Abstract
This paper is an investigation into the criteria for establishing syntacitc categories, and more specifically, into the problem of distinguishing between the categories of Adjective and Preposition. I will argue that in the history of English, at least two adjectives, like and worth, were reanalyzed as prepositions. Two questions come to mind: Why did the categorial reanalysis take place? What were the grammatical consequences of the reanalysis, i.e. what change(s) in the words’ use followed as a result? The answers to these questions provide evidence as to the grammatical function of complements of different syntactic categories. They also show how very little of the evidence traditionally used by linguists to establish categories is strictly syntactic in nature.
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Maling, J. (1983). Transitive Adjectives: A Case of Categorial Reanalysis. In: Heny, F., Richards, B. (eds) Linguistic Categories: Auxiliaries and Related Puzzles. Synthese Language Library, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6989-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6989-6_8
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