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This article discusses attributive adjectives in Zimbabwean isiNdebele. In traditional grammar, the attributive adjectives are treated as words whose function is to qualify a noun in a noun phrase. According to this analysis, an attributive adjective has the structure: adjective concord (a relative marker a- + a noun class prefix) and an adjective stem. However, there are instances where the attributive function is expressed by a construction that is larger than a word. In these constructions, the relative marker and the noun class prefix may be separated by a subject marker, negation marker, aspect markers, tense markers, inchoactive/auxiliary verbs, or a subject of the relative clause. I present an alternative analysis, according to which the attributive adjectival function is expressed by a relative clause rather than by an adjectival word category. I maintain that adjectival roots in isiNdebele are derived from class neutral roots by merging with an adjectiviser head (adj), and that the function of an adjective is to complement auxiliary verbs and inchoactive verbs in a predicate. I suggest that the relative operator is base generated as a complement of an adjective in an adjective phrase and then moves to spec C via spec in spec Pr and spec T respectively. The C-head a- then affixes to the subject of the relative clause in the formation of strategy 2 relatives and it affixes to T in the formation of strategy 1 relatives.

This paper studies ambiguous headlines (about 32 headlines) collected from various Egyptian newspapers. The ambiguity is shown to have resulted from various sources: pronominal forms, attributive a...

Inspired by Syrett (2013), three experiments explored children’s ability to distinguish attributives (e.g., “three-pound strawberries,” where MPs as adjectives signal reference to attributes) versus pseudopartitives (e.g., “three pounds of strawberries,” where MPs combine with of to signal part-whole relations). Given the systematic nature of the syntax-semantics mapping, we asked whether children are able to use syntax to interpret how entities are quantified. In Experiment 1, four- and five-year-olds were asked to choose between two characters for the one who was selling appropriate items matching an attributive or pseudopartitive expression. In Experiment 2, children of the same age heard items described with a phrase using either an attributive, a pseudopartitive, “each” (“each weighs three pounds”), or “all together” (“all together they weigh three pounds”). At test, with some items removed, children were asked whether the same phrase applied to the remaining items (e.g., “Does Dora still hav...

When one wishes to formulate, evaluate and implement public policies, the existence of a plurality of social actors, with interest in the policy being assessed, generates a conflictual situation. How such a conflict should be dealt with? This paper defends the thesis articulated in the following points: (1) Different metrics are linked to different objectives and values. To use only one measurement unit (on the grounds of the so-called commensurability principle) for incorporating a plurality of dimensions, objectives and values, implies reductionism necessarily. (2) Point (1) can be proven as a matter of formal logic by drawing on the work of Geach about moral philosophy. This theoretical demonstration is an original contribution of this article. Moreover, here the distinction between predicative and attributive adjectives is formalised and definitions are provided. Predicative adjectives are further distinguished into the new categories of absolute and relative ones. The new concepts of set commensurabi...

Using data obtained mainly from the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed. on CD-ROM, ver. 3.0, 2002), the process in which Japanese loanwords are incorporated into the English lexicon was reviewed. The process has been theorised in terms of a scale which begins with totally foreign at one end and finishes with fully incorporated/native at the other. Naturalisation is viewed as a matter of degree in which all the words in English can theoretically be assigned to a point on this scale. Still, it has been observed that the loanwords studied follow a specific trajectory of naturalisation, with three loosely set stages. In the initial stage, words are paraphrased by easily recognisable words or phrases to guarantee that the foreign words employed are understood. Then, attributive usages appear as a transitional phase towards the more productive stage. To finish the naturalisation process, the loanwords acquire greater productivity and in due course achieve the fully incorporated status.

This paper proposes a general structural-functional classification of Danish subclauses, based on their distributional properties. It is argued that traditional divisions into, for example, nominal/complement, attributive/relative and adverbial subclauses are inadequate on their own, because they only account for the syntactic functions of the clauses in realized discourse. Attempts at classifying subclauses at an abstract level tend to rely on the idea that each subclause form has a “default” syntactic function, but this paper argues that Danish subclauses may be dealt with more accurately by acknowledging and indeed exploiting their multifunctionality. Thus, a division into five distinct subclause classes is proposed, grouping the clauses according to their abstract potentials for occurring in specific syntactic functions and positions in the superordinate clause. The main inventory of Danish subclauses are classified on this basis, allowing for predictability between individual subclause types and thei...

