1 Adjective Classes in Typological Perspective 5between the core and peripheral types. For example, Blackwell (2000) studied how
children acquire syntactic functions for adjectives from seven semantic types in
English, and found that terms from the DIMENSION, AGE, VALUE, COLOUR, and
SPEED types tend to be used first in modifier function, while those from the PHYS-
ICAL PROPERTY and HUMAN PROPENSITY types tend be used first in copula com-
plement function.
Discussing the Austronesian language Tamambo, Jauncey (1997, 2000) shows
how each of the semantic types 1-6 has slightly different values for ten gram-
matical parameters; for example, only DIMENSION terms have a morphologically
marked plural, and only HUMAN PROPENSITY terms (and one VALUE term) can be
nominalized. Dixon (1982: 15-34) provides a survey of the varying properties of
semantic types 1-7 in English.
Some languages allow a given adjective to either precede or follow the head
noun, with a difference in meaning. For example, in French un curieux homme
is 'a curious/strange man while un homme curieux is 'a curious/inquisitive man
(in English the adjective curious is ambiguous between the 'strange' and 'inquisi-
tive' senses). See Jespersen (1924: 168-9) on glish, and Waugh (1977:182-3) on
French.
(c) A number of other semantic types are associated with large adjective classes in
some languages. These include:
- DIFFICULTY—'easy', 'difficult', 'tough', 'hard', 'simple', etc.
- SIMILARITY—'like', 'unlike', 'similar', 'different(/strange)', 'other', etc.
- QUALIFICATION—'definite', 'true', 'probable', 'possible'/likely','usual', 'normal',
'common, correct', 'appropriate', 'sensible', etc. - QUANTIFICATION—'all(/whole)', 'many', 'some', 'few', 'only', 'enough', etc.
- POSITION—'high', 'low', 'near', 'far/distant', 'right', 'left(/strange)', 'northern,
etc. - CARDINAL NUMBERS. (In some languages these constitute a separate word
class.) And 'first', 'last' (together with other ordinal numbers).
2. Basic clause types and core arguments
There are two major clause types found in human languages, transitive clauses and
intransitive clauses. In addition, many languages have a further clause type, copula
clauses. The make-up of the three clause types is shown in Table i.
There may also be verbless clauses, which simply include two NPs in apposition.
Languages which lack a copula verb typically translate copula clauses from other
languages with verbless clauses, e.g. '[John] [a doctor]' for '[John] [is] [a doctor]'.
Now the nucleus of a transitive clause will prototypically have a transitive verb
as head (in most languages the head can only be a transitive verb). Languages show
more variation with respect to the predicate head in an intransitive clause. In some
languages only an intransitive verb can fill this slot; in other languages the head of