On 20 March Nobert Cover (Utrecht University, Institute for Language Sciences) will give a seminar on adjectival constructions.

Abstract

In Chomsky’s (1993:4) article A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory, it is stated that “The notion of grammatical construction is eliminated, and with it, construction-particular rules.” He further argues that “Constructions such as verb phrases, relative clause, and passive remain only as taxonomic artifacts, collections of phenomena explained through the interaction of the principles of UG, with the values of parameters fixed.” Adopting this perspective on so-called “grammatical constructions”, I will examine the nature and behavior of degree-related phenomena in Dutch adjectival “constructions” (e.g. comparative constructions) by taking seriously (i) the non-existence of construction-particular rules, (ii) the existence of cross-categorial parallelism, and also (iii) the importance of structural decomposition. Questions that will be addressed include: Is -er in, for example, taller really a comparative morpheme? An what is the grammatical nature of the standard marker dan ‘than’ in Dutch comparative constructions? I hope to shed some light on the nature of these degree-related phenomena by “making them strange”. As a grammatical device for defamiliarizing these familiar grammatical elements, I will look at them and analyze them “through an adpositional lens”.