In this paper I deal with the attributive/referential distinction. After reviewing the literature on the issue, I adopt Jaszczolt's view based on default semantics. I relate her view to Sperber and Wilson's Principle of Relevance. I argue in favour of the modularity hypothesis in connection with pragmatic interpretations. I also discuss the issue of modularization a la Karmiloff-Smith in connection with default inferences and, in particular, referential readings of NPs. I reply to some considerations by Cummings and use data from referential/attributive uses of NPs to show that the modularity hypothesis is defensible.

A Russellian theory of (definite) descriptions takes an utterance of the form 'The F is G' to express a purely general proposition that affirms the existence of a (contextually) unique F: there is exactly one F [which is C] and it is G. Strawson, by contrast, takes the utterer to presuppose in some sense that there is exactly one salient F, but this is not part of what is asserted; rather, when the presupposition is not met the utterance simply fails to express a (true or false) proposition. A defender of Strawson's approach, however, must square up to what appear to be straightforward counterexamples to the presupposition thesis, and must also provide an account of certain linguistic phenomena that supposedly demand treating descriptions as quantifiers, as the Russellian theory does. In this paper I propose fresh considerations in favour of Strawson's approach. I shift attention from what the utterer presupposes to preconditions for the use of descriptions, and distinguish between referring and predicative uses of descriptions (not to be confused with referential and attributive uses); importantly, the referring and predicative uses have different preconditions, I argue, and these provide some satisfactory responses to the aforementioned challenges facing the Strawsonian.

On the basis of empirical evidence from six Old Russian chronicle texts, I investigate the process through which the long form of the adjective replaced the short form in attributive position. My findings lead me to argue that the loss of the attributive short form can be described as a process of grammaticalization which took place in accordance with a hierarchy of “newness” of the adjective in relation to the noun, which, in turn, can be linked to a hierarchy of individuation of the noun. This means that the SF should be expected to survive the longest in NPs with a high position in the hierarchy of individuation, i.e., NPs with concrete referents, nominative NPs and singular NPs. In order to test this assumption, I compare concrete NPs to abstract NPs, nominative NPs to accusative NPs and singular NPs to plural NPs and evaluate the results using the chi-square test for statistical significance. The idea that the SF survives longer in NPs with concrete referents and in singular NPs is statistically supp...

Revelation 1:5a-d is the first christological component of the Book of Revelation. It is a faith-reflection on the historical phenomenon of Christ and his transcendental acts in the final phase of God's kingdom. Christ's deeds are directed at the blessing of God's churches and he is God's highest revelation. With three attributive descriptions he is qualified from a covenant's perspective as the highest Prophet, Priest and cosmic King. This christology is placed in a heilgeschichtlich context.

Much of the disagreement and still prevalent confusion about the legal and constitutional meaning of concepts such as 'equality', 'equal,' or 'unequal' is due to inadequate linguistic analysis. These concepts, in order to be meaningful, cannot be used as predicative nouns or adjectives but only as attributive nouns or adjectives ('predicative' and 'attributive' being used in the logical rather than the grammatical sense). The correct approach requires an object to be specified (for example, 'strength', 'musicality', 'intelligence' or 'human dignity / worth') in order that the appropriateness of the attributive term ('equal', 'un-equal', 'equality') be judged. Those who would reject 'human worth' ('dignity', 'menswaardigheid', 'Menschenwurde') as the object and the answer, ought at least to come up with an alternative.

In Rev 1:4, God is the matrix and it refers to His self-revelation. God is described here as the omnipotent, all-time present God. His self-revelation is focused particularly on the salvation of His churches and the world. In His self-revelation He makes use of a human being John, the churches and the seven spirits. The seven congregations suggest pars pro toto the church in its fullness, the church in the final phase of the kingdom of God. The integrity of the text and the context show that the seven spirits are the Holy Spirit. Rev 1:4 is a detailed attributive description of the churches, God and the Spirit. The churches, God and the Spirit are placed in a covenant, a kingdom and an eschatological perspective.

