La mancanza di candidati al ruolo direttivo

Cinque shows that there is a systematic contrast between Romance and Ger-manic when it comes to adjective position and interpretation. Generally, adjec-tives that come before the noun in English are semantically ambiguous, while adjectives that follow the noun are not. In Italian, on the other hand, ambiguity is observed with postnominal adjectives, while prenominal adjectives are always unambiguous. This means that the Romance generalisation mentioned earlier, which took prenominal adjectives to be associated with one reading and post-nominal adjectives with another, does not hold in the expected fashion cross-linguistically. According to Cinque, the contrast between English and Italian, seems to be observed across Germanic and Romance.

The first difference between the two language families is observed with stage-vs. individual-level readings. In the English examples (14) and (15) we saw that the adjective visible only has a stage-level reading when postnominal, but can either have a stage or an individual reading when prenominal. This becomes obvious in the examples below, where the continuation of the sentence with but not Arcturus or Vega is only acceptable with the stage-level reading. If the sentence in (74) has an individual reading, then this is an invalid continuation as Arcturus and Vega are in fact visible from the Earth regardless of whether they are visible at a given moment.

(73) The stars visible include Sirius and Canopus (but not Arcturus or Vega).

(74) The visible stars include Sirius and Canopus.

Stage-level: (but not Arcturus or Vega)

Individual-level: #(but not Arcturus or Vega)

In Italian we observe the reverse phenomenon. When postnominal, invisibili is ambiguous between the two readings, but it can only have an individual-level interpretation when prenominal. This is witnessed in the following examples (Cinque 2010:7, (3) & (4), respectively):

(75) a. Le the

invisibili invisible

stelle stars

di of

Andromeda Andromeda

esecritano have

un a

grande great fascino

fascination

b. ‘Andromeda’s stars, which are generally invisible, have a great fas-cination’ (individual-level)

c. #‘Andromeda’s generally visible stars, which happen to be invisible now, have a great fascination’ (stage-level)

(76) a. Le the

stelle stars

invisibili invisible

di of

Andromeda Andromeda

sono are

moltissime very-many

b. ‘Andromeda’s stars, which are generally invisible, are very many.’

(individual-level)

c. ‘Andromeda’s generally visible stars, which happen to be invisible now, are very many.’ (stage-level)

Another example of ambiguity is found with restrictive vs. nonrestrictive read-ings. As witnessed in examples (77) and (78) (Cinque 2010:7–8, (5) & (6)), the adjective unsuitable can either have a restrictive or a nonrestrictive meaning when prenominal. However, when the same adjective appears postnominally, only the restrictive reading is felicitous. In the Italian examples in (79) and (80) (Cinque 2010:8, (7) & (8)) ambiguity is found in the postnominal position, while the prenominal position is reserved for the nonrestrictive reading.

(77) a. All of his unsuitable acts were condemned

b. ‘All his acts were condemned; they were unsuitable’ (nonrestrictive) c. ‘All (and only) his acts that were unsuitable were condemned’

(restrictive)

(78) a. Every word unsuitable was deleted

b. #‘Every word was deleted; they were unsuitable’ (nonrestrictive)

c. ‘Every word that was unsuitable was deleted’ (restrictive)

b. ‘Everybody remembers Ferri’s classes, all of which were boring’

(nonrestrictive)

c. #‘Everybody remembers just those classes by Ferri that were boring’

(restrictive)

b. ‘Everybody remembers Ferri’s classes, all of which were boring’

(nonrestrictive)

c. ‘Everybody remembers just those classes by Ferri that were boring’

(restrictive)

An additional ambiguity is observed with adjectives such as possible which can either have a modal interpretation or an implicit relative clause interpretation as in the English example in (81). The modal reading becomes unavailable in English when the adjective is postnominal, while in Italian it is the only available reading when the adjective appears before the noun (Cinque 2010:8–9, (9)–(12)):

(81) a. Mary interviewed every possible candidate.

b. ‘Mary interviewed every potential candidate.’ (modal)

c. ‘Mary interviewed every candidate that it was possible for her to interview.’ (implicit relative clause)

(82) a. Mary interviewed every candidate possible.

