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28.0. Introduction
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The predicative use of adjectives implies a set-subset relation: if an adjective A is predicated of a certain noun phrase, then the set of entities referred to by the noun phrase is a subset of the set denoted by A; cf. Section 23.3.2.1. The prototypical instantiation of this type of predication is found in the copular construction: an example such as (1) expresses that the set of entities referred to by the noun phrase de jongensthe boys is a subset of the set denoted by the adjective rijkrich.

1
Copular construction
De jongens zijn rijk.
  the boys are rich

Dutch predicatively used (henceforth: predicative) adjectives do not show agreement with the argument of which they are predicated; cf. Section 23.2 for a discussion of the attributive inflection of the adjective. Dutch differs in this respect from languages such as Italian, in which predicatively used adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun phrase they are predicated of; cf. Burzio (1986), Baker (2008) and the references cited there for a discussion of this type of agreement.

2
a. Marie is ziek.
  Marie is ill
b. Maria è malatafeminine,sg.
  Maria is ill

This chapter is organized as follows. Section 28.1 takes a closer look at the noun phrase that the adjective is predicated of, and argues that the relation between this noun phrase and the AP is in several respects similar to the relation between the VP and the subject of the clause. Sections 28.2 to 28.4 then discuss the various syntactic instantiations of the predicative construction; cf. Table 1. Finally, Section 28.5 discusses cases in which the adjective is not predicated of a noun phrase but of some other category: clauses, PPs, and APs.

Table 1: The predicative use of the adjective
complementive i. copular construction Section 28.2
ii. resultative construction
iii. vinden ‘consider’ -construction
supplementive Section 28.3
appositive Section 28.4

For the sake of clarity, note that, in analogy to the notion of attributive adjective, we will use the notion of predicative adjective to refer not to a specific subtype of adjective, but to adjectives with a specific syntactic function, i.e. as an abbreviation of predicatively used adjectives. The notions of complementive, supplementive and appositive adjective should be understood in the same way; they refer to adjectives used in their various predicative functions.

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