In simulations of predator avoidance, 3 experiments examined whether preschool children with virtually no tree-climbing experience exhibit precocious knowledge of what different tree shapes afford as climbable refuge. Sex difference in the choice of arboreal or terrestrial refuge was also evaluated with the aim of detecting evidence of ancestral sexual dinichism, the differential use of trees by hominid males and females thought to have occurred more than 2 million years ago when females were much lighter bodied than males and thus more agile tree climbers. Preschool girls were predicted to seek refuge in a tree to escape a predator; boys were predicted to seek terrestrial refuge. When shown pictures of trees, girls were also predicted to be more cognizant than boys of the safety of seeking refuge near the edge of the crown to evade a heavy bodied predator. In Experiment 1, 4- to 6-year-old Israeli children were shown a series of computer-generated pictures of a boulder outcrop (kopje) in an East African ...

In this essay I agrue that contemporary Anglo-American liberal egalitarianism has at its heart a tension: the goal is to find principles of justice that are fair in respecting the distinction between choice and chance and that do not invoke controversial metaphysical arguments. This is a tension because distinguishing between choice and chance itself requires invoking controversial metaphysical arguments. I proceed by offering, and then examining, the thought that Scanlon's distinction between ‘attributive’ and ‘substantive’ responsibility offers a route out of the tension described above. The greater part of the essay is taken up with examining Scanlon's account of responsibility and the distinction between substantive and attributive responsibility. My conclusion is that Scanlon does not offer a compelling account of substantive compatibilism; that his theory does not, therefore, release the liberal egalitarian from the tension; but that this does not show that the direction indicated by Scanlon's theor...

Definite descriptions (as in The murderer of Smith is insane) can have at least two interpretations: a referential one, in which insanity is predicated of a particular individual who killed Smith, and an attributive one, in which insanity is predicated of whoever it is that killed Smith. Experiment 1 manipulated shared knowledge and focus on specific entities, the verb in the sentence, and whether the description was definite or indefinite. Each factor influenced interpretation of the description. Experiment 2 confirmed that changing the verbs alone affected reference choice. Experiments 3 (ratings) and 4 (reading times) indicated that both referentially and attributively introduced entities are conceptually singular (better as antecedents of singular than plural pronouns) while generically introduced entities are conceptually plural. Thus, the difference between the discourse representation underlying referential and attributive interpretations does not hinge on a difference in the number of tokens being...

Analyses of the so-called adjective of Zulu are often guilty of language projection. The traditional terms ‘adjective’ and ‘relative’ as well as the ‘predicative use of the adjective (also referred to as the copulative use) as opposed to ‘attributive use of the adjective’ (also referred to as the qualificative use) are frequently used. These terms are inappropriate and the analysis of the language data, within the approaches used, does not lead to a cohesive and exhaustive discussion of the so-called adjective. The problems pertaining to the description of the so-called adjective are investigated in this article, while proposals are made in favour of more appropriate terminology.

Three experiments tested memory for sentences containing either metaphors (“Deserts are ovens”) or similes (“Deserts are like ovens”). Experiments 1 and 2 used forced‐choice recognition memory requiring a choice between the metaphor or simile form of the same sentence. Experiment 3 used cued recall, presenting the sentence stem (“Deserts are __”) and asking participants to fill in the rest. Experiment 1 presented a list of sentences, whereas Experiments 2 and 3 presented each critical metaphor or simile sentence at the end of a brief story that set up a meaningful context for it. As predicted by an extension of Glucksberg's (1991, 1998) attributive categorization model to memory, metaphors were consistently remembered better than similes, and concrete sentences were remembered better than abstract ones, in both recognition and recall. Contrary to predictions, the addition of the meaningful discourse context only slightly improved memory for the more difficult sentences, although it greatly improved correc...

This article aims to provide cognitively motivated evidence for the nonequivalence view of simile and metaphor. This evidence was derived from a study based on two preference tasks in which participants were asked to select the linguistic form that conveys the comparison most adequately and naturally. Adopting Gentner's (1983) "Structure-Mapping" analysis, I was able to establish a correlation between the type of comparison (attributive, relational, or double) and the means speakers select to best represent each such comparison. The results of this study strongly suggest that similes are the preferred linguistic representation for mapping attributive predicates, whereas metaphors are favored for mapping relational predicates. The study further considered the results of the double comparisons.

