A presentation of the interpretations associated with adjectives derived from nouns

What is it about?

This study proposes a fine-grained classification and analysis of French denominal adjectives based mainly on the semantic relationships that exist between the N the adjective modifies (the head-N) and the N it is derived from. Capitalizing on previous works, it is argued that these relationships are intrinsic whenever they focus on a dimension proper to the referent of the head-N, whereas they are extrinsic whenever this referent is conceived of as a participant in an event denoted either by the head or the modified N. After a brief characterization of denominal adjectives in relation with other adjectives, the article lists the variety of meanings these adjectives exhibit in French and tries to shed light on the reasons why only some of them sound acceptable when occurring with a degree adverb or in a predicative structure. In the account sketched in the final section, denominal adjectives are dealt with in the same way as intersective adjectives.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Characterizing the semantic link existing between the noun which denominal adjectives are derived from and the noun they modify in the syntactic phrase within which they occur is crucial to understand their behaviour. Since the interpretation expressed through this link may vary in function of the nature of the two nouns in question, most of denominals adjectives cannot be given an interpretation once for all in the lexicon. It is more important to bring to light the mechanisms that give rise to these interpretations.