Some diagnostics for the logical types of adjectives

There are at least four diagnostics which typically distinguish the adjectives in classes (a), (b), and (c), i.e. prenominal adjectives, from postnominal adjectives like those in Expressing an extreme property (d) (3). First, the members of each set differ as to their ability to be used in copular predicative structures. Second, they behave differently with respect to tests that make explicit the “subset property” (Pullum and Huddleston 2002). Third, gradable adjectives with different scalar properties (“absolute” and “relative” ones in the sense of Kennedy and McNally 2005) do not always accept degree modification in prenominal position. And fourth, the two positions also mark the difference between the non-specific and specific readings. I will now provide some evidence for these differences.