Modification

In traditional grammar, modification relationships are usually subsumed under the categories
adjectives and adverbs.

Modification of the Noun and the Noun Phrase

Unlike the categories determiner, predeterminer, and postdeterminer, t he category adjective is

an open class.

Words that are usually noun heads can modify other nouns – a paper airplane, the senior trip,
apple cider, the county jail, a stone wall. These are called denominal adjectives. (The term denominal
indicates that a word has lost its nominal status; it can be used to refer to any noun form that takes on a
non-nominal grammatical function.)

Sometimes an adjective will follow a noun or pronoun in the absence of a complex transitive
verb. These are postnominal adjectives.

PRENOMINAL ADJECTIVES

An adjective which precedes a direct object noun (as in I hate a risky business) is not an object
complement. This term is reserved for adjectives that follow the noun head of the direct object;
furthermore, object complements usually occur with complex transitive verbs.

Prenominal adjectives are sometimes called attributive.

Noninherent adjectives constitute a special class that can only be used prenominally.

PREDICATE ADJECTIVES

Adjectives which describe relatively permanent states are called stative.

 POSTNOMINAL ADJECTIVES AND ADJECTIVE PHRASES

On rare occasions a lexical adjective follows a noun in the NP.

Adjectives in this position are called postnominal. While adjectives seldom follow full nouns,
they often follow indefinite pronouns, despite the fact that adjectives rare precede pronouns of any
sort.

A sentence like The little girls is my niece is not especially informative if the room is filled with
little girls, and a speaker who hears the house burned down last night will have no idea which house.

INTENSIFYING AND DOWNTONING ADJECTIVES

In phrases like an utter fool, a complete disaster, a total failure, an absolute idiot, and a real
mess, the prenominal adjectives do not carry much meaning of their own; instead they intensify the
meaning of the noun. Such adjectives are called intensifying adjectives and they are often
interchangeable – My best friend is an utter/total/complete/absolute/real failure.

English also contains constructions that downplay rather than intensify meaning. Since there is
no traditional grammatical label for these constructions, they are known simply by their semantic label,
downtoner.

LIMITERS

In the following sentences, the items in boldface are limiters.

 He ate only the grapes.

 I invited just the women.

GRADABILITY

Be aware that {-est} and most are not always superlative forms.

Adjectives that can take comparative and superlative forms of either type are said to be
gradable.

Absolute opposites are not normally gradable but sometimes speakers use intensifiers to
engage in hyperbole – The gangster was very dead.
 A few commonly used scalar opposites exhibit markedness. Tall, long and old are commonly
used unmarked adjectives. Short and young are considered marked, even though they don’t carry any
special morphology, because they are used in more limited circumstances.

ADJECTIVES AND COMPOUND NOUNS

Sometimes an adjective becomes so closely associated with a noun that the construction
becomes a compound noun.

Occasionally a compound is formed by a NP and a word that was originally a postnominal

adjective, i.e. an adjective that follows the noun.

INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE ADJECTIVE PHRASE

We use various kinds of degree modifiers to express these differences including intensifiers and
downtoners.

Downtoners

Some adjective modifiers are downtoners.

Summary of degree modifiers

Intensifiers Your mom is very angry.

Downtoners She’s a rather strange person.

Other The portions are too small.

Adjective Complements
 Predicate adjectives are often followed by prepositional phrases that are clearly working with
the adjective in a single grammatical structure. Such prepositional phrases are called adjective
complements.

The predicate adjective fond requires a following prepositional phrase – *Kate is fond is
ungrammatical.

Use of the Term Adverb

The term adverb is also a bit problematic. Some contemporary grammarians try to avoid this
catch-all term, adverb, by using only semantic terms like intensifier or structure terms like adjunct.

My solution to this terminological dilemma is to use semantic terms like intensifier and
downtoner to refer to those words and phrases that modify adjectives and adverbs and to use the term
adverb to refer to words and structures that modify verbs, predicates, and sentences.

Adjunct Adverbs

Adjunct is general term that refers to any item (or person) that functions in an auxiliary capacity.
(An adjunct is optional only in that it is not required for grammaticality; adjuncts provide crucial
information in the discourse.)

INTENSIFYING, DOWNTONING, NAD LIMITING ADJUNCTS

Limiting adjuncts focus the hearer on a narrow or literal interpretation of the verb.

Adjectives of Direction

In a few cases, clearly related prepositional forms can be used to distinguish between position
and direction. In these cases, the semantic difference can be lexicalized, i.e. the difference in meaning is
expressed by different lexical items.

(Some linguists consider goal to be a separate semantic category, but that will not concern us
here.)

