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Cinque (2010) Treats Prenominal Adjectives in Languages Like Bosnian

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Cinque (2010) Treats Prenominal Adjectives in Languages Like Bosnian 194 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION LONG-FORM AND SHORT-FORM Cinque (2010) treats prenominal adjectives in languages like Bosnian/ PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES ARE Croatian/Serbian (BCS) and English either as APs in the specifiers NOT REDUCED RELATIVE of functional projections in the extended domain of N (direct modifica- CLAUSES IN BOSNIAN/ tion) or as predicates in reduced relative clauses in the specifiers of CROATIAN/SERBIAN functional projections (indirect modification), while postnominal ad- Aida Talic´ jectives in these languages are treated only as predicates in reduced University of Connecticut relative clauses. In this model, the direct-modification source is associ- ated with one set of interpretations and the indirect-modification source with a different set of interpretations. This proposed dual-source analy- sis raises the question whether there are any languages that mark this distinction with overt morphology. In this respect, Cinque considers languages, among them BCS, where adnominal modification has two distinct morphological shapes. Crucially, BCS adjectives have differ- ent morphological forms depending on their distribution: the ‘‘long form’’ and the ‘‘short form.’’ Cinque treats the two forms as being overt manifestations of the two sources of modification. In particular, he suggests that adnominal short-form adjectives are always reduced relative clauses (indirect modification), while long-form adjectives are ambiguous between the two sources. This proposal captures some distributional and ordering restrictions these two forms of BCS adjec- tives display. In this squib, I provide several empirical arguments against the claim that BCS is a language that overtly distinguishes between two sources of modification. By closely inspecting the distribution and interpretations of BCS adjectives, the ordering between the two forms in the prenominal position, and extraction possibilities out of APs, I show that both long- and short-form adjectives represent challenges for Cinque’s model. I argue that treating BCS long adjectives, as well as prenominal short adjectives, as reduced relative clauses is problem- atic. More generally, my investigation of interpretations that adnomi- nal adjectives in BCS receive, including several parallels between BCS and English, leads to the conclusion that, although there may be two syntactic sources of adnominal adjectives, these different sources are not identified by two distinct sets of interpretations associated with them. I also introduce facts that are problematic for the claim that the indirect-modification source involves reduced relative clauses. The squib is organized as follows. In section 1, I introduce Cinque’s (2010) dual-modification-source model and its predictions. In section 2, I explore how the predictions of this model fare with respect to BCS adjectives. In sections 2.1 and 2.2, I discuss data regard- ing BCS long and short adjectives, respectively, that are problematic for the dual-source analysis. Section 3 is the conclusion. For helpful comments, I am very grateful to äeljko Bo'kovic´, Jonathan Bobaljik, Nadira Aljovic´, Susi Wurmbrand, Jon Gajewski, Magdalena Kauf- man, NedÅad Leko, two anonymous LI reviewers, and the Squibs and Discus- sion editors. Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 48, Number 1, Winter 2017 194–212 ᭧ 2017 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi: 10.1162/ling_a_00241 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LING_a_00241 by guest on 30 September 2021 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 195 1 The Dual-Modification-Source Hypothesis Cinque (2010) proposes that adnominal adjectives have two sources—a proposal based on, among other things, the interpretation of adjectives within nominal phrases. Under his view, adnominal ad- jectives enter the structure either as APs in the specifiers of designated functional projections (FPs) in the extended domain of N or as predi- cates in reduced relative clauses in the specifiers of FPs. Regarding the interpretation of adnominal adjectives, it has been known since Bolinger 1967 that prenominal and postnominal adjec- tives in English differ in their interpretation. Thus, the prenominal adjective in (1a) is ambiguous and can be understood as denoting a permanent (intrinsic) or temporary (episodic) property. (Svenonius (1994) and Larson and Maru'i? (2004) note that the distinction be- tween permanent and temporary property corresponds to Carlson’s (1977) individual-level/stage-level distinction.) The postnominal ad- jective in (1b), on the other hand, is not ambiguous and can only receive the temporary-property reading. (1) a. the visible stars (include Capella, Betelgeuse, and Sirius) b. the stars visible (Bolinger 1967:4, Larson and Maru'i? 2004:274) Bolinger (1967) also notes that prenominal and postnominal adjectives differ regarding the availability of restrictive and nonrestrictive inter- pretations. The prenominal adjective in (2a) can be understood as either restrictive or nonrestrictive, while the postnominal one in (2b) receives only a restrictive reading. (2) a. Every unsuitable word was deleted. ‘Every word was deleted; they were all unsuitable.’ ‘Every word that was unsuitable was deleted.’ b. Every word unsuitable was deleted. #‘Every word was deleted; they were all unsuitable.’ ‘Every word that was unsuitable was deleted.’ (Larson and Maru'i? 2004:275) Further, Cinque (2010) notes that in English DPs with multiple pre- nominal adjectives, readings available only to prenominal adjectives (permanent, nonrestrictive) and the ones available to both postnominal and prenominal adjectives (temporary, restrictive) can cooccur. In such cases, adjectives with interpretations available to both prenominal and postnominal adjectives must precede adjectives with prenominal-only readings. This is shown in (3a), where the boldfaced adjective is inter- preted as denoting a temporary property and the nonboldfaced one is interpreted as denoting a permanent property, and in (3b), where the boldfaced adjective is interpreted as restrictive and the nonboldfaced adjective as nonrestrictive. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LING_a_00241 by guest on 30 September 2021 196 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION (3) a. every visible visible star (temporary Ͼ permanent) b. his most unsuitable unsuitable acts (restrictive Ͼ nonrestrictive) (Larson 1998:155–165, Cinque 2010:19) Cinque also observes that in some languages adjectives with permanent or nonrestrictive interpretations have more rigid ordering within the nominal phrase than those with temporary or restrictive interpretations (see also Sproat and Shih 1988, 1990). However, this ordering some- times appears to be a mere preference or just an unmarked order, as is the case in English. Cinque captures these interpretive properties of English adjec- tives and their order in the prenominal position by proposing a dual- source analysis for adnominal modification. One source is direct modification, which he assumes involves merger of APs in the speci- fiers of FPs in the extended domain of N. These adjectives are real attributive adjectives and receive interpretations that are not found in the postnominal position in English (permanent, nonrestrictive, nonin- tersective, etc.). The second source is indirect modification (Sproat and Shih 1988, 1990), which Cinque takes to be (reduced) relative clauses merged in the specifiers of projections higher than the ones associated with direct modification, as in (4). The indirect-modifica- tion adjectives receive interpretations that can occur in both prenomi- nal and postnominal position in English (temporary, restrictive, inter- sective, etc.). (4) DP FP (reduced) RC indirect modification FP AP direct modification NP In short, in Cinque’s account two sources of adnominal modification correlate with two distinct sets of interpretations that are available to adjectives only in particular (distinct) positions within the nominal phrase. 2 Two Adjectival Forms in BCS BCS has ‘‘long’’ and ‘‘short’’ forms of adjectives, which differ in the prosody of the adjectival stem and (in some dialects) the agreement Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LING_a_00241 by guest on 30 September 2021 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 197 endings they take. (Pitch accents are represented as follows: [`]– falling accent; [´] – rising accent; [:] – length. It is well-known that the prosody of adjectival stems usually differs in the long form and in the short form; see Aljovic´ 2002 for discussion.) Some dialects use the so-called nominal declension endings for agreement in the short form (bije´:la konja ‘white.ACC.SF horse’) and pronominal declension endings in the long form (bije`:log konja ‘white.ACC.LF horse’), the distinction being present only in masculine and neuter singular con- texts; other dialects productively use only pronominal declension end- ings in both the long and the short form (bije´:log konja ‘white.ACC.SF horse’, bije`:log konja ‘white.ACC.LF horse’), except in the nominative singular masculine and the accusative singular masculine inanimate, where the short form has the ending - and the long form has the ending -i.1 What is relevant for our discussion is that in all dialects the long form is only used attributively (5a–b),2 while the short form typically occurs in the predicative position (5c) but can also be used attributively (5d). (5) Long form a. poznati pjesnik famous.LF poet ‘a/the famous poet’ b. *Ovaj pjesnik je poznati. this poet is famous.LF Intended: ‘This poet is famous.’ Short form c. Ovaj
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