LING 2200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Noun Phrase, Deixis, Grammatical Category
25 Sep 2018
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Syntactic subcategories: noun, verb, adjective, preposition, determiner. Scalar (/gradable) most adjectives belong to this category. Refers to a property that we can put on a scale or a continuum. (ex. Non-scalar (/non-gradable) ones that do not refer to properties that can be placed on a continuum, either or adjectives (ex. Something cant be more major than something else, it either is or isn"t). 2 characteristics: cannot be inflected for the comparative and superlative (major, *majorer, *majorest), cannot follow degree adverbs (*very major) * ongoing trend: more and more speakers are relying on degree adverbs instead of using inflection. Optimally transitive: noun phrase following a preposition is not obligatory, ex. up he climbed up the stairs (transitive), or he climbed up. Obligatorily transitive: have to be followed by a noun phrase (if there is no noun phrase the clause will be ungrammatical, ex. to he moved to toronto *he moved to.
