On the scalar structure of the adjective: the case of Romanian resultative constructions

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is two-fold. On the one hand, based on the fact that AP resultative constructions are severely restricted in Romanian (and more generally in Romance languages), the paper offers a range of devices that improve the interpretation of (i) unambiguous depictive/attributive structures, and (ii) ambiguous depictive/attributive–resultative sentences towards an unambiguous result reading. On the other hand, it discusses the reasons why these strategies derive such an interpretation and it proposes a syntactic structure for the resulting AP constructions. The underlying idea is that the predicates of these newly obtained structures are all adjuncts and not complements.

Keywords

• djective
• resultative construction
• scalar structure
• adjunct
• complement
• Romanian