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Central semantics of value adjective

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).

pos=adj
D e s c r i p t i o nE x a m p l e s
coloursrosa/adj  , rosso/adj  
physic dimensiongrande/adj  , piccolo/adj  
abstract valuesbuono/adj  , valido/adj  
etnical adjectivesitaliano/adj  , europeo/adj  
relationalpauroso/adj  
adjective in post-nominal positionun uomo bello/adj  , buono/adj  
adjective in pre-nominal positionun bell'/adj   uomo, un buon/adj   uomo
present participlesun uomo molto amante/adj   della vita
past participlesusanze passate/adj  


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