The Syntax of Adjectives: A Comparative Study

In The Syntax of Adjectives, Guglielmo Cinque offers cross-linguistic evidence that
adjectives have two sources. Arguing against the standard view, and reconsidering his own earlier
analysis, Cinque proposes that adjectives enter the nominal phase either as "adverbial"
modifiers to the noun or as predicates of reduced relative clauses. Some of his evidence comes from
a systematic comparison between Romance and Germanic languages. These two language families differ
with respect to the canonical position taken by adjectives, which is prenominal in Germanic and both
pre- and postnominal in Romance. Cinque shows that a simple N(oun)-raising analysis encounters a
number of problems, the primary one of which is its inability to express a fundamental
generalization governing the interpretation of pre- and postnominal adjectives in the two language
families. Cinque argues that N-raising as such should be abandoned in favor of XP-raising--a
conclusion also supported by evidence from other language families. After developing this framework
for analyzing the syntax of adjectives, Cinque applies it to the syntax of English and Italian
adjectives. An appendix offers a brief discussion of other languages that appear to distinguish
overtly between the two sources of adjectives.

The hardcover edition does not
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