1
CRAZY RUSSIANS, FAMOUS LINGUISTS, AND ADJECTIVE FRONTING IN SPANISH
Whereas in English adjectives appear before the noun, in Spanish they generally follow it. In this paper
we are concerned with apparent exceptions to the general rule, where an adjective that is normally postnominal appears before the noun. We show that all cases of prenominal adjetives have a common kind or
interpretation, which is forced by the syntactic position in which they appear.
1.
Generic readings
Prenominal adjectives in Spanish typically have an interpretation which we can term ‘generic’. Thus, (1a)
implies that the mountains of the Basque country are stereotypically green, while (1b) is ambiguous
between that and the usual restrictive reading. The most striking feature of this construction in Spanish is
that while scalar (2a) adjectives can appear in this position and have this interpretation, relational (2b)
adjectives cannot. The early transformational analysis by Vendler 1963 links generic adjectives like those
in (1a) and (2a) to non-restrictive relative clauses, as in (3), implying that they also are appositive.
However, there are several differences between the two types of modification. To begin with, appositive
relatives cannot appear in DPs headed by ‘each’ (Ross 1967), but generic adjectives can, as (4) shows.
Furthermore, generic adjectives can be interpreted inside the scope of an intentional verb (cf. 5b), unlike
appositive relatives, such as (5a), which are interpreted as root clauses (Demirdache 1990).
2.
Intentional adjectives
Example (6) shows that intentional adjectives can be also preposed, but neither before nor after the noun
do they carry the connotation of genericity. Also, because a possible error may not be an error, the
adjective cannot be argued to be appositive. This disconfirms, we will argue, the putative parallelism
between non-restrictive relatives clauses and prenominal adjectives.
3.
Interpretation
We argue that the fact that both generic and intentional adjectives appear in the prenominal position is not
accidental. We analyze this postion as the specifier of a DP-internal functional head which forces a
reference-modifying interpretation (type et,et) of the adjective. It is worth noting that all ‘naturally’
prenominal adjectives in Romance, such as gran ‘great’, are reference-modifying. The interpretation of
generic adjectives indeed resembles that of intentional adjectives and differs from both restrictive
adjectives and appositive relatives. The intersective interpretation of (7a) combines the adjective and the
noun by the standard rule of predicate modification, giving an interpretation which can be paraphrased as
(7b). We will argue that generic adjectives like (7c) are interpreted by function application: the adjective
is of type et,et, and is predicated of the kind denoted by the head noun, i.e. (7c) implies that being green
is a stereotypical property of the kind mountain. Similarly, intentional adjectives (cf. 6) are also
interpreted as being predicated of the kind denoted by the head noun (i.e. a possible error cannot be
paraphrased as ‘an x such that x is an error and x is possible’). This interpretation is optional in the postnominal position but obligatory in the prenominal one, which is why the prenominal position is argued to
force the reading (the semantics of the functional head requires function application), though overt
adjective fronting is due to independent factors (see below). The only adjectives that have the semantic
type compatible with function application (type et,et) are scalar adjectives (crazy, tall), and intentional
adjectives (former, possible). This explains why the generic interpretation is only available with scalar
adjectives (cf. 2), and why only intentional and scalar adjectives can appear in the prenominal position.
4.
Adjective fronting
We will show that generic adjective fronting is exclamative in nature, which is what forces overt fronting
(cf. Bolinger 1967). Additional evidence comes from qué ‘what’ exclamatives, and the fact that emphatic
adjectives such as puta ‘fucking’ are obligatorily prenominal, as (8) shows. We will also examine
adjective fronting in definite anaphors, such as (9), where fronting is also obligatory.
In all the cases examined above, the semantic type of the adjective plays the crucial role – only
adjectives of the semantic type e, t, e, t can, though not always must, appear before the noun. Similar
effects arise in French and Italian. Finally, we will also speculate that adjective fronting in all these cases
is due to scopal reasons.
Adjective fronting in Spanish
2
Examples
1 a.
b.
2 a.
b.
3 a.
b.
4 a.
b.
5 a.
b.
6 a.
b.
7 a.
b.
c.
8 a.
b.
9.
las
verdes
montañas del
País
Basco
Def-Fpl green-pl mountains of+Def-Msg country Basque
las
montañas verdes
del
País
Basco
Def-Fpl mountains green-pl of+Def-Msg country Basque
the green mountains of the Basque country
un
famoso autor
Indef-Msg famous author
a famous author
* un
español torero (cf. un torero español)
Indef-Msg Spanish torero
a Spanish torero
restrictive reading only
He is one of those crazy Russians.
He is one of those Russians, who are crazy.
He
visto cada verde montaña del
País
Basco.
Have-1sg seen every green mountain of+Def-Msg country Basque
* He
visto cada montaña del
País
Basco, que es verde.
Have-1sg seen every mountain of+Def-Msg country Basque that is green
Noam Chomsky, who is probably the most famous linguist in the world, is rumored
to speak nothing but English.
Noam Chomsky is rumored to speak nothing but English. He is probably the most
famous linguist in the world.
un
error posible
Indef-Msg error possible
un
posible error
Indef-Msg possible error
a possible error
la
montaña verde
Def-FPl mountain green
the x such that x is a mountain and x is green
la
verde montaña
Def-FPl green mountain
este puto
problema
Dem fucking problem
this fucking problem
ese problema puto
Dem problem fucking
this difficult/*fucking problem
Noam Chomsky invented generative linguistics. The famous linguist says that we have
trees in our heads.
References
Bolinger, Dwight (1967): Adjective comparison: a semantic scale. Journal of English Linguistics 1, pp. 210.
Demirdache, Hamida (1991): Resumptive Chains in Restrictive Relatives, Appositives and Dislocation
Structures. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Ross, John (1967): Constraints on Variables in Syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Vendler, Zeno (1963): The Transformational Grammar of English Adjectives. University of Pennsylvania
Transformations and Discourse Papers 52.