Responsible drivers and good passengers: the influence of non-intersective modification on nouns

Abstract

A noun modified by a non-intersective adjective is standardly said to denote a subset of the unmodified noun’s extension; [[skillful surgeon]] is a subset of [[surgeon]] (Siegel, 1976; Kamp and Partee, 1995). I argue that many non-intersective adjective-noun combinations actually denote a subset of the modifier’s extension (e.g. [[skillful surgeon]] is a subset of [[skillful]]). I define 'quality adjectives' — adjectives that describe goodness or character traits specifiable by an identity — as a subclass of non-intersective modifiers and provide data to suggest these modifiers are centrally predicated while the nouns they modify restrict their context. I derive these cases from a dyadic generic quantifier over Kratzerian situations that situates the nominal in its restrictor and the adjective in its nuclear scope. This accounts for three novel generalizations regarding how certain quality modifiers influence nouns: quality modifiers alter the temporal properties of nouns, suppress the second argument of relational nouns, and resist nouns that reference species and natural classes.