An analysis of major adjectival constructions in terms of the argument structures of adjectives---tough construction and W-class adjectival construction

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This project is an in-depth analysis of adjectival constructions within the theoretical framework of Lexical Semantics, which has been developed for the last two decades, and assumes that the syntactic structures are direct projections of the argument structures of their main predicates, i.e., verbs. The present research is an extension of verb semantics to adjectival semantics. Among the major adjectival constructions, I have chosen TOUGH constructions (i.e., It is easy to please John/John is easy to please) and W-CLASS ADJECTIVAL constructions (i.e., It is wise of John to do so/John is wise to do so.). The approach is that first I examined the fine-grained lexical semantics of these adjectives, and then elucidated the relations between the semantic factors and the syntactic features. The points made clear are that in the TOUGH construction"John is easy to please,"to please and easy constitute the subject-predicate relation and also that they collectively serve as a single complex pre … More dicate describing the surface subject. That is, this sentence can be paraphrased as"John is such that to please him is easy."The easy in"John is easy to please"and that in"It is easy to please John"are analyzed as different lexical entities in terms of argument structure. The former is a part of the complex predicate easy-to-please where to please satisfies one of its arguments, and the latter is an independent predicate that takes the argument structure [Theme (Experiences)].With W-CLASS ADJECIVAL constructions, at issue is why only these adjectives can take of NP. I have made it clear that the evaluation factor in the semantics of these adjectives are responsible for anchoring the PP. Thus with adjectives like slow (John is slow to finish the job.), this PP is impossible as in"^*It is slow of John to finish the job."Of can be analyzed as an linguistic form that realizes the agent of the relevant act and the evaluated person.As stated above, the present research has claimed that the fine-grained adjectival semantics can explain the syntactic features of the major adjectival constructions. Less