Complex NP constructions involving nominalisations and preposed or postposed attributive modifiers of various kinds abound in German informational and academic prose. Similar constructions are fairly rare, and their possibilities of formation restricted, in Scandinavian languages as, for instance, Norwegian. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate and discuss some of the interlingual differences in question in a way which may hopefully prove conducive to an understanding of their systematic typological motivation.

This article proposes an additional form of unconditional strokes called attributive strokes, which relate to the natural physical and psychological differences between individuals. People need unc...

Textual analysis was used to examine responses to an open ended question about women's experiences of premenstrual change. The question was the final item of the Premenstrual Assessment Form (PAF), a retrospective PMS questionnaire. Of the 336 women who answered the PAF, 261 provided a written narrative summary. We found a logical hierarchy of distinctions covering the presence or absence of changes, their timing, and attributive aspects, and a final cumulative distinction in which women provided information about the consequences of their premenstrual change. Although attribute aspects mirrored the PAF, distinctions in timing and in the cumulative effect of changes differed. The analysis suggests that questionnaires could be designed which more precisely reflect premenstrual change.

Although it is now well established that the majority of young people are introduced to alcohol within the family, further understanding is needed of teenagers' own perceptions of drinking behaviour. As part of a large scale regional survey, young people reported on aspects of their drinking behaviour. This article presents the results of a qualitative analysis of detailed attributive statements made by one randomly chosen group of 15-ldyear-olds. These statements were made at the end of a questionnaire about young people, alcohol and family life, and the statements reflect these issues. On the whole, this sample of adolescents reported drinking sensibly and appropriately, and did not see their drinking as a deviant behaviour. They also commented on several important intra-jamilial factors. The positive role of parental knowledge and sanction, and also of appropriate parental and family drinking, seem important for the develop- ment of sensible adolescent alcohol use. Furthermore, the potential negative influence of poor family relationships was highlighted. These family factors are consistent with quantitative data supporting the family socialization theory of adolescent alcohol use. Family social learning and family process seem to be important influences

The use of intensional objects as the things to which expressions refer has not been sufficiently explored or developed. Such referents are considered in the cases of definite descriptions of the referential and attributive kinds, and of proper names. The method is exploited to handle the representational and inferential problem of such expressions in the semantic network processing system. The features required to handle it are proposed and satisfied. Testing of results is considered and consequences of the theory are examined.

In her thoughtful essay, Monika Piotrowska (2014) asks us to imagine two mice that manifest “the same ‘human-like’ characteristics,” one of which has been treated with cells taken from Homo sapiens...

Three experiments are presented that investigate how people understand definite descriptions, such as The woman who can sing this song will get the job. The woman may refer to a specific woman, the referential use, or it may refer to any woman who fills the description who can sing this song, the attributive use. Experiment 1 showed that people can readily distinguish between the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions in various discourse situations. Experiment 2 used a probe‐recognition task to assess the anaphoric inferences needed to interpret attributive and referential descriptions. The results showed that referential descriptions activate their explicit antecedents, whereas attributive descriptions activate an unspecified member of a class of objects or persons. In Experiment 3, subjects read stories ending with definite descriptions referring to famous people, such as The Prime Minister of England has a rough job. No search was required to understand attributive descriptions beca...

Summary It was hypothesized that more intelligent and less psychologically differentiated Ss would be less likely to use attributive and contrast projection. The Otis Self-Administering Tests of Mental Ability were used as the measure of intelligence, and the Group Embedded Figures Test was used to measure psychological differentiation. Nineteen female and 11 male college students described Favorable and Unfavorable target photographs and themselves on a list of trait-rating scales. Possible accuracy of ratings was controlled. Attributive projection and contrast projection were demonstrated and found to be related to each other (r = .44, p

A method is described for postoptimality analysis of multi-attributive objective functions in dynamic programming problems. The analysis examines the sensitivity or an optimal solution to changes in the weight allocated to one of the component attributes in the objective function. The information derived is either upper and lower bounds to the critical weight at which the optimal solution changes or, with additional computation, the exact critical weight. An arbitrary worked example is presented and a practical application is discussed.

SUMMARY This article is a review of a thesis dealing with the history of the inflection of the attributive adjective in Dutch and Afrikaans, and an attempt at a critical assessment of the treatment of the current position in Afrikaans in particular.