Locative Inversion
 Sometimes, intransitive verbs allow locative inversion. Occasionally, it is used to use unexpected
participants or items into the discourse.

Locative inversion represents marked (i.e. non-prototypical) word order.

Summary of adverbial constructions expressing a point or boundary in time

Specific time frame David finished his test at 3 P.M.

Time frame bounded on one side You must finish your exam before noon.

Time frame bounded on two sides I should arrive between five and six o’clock.

Vague time frame My mother was promoted recently.

The present perfect does appear with adverbs that include present time – I have washed four
loads of clothes today; Martin has read two chapters so far; Georgia has been here since noon; I’ve seen
Maggie twice this week.

ADVERBS OF MANNER

Pseudo-passives are constructions that are active in form and passive in meaning.

ADVERBS OF MEANS

Sometimes adverbs of manner shade into adverbs of means. In fact, some grammarians include
both types in a single category called process adverbs.

ADVERBIAL PROFORMS
 Since the term pronoun contains the root noun, it isn’t appropriate to use this label to refer to
words that substitute for other parts of speech. Linguists have coined the all-purpose term proform for
a small word that substitutes for another word or construction. Just as pronouns are noun substitutes,
adverbial proforms are adverb substitutes.

SOME OTHER ADJUNCT CATEGORIES

Adverbs of accompaniment usually occur with the preposition with – I walked with my mother;
Signe played with her friends; Lu partied with her roommates. Lemon sauce is an adverb of means in He
won her heart with his wonderful lemon sauce.

There is a small set of verbs that take adverbs of remuneration (payment).

Adverbs of source indicate the source or place of origin of someone or something – Hamish is
from New Zealand; Jamie borrowed this book from his mother; Helen stole the stereo from her neighbor;
Susan bought that car from Bob; He got the money from his partner.

Concessive adverbs indicate that one circumstance is surprising in the light of another.

Summary of adjuncts

Intensifier Duration

Downtoner Frequency

Focuser Time relationship

Place Manner

Direction Means

Time (point/boundary) Reason/purpose

Result

ADJECTIVES THAT FUNCTION AS ADJUNCTS

 Up until now we’ve used the term adjunct exclusively in terms of adverbial constructions.

Charlie sleeps nude. The river froze solid.

The term adjunct adjective is sometimes used to describe such forms because the adjective is
an optional construction.

Disjuncts

Disjuncts are so labeled because they don’t modify structures within the sentence and they
generally stand apart at the beginning of the sentence. Some linguists call disjuncts sentence modifiers
but this label overstates the modification relationship. (Don’t confuse this use of the term disjunct with
disjunction in formal logic and semantics.)

Summary of disjuncts

Attitude Stupidly, she left the letter in the rain.

Style Frankly, I can’t stand the man.

Point of view Politically, the event was a great success.

Epistemic Perhaps tomorrow will be sunny.

ADDING AND REINFORCING CONJUNCTS

Adding and reinforcing conjuncts add material to the discourse and often reinforce what has
been said before.

RESULTING CONJUNCTS

As the label implies, resulting conjuncts communicate the results of events in the preceding
discourse.
 Sometimes so is used to communicate a resulting conclusion on the part of the speaker.

CONCESSIVE CONJUNCTS

The term concessive describes a relationship between two circumstances in which one
circumstance is surprising in light of the other.

SOME OTHER CONJUNCTS

English contains summation conjuncts (in conclusion, this, to summarize, etc.), equating
conjuncts (likewise, correspondingly, similarly), restating conjuncts (in other words, rather), and a
number of other types.

Summary of conjuncts

Sequencing Next, I stirred the egg whites briskly.

Adding and reinforcing Furthermore, you lied to me.

Resulting Consequently, she didn’t impress me.

Transitional By the way, I like your new car.

Concessive In spite of her opposition, I got the job.

 Clauses: Coordination and Subordination

Linguists are fond of saying that any human language contains an infinite number of possible
sentences. The reason for this extraordinary potential is the recursive quality of language; the same
basic structures can be repeated over and over again in a given sentence.

Clauses

Recursive processes depend a great deal on clauses. A clause that can stand on its own is called
an independent clause, thus any sentence is technically an independent clause. A subordinate or
dependent clause is one that cannot stand alone as a grammatical entity. When a structure contains a
subordinate clause, the containing structure is often called a matrix clause. If the matrix clause also
contains the “main verb” of the sentence, it is the main clause.

Subordinate clauses will usually contain a subordinator (sometimes called a complementizer),

one or more small function words or special suffixes that signal that the following verb is not to be
construed as the main verb of the sentence.

Conjoining

We can always add one structure to another by conjoining two or more elements with a
conjuction.