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man, determiners are also used indexically, which may be handled by widening
the restriction on the substitution variable to include indexical use.
Another difference between the traditional part of speech classification 3.5.1
and the core attributes of DBS concerns 3. adjective ,4. adverb , and 6. preposi-
tion . In DBS, they are treated as proplets with the same core attribute, namely
adj . Consider the following examples:
3.5.3 A NLYAZING DIFFERENT ADJECTIVES AS LEXICAL PROPLETS
adnominal
adverbial
indexical adjective
preposition
sur: beautiful
adj: beautiful
cat: adn
sem: psv
mdd:
prn:
sur: beautifully
adj: beautiful
cat: adv
sem: psv
mdd:
prn:
sur: here
adj: idx_loc
cat: adnv
sem:
mdd:
prn:
sur: on
adj: on n_2
cat: adnv
sem:
mdd:
prn:
While all four proplets share the core attribute adj , they are distinguished in
terms of the sign kind of their core values and in terms of their cat values.
The proplets beautiful and beautifully share the same core value beautiful
(symbol), but differ in their cat values adn (adnominal) and adv (adverbial).
The proplets here and on share the cat value adnv (adnominal and adver-
bial use), 15 but differ in the sign kind of their core values, namely indexical
( idx_loc ) and preposition plus a substitution variable for a noun ( on n_2 ). All
adj proplets have the continuation attribute mdd , for “modified.”
Analyzing the adnominal and adverbial uses of an adjective as proplets with
the same core value, here beautiful , is partially motivated by terminology: the
Latin root of adjective means “what is thrown in,” which aptly characterizes
the optional quality of modifiers in general. It is also motivated morpholog-
ically because of the similarity between adnominal and adverbial adjectives.
The two uses may resemble each other also in their analytic degrees, as in
more beautiful (adnominal) and more beautifully (adverbial) in English.
Languages may differ in whether they treat the adnominal or the adverbial
form of an adjective morphologically as the unmarked case. For example, in
English the unmarked case is the adnominal, 16 e.g., beautiful , while the ad-
verbial is marked, e.g., beautifully . In German, in contrast, the adnominal
15 As a cat value, adnv is an empirically motivated underspecification in DBS. For a comparison of
underspecification in DBS and in Nativism see NLC'06, p. 92, footnote 3.
16 That the adnominal form happens to equal the unmarked case of adjectives in English may be the
reason for the widespread, but nevertheless misguided, terminological practice of calling adnominal
use “adjective,” in contrast to adverbial use, which is called “adverb.” If we were to apply the same
logic to German, it would have to be the adverbials which are called “adjective.”
Equating adnominal with adjective reduces the number of available terms from three to two. How-
ever, three terms are required by the combinatorial possibilities represented by the cat values adnv,
adn, and adv .
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