Affiliation:
1. Linguistics, The English and Foreign Languages University
2. Linguistics, The English & Foreign Languages University
Abstract
Abstract
Gradable nouns participate in comparison without the need for a quantifier to project a degree head. Case, genitive, or dative (and of in English) can function to project a degree head; bare property concept nouns in the dative subject construction are not gradable, but their dative/genitive-marked counterparts are. Thus, one source for a category of adjectives from a universal two-category lexical base (N, V) is by the absorption of N into a degree case-head. Taking also have as be which absorbs the dative case, the stability of morphological case in Dravidian explains the lack of have and the paucity of adjectives, and thus, the inevitability of the dative subject construction.
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