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Part of
A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives
Edited by Phoevos Panagiotidis and Moreno Mitrović
[Language Faculty and Beyond 17] 2022
► pp. 15–72

Universal and language-specific aspects of adjectives

Absolute categories and relational molds

| Ruhr-Universität Bochum

This paper argues that categoriality is a multi-layer notion. Some properties of categoriality may be cross-linguistically universal. However, other properties of linguistic categorization differ between languages. Some of these properties can be described by (non-categorial) properties of lexical items. However, we argue, another layer of categoriality are so-called molds, morpho-syntactic contexts that lexical items can appear in. Molds are, crucially, defined by items in a language other than the item to be categorized. Various phenomena in different languages, borrowing and code-switching serve to highlight the use of molds. The same phenomena also demonstrate that no lexical items can ever be truly category-less, in that all items have lexical properties which qualify them for, or disqualify them of, certain molds.

Keywords: category, word class, categorial features, root, adjective, borrowing, code-switching
Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • Part I.The theoretical status and definition of word classes in generative syntax
    • 1.Word classes in traditional grammars
    • 2.Categorial features and featurized categories in generative approaches
      • 2.1Feature systems with categorial features
      • 2.2Featurized categories – without categorial features
    • 3.‘Essentialist’ word class definitions
  • Part II.Working without grammar-wide word classes in individual languages
    • 4. Lexical molds yield richer descriptions (and are layered on top of essentialist word sets)
    • 5.Adaptation to a mold in naive borrowing
    • 6.Adaptation to molds in bilingual code-switching: Restricted options
  • Part III.The ‘adjectival’ mold in German is about predication and attribution
    • 7.‘Adjectival’ molds in German
    • 8.Adapting English adjectives to the German mold in naive borrowing
    • 9.In lieu of a conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.17.02str
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