Summary and Conclusions Meaning–form correlations and adjective position in Spanish

In the first part of this chapter I presented a new classification of nonpredictive and predicative adjectives and introduced a series of generalizations showing that the semantic interpretation and logical types of adjectives strongly correlate with syntactic position. In the second part, I justified the proposal that the modifying relation that adjectives establish with Ns is created by the three operations for forming phrase structure that are provided by the hypothesis of narrow syntax developed in Chomsky (2001a,b): external Merge, internal Merge (both cases of Set-Merge) and Pair-Merge. My claim is that non-predicative adjectives, [−p], receive such an interpretation at SEM when they Pair-Merge, or adjoin, to the maximal projection of N; predicative adjectives, [+p], receive their interpretation when they form a predication structure through external Merge. Adjectives which “preserve” their predicative interpretation in prenominal position or are nonrestrictive in postnominal position have been displaced to a Focus position above NP, which constitutes a case of internal Merge. These three operations are the only options. By adhering to a narrow set of assumptions and minimal analyses, we thus illuminate aspects of the syntax–semantics interface.