SoSe15: Term paper project: Predicative and Attributive Adjectives

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Participants

  • Ekram Aghdoube
  • Hana Hashi

Short description of the project

  • Difference between attributive and predicative adjectives
  • Video (lexical entries of both types of adjectives)
  • Tasks

Produced material

Difference between predicative and attributive adjectives

  • attributive adjectives are used right before the noun they qualify
  • predicative adjectives come after to be or similar verbs such as become and seem
  • most adjectives can be both attributive and predicative (e.g. the blue sky - the sky is blue)
  • some adjectives work only one way (e.g. He is a mere boy - *The boy is mere (attributive-only adjective) or The baby is asleep - *The asleep Baby (predicative-only adjective))


The Model based on "Friends"

For our world, we use the characters of the American television sitcom "Friends", which aired on American television from 1994 to 2004. The sitcom deals with six friends living in New York City.

Individuals:

  • Chandler (executive in statistical analysis and data reconfiguration and the husband of Monica)
  • Rachel (waitress, who has an on-again/off-again relationship with Ross)
  • Ross (paleontologist, who is the brother of Monica and in an on-again/off-again relationship with Rachel)
  • Monica (chef, who is the sister of Ross and the wife of Chandler)
  • Joey (actor, who lives together with Chandler)
  • Phoebe (masseuse and self-taught musician)


Video

After having watched the video, work on the following tasks

Task 1

Look at the following sentences and decide, whether the adjectives are used attributively or predicatively.


attributive predicative
Phoebe is pregnant with twins
Rachel is a former waitress
Joey feels faint
Chandler was very hungry after work
Monica wears a summer dress
Ross buys a 30-inch-long monkey


Task 2

Consider the following sentences.

  1. For each of these, provide the syntactic structure.
  2. Write down the logical forms.
  3. Provide a full analysis of the sentences, indicating following values: PHON, HEAD, PRED PLUS, ARG-ST, MOD, DR, INCONT, PARTS.


a. Chandler is humorous.

Check your answer

  1. Syntactic structure: caption
  2. Logical form: humorous 1 (chandler)
  3. Lexical entry:
humorous
PHON  < humorous >
HEAD  adjective
PRED  <plus>
ARG-ST  <NP[DR [c]] >
MOD  < >
DR   [a]
INCONT   [b]
PARTS  <[a]humorous1, [b]humorous1([a], [c]) >  

b. The blonde waitress .

Check your answer

  1. Syntactic structure: caption
  2. Logical form: waitress 1 (blonde)
  3. Lexical entry:
blonde
PHON  < blonde >
HEAD  adjective
PRED  <minus>
ARG-ST  <NP[DR [c]] >
MOD  < >
DR   [a]
INCONT   [b]
PARTS  <[a]blonde1, [b]blonde1([a], [c]), ϕ∧ɣ>  





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