It is a Pos that
combines with other PoS giving rise to Adjective Phrases.
The adjective co-occurs, in general
with the noun, specifying its qualities.
The isolation and recognizing criteria are of
formal and semantic type.
Morphological and syntactic parameters:
- the adjective carries the number and gender marks;
it undegoes the agreement
mechanism (with the noun)
which is a relation of syntactic type,
il mio caro amico, le mie care amiche.
- the adjective combines with elements
which is in relation of dependency with (but the process of
nominalization).
In Italian, the marked or not-marked position of the
adjective in the context has implication on the semantics:
post-nominal position (not marked):
un uomo grande, un uomo buono;
pre-nominal position (marked):
un grand' uomo, un buon uomo.
In these positions, the adjective,
linked with a noun containing the feature [+human], acquires a special
metaphoric sense.
Note that at morphological level, in the marked position the adjective
selects the ``truncated" form.
Morphologically, adjectives are subdivided into three different classes:
- two endings (one for masculine nouns, the other for feminine
nouns):
bambino buono, bambina buona; bambini buoni, bambine buone
- one ending (the same ending for masculine and feminine nouns):
caramella/biscotto dolce; caramelle/biscotti dolci
- invariant (the same ending for masculine and feminine nouns and
for the singular
and plural forms): lotta/e impari, totale/i pari
Semantic parameters:
- the adjectives specify subclasses: the class of
qualificative (which are considered
the ``protypical" nucleus of the class and constitute the productive
sector, see the relational below), and the determinative (which, in this
document, are inserted and dealt with in the Determiner section).