Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics (Nov 2012)

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

  • Viorela-Valentina Dima

Journal volume & issue
Vol. XIV, no. 2
pp. 77 – 98

Abstract

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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’).

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