Subcategorization of adnominal and adverbial modifiers

Summary

The topic of this paper1 is the role of adnominal and adverbial modifiers in sentence semantics. Before going into details I will sketch the framework in which this special problem will be treated. The framework is that of Natural Generative (NG) Grammar (Bartsch and Vennemann (1972)). A natural generative grammar comprises the following rules:

From the point of view of linguistic production

(a) Formation rules of a properly extended predicate logic (PEPL), i.e. a predicate logic extended by predicates over sentence intensions and by several sorts of individual variables and constants (multi-sortal logic).

(b) Formation rules of a categorial grammar of a natural language.

(c) Constituent building rules. They map forms built according to PEPL (a), the semantic representations, onto forms built in accordance with categorial syntax (b). If the formation rules of PEPL are understood as the generative component of the grammar, then the constituent building rules are conversion rules with semantic representations as input and categorial forms as output. The rules of categorial syntax then have to be understood as restrictions on the forms of the output of constituent building rules and thus as restrictions on the constituent building rules themselves.

1. (d) Lexicalization rules.

2. (e) Morphological rules.

3. (f) Serialization rules.

4. (g) Intonation rules.

The semantic representations as well as the forms of categorial syntax are not linearly ordered but only hierarchically ordered. Serialization rules apply to the forms of categorial syntax after lexicalization rules and morphological rules have applied.