Talk:Adjective

Problems with Semantics Section
There were several problems with the semantics section which I have tried to fix.


 * Partee (1995) uses the non-hyphenated term 'nonsubsective'.
 * It's not clear that Partee (1995) considers 'plain' a category of adjective. She does describe "plain nonsubsective" adjectives (p. 355), but its not clear to me that she considers that the name of a category of adjective, rather than just a generic description of such adjectives. I've changed the name to 'plain nonsubsective', but 'nonprivative nonsubsective' might be better.
 * It is not the case (incl. according to Partee) that an intersective adjective is 'one that is essential to the meaning of the referent to which it applies'. While that is true of the example 'carnivorous cat', it is not true of Partee's (1995, p. 323) example 'carnivorous mammal', as being carnivorous in _not_ essential to the meaning of 'mammal'. Instead, an adjective is intersective if and only if the extension of its combination with a noun is equal to the intersection of its extension and that of the noun its modifying. An adjective which is essential to the meaning of the referent to which it applies would be pleonastic.
 * The denotation of an adjective is normally said to have members, rather than tokens, and can be more precisely described as an extension (Partee 1995 does both).
 * A subsective adjective, together with a noun, need not only hold for a _proper_ subset of the noun. 'Carnivorous' is subsective, but the extension of 'carnivorous cat' is equal to the set cat.

Finally, this section only discusses are small part of the semantics of adjectives, and should be extended. Ted BJ (talk) 20:57, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

"Bright sun"
What is the term for an adjective that is redundant but included for emphasis, such as "the bright sun"? I don't mean a tautology; there is a special term when the purpose is emphasis. It may be "pleonasm", but I thought there was something more specific when used for emphasis. I didn't see anything in the article for this. BMJ-pdx (talk) 12:15, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Adjective :) Botterweg14  (talk)  15:21, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Expletive attributive. (@Botterweg14: I wouldn't say restrictive, which IMHO is a very ill-defined concept that is too broad to be practicably useful. I mean, all attributive adjectives are restrictive, right?) Kent Dominic·(talk) 16:51, 16 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Both of those are close but no cigar. Adjective explains "non-restrictive" well, but in the examples cited, at least, the adjective does add something, whereas in "a true fact" it's completely redundant, serving only as emphasis. Expletive attributive goes beyond mere emphasis; in any case, "expletive" has a lot of extra baggage.
 * BMJ-pdx (talk) 17:08, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

I found where I first saw what I was thinking of, and it is "pleonasm" (not to be confused with "neoplasm" :). From WordNet(r) 3.1:
 * pleonastic  adj : repetition of same sense in different words; "`a true fact' and `a free gift' are pleonastic expressions"

Albeit not as poetic as "The bright sun bore down upon them.".

"Pleonastic" is a lacking omission from the article, but I'll leave to someone with knowing erudition to try to shoehorn it in.

BMJ-pdx (talk) 17:08, 19 March 2024 (UTC)


 * FYI, despite how expletive typically connotes profane in colloquial usage, the linguistics sense of the word relates to amplifiers or intensifiers. E.g., I coined the word gob-so-smacking-lutely, whose definition is tagged as an expletive as used in the sentence, "Guess who called me today out of gob-so-smacking-lutely nowhere?" (Using abso-effing-lutely didn't have the same feeling of novelty that I wanted the relevant character to express.)
 * I don't consider "bright sun to be necessarily pleonastic, given how there are sunsets, first lights, eclipses, cloudy skies, etc., that can be thought of as contrasting a bright sun. Depends on the context. Someone who thinks otherwise might work the concept of pleonasm into the article. Cheers. Kent Dominic·(talk) 21:26, 19 March 2024 (UTC)