The study tries to show - on the basis of a large collection of data - that the labelling of adjectives such as environmental, nuclear, linguistic, urban as 'nominal, non-preicating' does not adequately account for observable language behaviour. 'Lexicalized' terms such as polar bear behave like unitary nouns, but otherwise these adjectives can well be found in predicative position; they may also accept adverbial modification. Various syntactic tests demonstrate that attempts to explain predicative occurrences as resulting from ellipsis, from Head Noun Deletion, fail in a large number of cases. The conclusion reached in this thesis is that the adjectives in question cannot generally be considered 'attributive-only'.
| ISBN: | 9783820497410 |
| Publication date: | 31st December 1987 |
| Author: | Steffi George |
| Publisher: | Peter Lang Edition an imprint of Lang, Peter, GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wiss |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 209 pages |
| Series: | Europaische Hochschulschriften : Reihe 14: Angelsachsische Sprache Und Literatur |
| Genres: |
Language: reference and general Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 |