230 Bożena Cetnarowska
Waugh (1977), and investigated in detail by Bernstein (1993) and Bouchard (2002),
pre-nominal adjectives in French are more closely related to the head noun than post-
nominal attributes.^7
(19) a. homme pauvre
man poor
‘not a rich man’
b. pauvre homme
poor man
‘a pitiable man’
(Bouchard 2002: 6)
As is stated by Bouchard (2009: 250), in French “the pre-nominal Adj is used inten-
sionally, while the post-nominal one is extensional”. He assumes, in the tradition of
Montague Semantics, that a semantic entry for a common noun consists of a network
of several interacting elements (or “functions”). The following sub-components of
N(ouns) are identified:- a characteristic function f which provides the property that interprets the N (“a m e a-
sure of the degree to which an object falls in the extension of a given concept”
(Kamp & Partee 1995: 131)); - a specification for a time interval i, which tells at what moment f holds;
- an indication of the possible world w which allows us to know whether f holds in the
“actual” world or in some other imagined world in which f is not necessarily false; - a variable assignment function g, that allows us to determine the truth value of the
final formula by associating each variable with a particular entity in the model.”
(Bouchard 2002: 7–8)
It is argued that the above-mentioned network of elements “determines the set of
things that have the property of being an f in w at i” (Bouchard 2002: 8). Intersective
adjectives modify the components of the N as a whole. For instance, the intersective
adjective carnivorous assigns a property and thus defines a set on the basis of this
property. When it appears as a modifier of the noun mammal, the extension of the
resulting nominal carnivorous mammal is the intersection of two sets, i.e. the set of- Reviewer 1 points out that the difference between the interpretation of pre-nominal and
post-nominal adjectives is visible also in other Romance languages, as is illustrated by the
following data from Spanish: mi cara madre ‘my dear mother’ vs. un libro caro ‘an expensive
book’, or un nuevo libro ‘a new (i.e. different) book’ vs. un libro nuevo ‘a new (i.e. newly pub-
lished) book’.