b. #‘Mary interviewed every potential candidate.’ (modal)

c. ‘Mary interviewed every candidate that it was possible for her to interview.’ (implicit relative clause)

(83) a. Maria b. ‘Mary interviewed every potential candidate.’ (modal)

c. #‘Mary interviewed every candidate that it was possible for her to interview.’ (implicit relative clause)

(84) a. Maria

b. ‘Mary interviewed every potential candidate.’ (modal)

c. ‘Mary interviewed every candidate that it was possible for her to interview.’ (implicit relative clause)

Earlier in this chapter we saw that beautiful dancer is ambiguous between the intersective reading ‘beautiful as a person’ and the nonintersective reading ‘beau-tiful as a dancer’. When beau‘beau-tiful is found postnominally, however, it can only have the intersective reading as shown in (85) (Cinque 2010:10, (14)).

(85) a. Olga is a dancer more beautiful than her instructor.

b. ‘Olga is a dancer who is also a more beautiful person than her in-structor.’ (intersective)

c. #‘Olga dances more beautifully than her instructor’ (nonintersective) In Italian, on the other hand, the adjective buon ‘good’ is unambiguously nonin-tersective prenominally, but either innonin-tersective or noninnonin-tersective postnominally (Cinque 2010:10, (15)–(16)): b. ‘A forward good at playing forward would never do such a thing.’

(nonintersective)

c. #‘A good-hearted forward would never do such a thing.’ (intersective) (87) a. Un b. ‘A forward good at playing forward would never do such a thing.’

(nonintersective)

c. ‘A good-hearted forward would never do such a thing.’ (intersective) Cinque (2010:5–17) mentions more interpretive asymmetries between English and Italian, which are summarised in tables 2.3 and 2.4. The generalisation that holds is that the prenominal position in English is ambiguous, while in Italian ambiguity is associated with the postnominal position. Moreover, the postnominal position in English and the prenominal position in Italian are unambiguous, but the un-ambiguous readings in the two languages have the opposite values. For instance, postnominal adjectives in English are always intersective, while prenominal ad-jectives in Italian must be nonintersective.

Cinque concludes that adjectives which appear postnominally in English are always merged in a reduced relative clause. One of the indications that this is

Table 2.3: English (Germanic) readings

Prenominal adjectives N Postnominal adjectives stage-level or individual-level stage-level

restrictive or nonrestrictive restrictive

implicit relative clause or modal implicit relative clause intersective or nonintersective intersective

relative or absolute [cannot be tested]

comparative or absolute reading of superlatives

[cannot be tested]

specificity- or nonspecificity-inducing

specificity- or nonspecificity-inducing

evaluative or epistemic reading of

‘unknown’

[cannot be tested]

NP-dependent or discourse anaphoric reading of ‘different’

[cannot be tested]

Table 2.4: Italian (Romance) readings

Prenominal adjectives N Postnominal adjectives individual-level individual-level or stage-level

nonrestrictive restrictive or nonrestrictive

modal implicit relative clause or modal

nonintersective intersective or nonintersective

absolute relative or absolute

absolute reading of superlatives comparative or absolute reading of superlatives

specificity-inducing specificity- or nonspecificity-inducing

evaluative reading of ‘unknown’ evaluative or epistemic reading of

‘unknown’

NP-dependent reading of ‘different’ NP-dependent or discourse anaphoric reading of ‘different’

the case, is the fact that only predicative adjectives are allowed in this position.

More supporting evidence comes from the fact that the interpretation of English adjectives in this position is identical to that of adjectives inside restrictive rela-tive clauses. This is obvious when we compare the examples (82a) and (82c), as well as the following pair:

(88) the students present = the students who are present

As a result, adjectives that share the interpretational properties of postnominal adjectives in English are assumed to have a predicative source. On the other hand, prenominal adjectives in Italian are argued to be adjectives that directly modify the noun and which are, therefore, merged inside the Specifiers of dedicated func-tional projections. Consequently, any adjectives that share the interpretafunc-tional properties of prenominal adjectives in Italian must be APs merged in a Spec,FP.

In the next subsection we will look at the syntactic positions of the two adjectival sources inside the DP.