How do adjectival modifiers contribute to the temporal interpretation of nominals?

Abstract

Starting from the assumption that nominals contain (at least) one internal temporal variable which may be located in time by various cross-linguistic means (see Pustejovsky 1995, 1998 a.o.), the aim of the present paper is to examine the way in which adjectival modifiers influence the temporal interpretation of head nominals. We will analyze examples which contain relational adjectives (e.g. ‘antique’, ‘modern’) and intensional adjectives (e.g. ‘former’, ‘future’, ‘present’).

Keywords

• nominal temporal semantics
• Lexical Conceptual Structure
• relational adjectives
• intensional adjectives