Unclear Predication in the Construction
This paper examines Evaluative Adjectives (in short: EAs) like brave, clever, crazy, foolish, silly, wise when followed by to + infinive as in (1) or (2):(1) C8T 2147 I suppose I'm silly to worry about that. (Examples from the BNC)(2) EU 1623 You’d be crazy to sell today. Intuitively, this cons...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)
2012-03-01
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| Series: | E-REA |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/erea/2368 |
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| Summary: | This paper examines Evaluative Adjectives (in short: EAs) like brave, clever, crazy, foolish, silly, wise when followed by to + infinive as in (1) or (2):(1) C8T 2147 I suppose I'm silly to worry about that. (Examples from the BNC)(2) EU 1623 You’d be crazy to sell today. Intuitively, this construction appears to be a case of Stage-level predication (Stowell, 1991). However, the Derived EA construction passes none of the classic S-level tests, as demonstrated in Kertz’ (2006) “Adjunct Control analysis”. Yet to consider this construction as a clear case of Individual-level predication remains counter-intuitive. This paper aims at showing that it should be regarded as a case of “unclear predication”, and as such, having the pragmatic advantage of enabling the speaker to pronounce a judgment without clearly committing themselves. The following parameters are taken into account: the syntactic status of the EA’s infinitival modifier, the semantic status of its propositional content, and the preconstruction behind the adjectival predication. |
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| ISSN: | 1638-1718 |