Predicative adjectives in some Germanic and Slavic languages: On the role of metonymy in extending grammatical constructions
Predicative adjectives in some Germanic and Slavic languages: On the role of metonymy in extending grammatical constructions

Summary/Abstract: It has often been noted that English predicative adjectives frequently find their counterparts in Croatian in items belonging to some other word classes, particularly in verbs and adverbs, although direct structural correspondents do in fact exist. Contextual and/or stylistic factors certainly play an important role here, but we also note that even when there is no contextual pressure, nonadjectival predicates are very frequent. What is more, this peculiar contrast obtains not only between English and Croatian. Some other Slavic languages pattern like Croatian, while Germanic languages seem to be split in this respect, Flemish and Danish being closer to English, and German closer to Slavic languages. It is argued that these contrastive facts can be well motivated by taking into account how much a language relies on metonymy in organizing its predicate-argument structure, specifically in extending the ascriptive construction with predicative adjectives.

• Details
• Contents