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In this paper I examine certain gradable adjectives in Serbian, whose suppletive comparative forms display unexpected semantic properties. In particular, while these adjectives are ambiguous between intersective and non-intersective readings in the positive form, their suppletive comparative and superlative forms are limited to the non-intersective interpretation. These facts show, I argue, that in a theory like Distributed Morphology either adjectival roots or category-assigning heads they combine with come in semantic subtypes (i.e. are specified for certain semantic properties; Harley 2005, Anagnostopoulou and Samioti 2014). I show how the analysis I propose explains semantic properties of change-of-state verbs derived from these adjectives and why these adjectives are restricted to the intersective interpretation when their positive form takes the long-form (definite) inflection. I also provide an illustration of how Arregi and Nevins's (2014) analysis of the so-called "disuppletive" roots, such worse/badder, can deal with the facts presented in this paper. Finally, I discuss implications of these facts in the context of Bobaljik's (2012) approach to suppletive comparative morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many languages a set of adjectives are characterized by their 'past/passive' participial morphology. Lexicalist and syntactic approaches to word formation converge on the claim that such adjectives can be derived from verbal inputs with no external argument but never from verbal inputs with an external argument. That is, there are 'adjectival passives' but no 'adjectival antipassives' marked with the same morphology. I argue that a sub-class of adjectives marked with the 'past/passive' participial morpheme -do in Spanish, labeled participios activos in descriptive grammars, should be treated as adjectival antipassives in precisely this sense. I propose that Spanish has an Asp head that (i) is spelled out with 'past/passive' participial morphology and (ii) selects an unergative verbal input creating a state/property whose argument corresponds to the external argument of that verbal source. If on the right track, the proposal supports the existence of a typology of adjectivizing heads that are spelled out uniformly with 'past/passive' participial morphology but must be distinguished in terms of selectional and semantic properties (Bruening 2014, Word formation is syntactic: Adjectival passives in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32. 363-422; Embick 2004, On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry 35. 355-392). It differs from previous approaches in claiming that such a typology must include root-derived adjectives, as well as 'active (=unergative)' and 'passive' deverbal adjectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the mechanism of predicate formation at work in the Participial Relative in Modern Hebrew and Standard Arabic, a mixed verbo-adjectival construction. External distribution and function of the verbal construction as that of adjectival predicate; Means of achieving predicate formation in participial relatives.