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Adnominal adjectives in Old English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2010

DAGMAR HAUMANN
DAGMAR HAUMANN*
Affiliation:
University of Agder, Service box 422, NO-4604 Kristiansand, [email protected]
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Abstract

Even though adnominal adjectives in Old English are distributionally versatile in that they may precede, follow or flank the noun they modify, their positioning is not random but follows from systematic interpretive contrasts between pre- and postnominal adjectives, such as ‘attribution vs predication’, ‘individual-level vs stage-level reading’ and ‘restrictive vs non-restrictive modification’. These contrasts are largely independent of adjectival inflection (pace Fischer 2000, 2001, 2006). The placement of adnominal adjectives in Old English is investigated in relation to recent comparative and theoretical studies on word order and word order variation (see Cinque 2007; Larson & Marušič 2004).

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 53 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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