -er(e)”. Lexique 10.61–145.Google Scholar
Corblin, Francis, Jean-Marie Marandin & Petra Sleeman
2004 “Nounless determiners”. Handbook of French Semantics ed. by Francis Corblin & Henriëtte de Swart, 23–41. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Croft, William A
2001 Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles & Paul Kay
1993 Construction Grammar Course Book. Unpublished ms., Department of Linguistics, Berkeley, University of California.Google Scholar
Fradin, Bernard
2003 Nouvelles approches en morphologie. Paris: P.U.F.Google Scholar
Francis, Elaine J
1999 “Variation within lexical categories”. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago [UMI Dissertation Abstracts].Google Scholar
Francis, Elaine J. & Laura A. Michaelis
2004 Mismatch. Form-Function incongruity and the architecture of grammar. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Fried, Mirjam & Jan-Ola Östman
2004 “Construction Grammar: A thumbnail sketch”. Construction Grammar in a Cross-Language Perspective ed. by Mirjam Fried & Jan-Ola Östman, 11–86. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gaeta, Livio
This volume. “On decategorization and its relevance in German”.
Goldberg, Adele
1995 Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kerleroux, Françoise
1996 La coupure invisible. Etudes de syntaxe et de morphologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.Google Scholar
2000 “Identification d’un procédé morphologique: la conversion”. Faits de Langue 14.89–100.Google Scholar
Kester, Ellen-Petra
1996 The Nature of Adjectival Inflection. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
Koch, Peter & Thomas Krefeld
1993 “Gibt es Translationen?”. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 109.149–166.Google Scholar
Kupferman, Lucien
1991 “Structure événementielle de l’alternance un/Ø devant les noms humains attributs”. Langages 102.52–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambertz, Thomas
1995 “Translation et dépendance”. Lucien Tesnière aujourd’hui ed. by Françoise Madray-Lesigne & Jeannine Richard-Zappella, 221–228. Louvain & Paris: Peeters.Google Scholar
Lauwers, Peter
2008 “The Nominalization of Adjectives in French: From morphological conversion to categorial mismatch”. Folia Linguistica 42.133–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “The Modification of Predicative Bare Nouns in French: A functional analysis”. Transactions of the Philological Society 109:1.12–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forthcoming. “Copular Constructions and Adjectival Uses of Bare Nouns in French: A case of syntactic ‘recategorization’?”. Word 60.
Lauwers, Peter & Dominique Willems
2011 “Coercion: Definition and challenges, current approaches, and new trends”. Linguistics 49:6.1219–1235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
eds. 2011  New Reflections on Coercion . Special issue of Linguistics 49:6.Google Scholar
Leeman, Danielle
1998 “ C’est du joli! Remarques sur un emploi d’adjectif dit ‘substantivé’”. Du percevoir au dire. Hommages à André Joly ed. by Annie Boone, 221–232. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Claire & Pieter Muysken
1988 Mixed Categories. Nominalizations in Quechua. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Lieber, Rochelle
2004 Morphology and Lexical Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maesfranckx, Patricia & Johan Taeldeman
1998 “Polyseem, polyvalent en vaag -achtig ”. Morfologiedagen1996 ed. by Erik Hoekstra & Caroline Smits, 84–105. Amsterdam: Meertensinstituut.Google Scholar
Malouf, Robert
2000 “Verbal Gerunds as Mixed Categories in HPSG”. The Nature and Function of Syntactic Categories ed. by Robert D. Borsley, 131–166. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura A
2003 “Word Meaning, Sentence Meaning, and Syntactic Meaning”. Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics ed. by Hubert Cuyckens, René Dirven & John R. Taylor, 163–209. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 “Construction Grammar”. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics ed. by Keith Brown, 2nd ed., vol. 3, 73–84. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
2011 “Stative by Construction”. Linguistics 49:6.1359–1400. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Milner, Jean-Claude
1989 Introduction à une science du langage. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick
2004 “Theoretical Implications of Grammatical Category – Grammatical Relation Mismatches”. Mismatch. Form-Function incongruity and the architecture of grammar ed. by Elaine J. Francis & Laura A. Michaelis. 149–178. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Olsen, Susan
1988 “Das ‘substantivierte’ Adjektiv im Deutschen und Englischen: Attribuierung vs. syntaktische ‘Substantivierung’”. Folia Linguistica 22.317–372. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pustejovsky, James
1995 The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Riegel, Martin, Christian Pellat & René Rioul
1994 Grammaire méthodique du français. Paris: P.U.F.Google Scholar
Sleeman, Petra
1996 Licensing Empty Nouns in French. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Spencer, Andrew
2005 “Towards a Typology of “Mixed Categories”. Morphology and the Web of Grammar. Essays in memory of Steven G. Lapointe ed. by C. Orhan Orgun & Peter Sells, 95–138. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Tesnière, Lucien
1959 Elements de linguistique structurale. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Villalba, Xavier
2009 “Definite Adjective Nominalizations in Spanish”. Proceedings of the IV Nereus International Workshop “Definiteness and DP Structure in Romance Languages ” (Arbeitspapier 124) ed. by Teresia Espinal, Manuel Leonetti & Louise McNally, 139–153. Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz.
Werner, Edeltraud
1993 Translationstheorie und Dependenzmodell. Kritik und Reinterpretation des Ansatzes von Lucien Tesnière. Tübingen: Francke.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
1986 “What’s in a Noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?)”. Studies in Language 10:2.353–389. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winther, André
1982 “Un cas de dérivation non-affixale: la substantivation des adjectifs en français”. Folia linguistica 16.325–364. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by 5 other publications

Busso, Lucia, Florent Perek & Alessandro Lenci
2021. Constructional associations trump lexical associations in processing valency coercion. Cognitive Linguistics 32:2 ► pp. 287 ff. DOI logo
Lauwers, Peter
2020. Je ne suis pas très fromage. Hypothèses sur l’origine d’une construction attributive exprimant l’inclination. Romance Philology 74:1 ► pp. 123 ff. DOI logo
Creissels, Denis
2014. The ‘new adjectives’ of Tswana. In Word Classes [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 332], ► pp. 75 ff. DOI logo
Gaeta, Livio
2014. On decategorization and its relevance in German. In Word Classes [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 332], ► pp. 227 ff. DOI logo
Simone, Raffaele & Francesca Masini
2014. On Light Nouns. In Word Classes [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 332], ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.