On frequency adjectives

Abstract

Frequency adjectives like occasional can occur, unexpectedly, in connection with nouns which do not denote events: Agent Cooper likes an occasional cup of coffee. I provide a full classification of these adjectives and formulate a solution in terms of event semantics which keeps the core semantic contribution of frequency adjectives constant for normal uses and marked uses with non-event nouns. This distinguishes my approach from previous approaches which are merely partial and use non-standard ontologies and semantics for the marked constructions.