1. Attributive and predicative adjectives
Broadly speaking adjectives can have two types of occurrence. Firstly, they can occur inside a noun phrase, in which case they are said to be attributive. This is illustrated by roja in (1) below:
(1) una camiseta roja
‘a red T-shirt’
Secondly, an adjective can occur as the complement of a copular verb such as ser ‘to be’, in which case it has a predicative occurrence. This is shown in (2). (For adjectives used as secondary predicates, see Small clauses.)
(2) La camiseta es roja.
‘The T-shirt is red.’
2. Position of attributive adjectives
In English, attributive adjectives are normally prenominal, whereas the ‘default’ position for most Spanish attributive adjectives is postnominal. In the majority of cases, however, the possibility also exists of placing the adjective before the noun, usually with a specific interpretive effect.
2.1 Restrictive and non-restrictive modification
An attributive modifier such as an adjective can be either restrictive in its meaning or non-restrictive. In the first case the modifier limits the containing noun phrase’s reference while in the second it does not. For example, if (3) below presupposes a partition of the children into those who were hungry and those who were not, with only the former running into the kitchen, then hungry is restrictive, whereas if (3) presupposes no such partition – implying that they all ran into the kitchen – then hungry is non-restrictive.
(3) The hungry children ran into the kitchen.
In Spanish, prenominal placement of an adjective that characteristically occupies postnominal position normally indicates non-restrictive modification, while the more usual postnominal positioning is compatible with both restrictive and non-restrictive modification. For example, sentence (4) below, where sofisticados is prenominal, is one which presupposes no partition of María’s friends into sophisticates and non-sophisticates. Rather, what the sentence asserts is simply that the subject met María’s friends, who are described as being sophisticated. Sofisticados is thus non-restrictive.
(4) En la fiesta conocí a los sofisticados amigos de María.
‘At the party I met María’s sophisticated friends.’
This reading would also be possible for (5) below, where sofisticados is postnominal. However, the same sentence would also be appropriate if, for example, this was a special party to which María had invited (in addition to the subject) only those friends of hers who were sophisticated. In this case sofisticados would be restrictive.
(5) En la fiesta conocí a los amigos sofisticados de María.
‘At the party I met María’s sophisticated friends.’
2.2 Intersective and non-intersective
Placement can also signal whether an adjective is to be understood as being intersective (i.e. as assigning a property in its own right) or not. Bueno ‘good’, for example, is usually intersective when postnominal but often is not when prenominal; thus the noun phrase un fontanero bueno ‘a good plumber’ refers to someone who is both a plumber and a good person, whereas un buen fontanero refers to someone who is simply an effective plumber (and may or may not be a good person). In the same way, while un periodista simple ‘a naïve journalist’ refers to someone who meets two conditions (being a journalist and being naïve), the noun phrase un simple periodista ‘a mere journalist’ refers to someone who satisfies just one condition (being a journalist).
A variant of the intersective versus non-intersective distinction arises when an item functions as a determiner when prenominal and as an adjective when postnominal. This can be seen with cierto and cualquier:
ciertas creencias ‘certain beliefs’, versus:
creencias ciertas ‘true beliefs’cualquier trabajo ‘any job’, versus:
un trabajo cualquiera ‘a routine job’.
2.3 Contrastive stress
With common gradable adjectives (grande ‘large’, pequeño ‘small’ etc.), postnominal placement enables contrastive stress to be applied. This is illustrated in example (6) below, where capitalization indicates contrastive stress.
(6) Quiero una casa GRANDE y no una pequeña.
‘I want a large house, not a small one.’
The largest group of primarily attributive adjectives in Spanish comprises denominal adjetives that merely substitute a phrase involving a noun. English typically expresses the corresponding concepts by using a noun attributively, as with business in the noun phrase business studies. Examples of such adjectives are as follows:
carcelero (from cárcel) ‘in/of prison’
empresarial (from empresa) ‘business’
espacial (from espacio) ‘space’
ferroviario (from ferrocarril) ‘relating to railways’
escolar (from escuela) ‘relating to schools’
Adjectives in this class rarely if ever occupy prenominal position. So, for example, estancia carcelera ‘stay in prison’ is possible but not *carcelera estancia; similarly, red ferroviaria ‘railway network’ or viaje escolar ‘school trip’ but not *ferroviaria red or *escolar viaje. Notice that the corresponding attempts to use the adjectives predicatively are also unsuccessful, as examples (7) to (9) demonstrate.
(7) *La estancia va a ser carcelera.
‘The stay will be [a] prison [one].’
(8) *La red va a ser ferroviaria.
‘The network will be [a] railway [one].’
(9) *El viaje va a ser escolar.
‘The trip will be [a] school [one].’
Nationality adjectives also rarely occupy prenominal position (thus equipo francés ‘French team’ but not *francés equipo), although of course they are not exclusively attributive.
A second class of essentially attributive adjectives comprises expressive or hedging devices such as mero ‘mere’ and presunto ‘alleged’. These items, in contrast to the adjectives mentioned in the two previous paragraphs, are never postnominal; e.g. la mera intención ‘the mere intention’, el presunto asesino ‘the alleged murderer’, but not *la intención mera, *el asesino presunto.
4. Fixed collocations
Certain collocations of noun and adjective have acquired a fixed order, giving them the air of lexical compounds. These fixed locutions include the following (from Alarcos Llorach 1994):
fuego fatuo ‘will-o-the-wisp’
ideas fijas ‘fixed ideas’
alta mar ‘high sea’
libre albedrío ‘free will’
sentido común ‘common sense’
rara vez ‘infrequently’
largo plazo ‘long term’
5. Syntactic ‘movement’ of nouns in certain noun phrases
From a structural point of view, attributive adjectives are adjuncts, in the sense that they do not function as the complement of the noun that they modify. In modern syntax the complement of a noun is held to combine (or merge) directly with the noun while an adjunct combines with the unit resulting from the merge of the noun and its complement. This is schematized in (10a) and (10b) below, where merge is indicated by a comma and the square brackets delimit the units resulting from merge.
(10a) [[noun, complement], adjunct]
(10b) [adjunct, [noun, complement]]
In Spanish noun phrases, the schema in (10) – specifically in its (b) variant – is naturally respected if the adjective is prenominal, as can be seen from (11) below.
(11) la [inoportuna [invasión de Irak]]
‘the ill-judged invasion of Iraq’
Here the complement of the noun invasión is the prepositional phrase (PP) de Irak. In other words, the noun invasión has merged with the PP de Irak to produce the unit [invasión de Irak]. It is with this latter unit that the adjective inoportuna merges, exactly as in schema (10b). The result of this second merge operation, i.e. [inoportuna [invasión de Irak]], then merges with the definite article to complete the noun phrase.
On the other hand, if the adjective is postnominal the schema in (10) fails to be respected (in either of its variants (a) or (b)), as can be seen from (12), where the noun invasión is separated from its complement by the adjective americana, creating the discontinuous unit [invasión . . . de irak].
(12) la invasión americana de Irak
‘the American invasion of Iraq’
In Generative Grammar, the solution to this analytical problem is to assume that the base order of an example such as (12) is actually like that of (11) and that, in the course of the derivation of the noun phrase’s surface order, the noun is deleted in its original position and remerged or ‘moved’ to the left of the adjective, as shown in (13).
(13) la invasión [americana [invasión de Irak]]
The item in strikethrough font can be understood as being an unpronouncd copy of the noun invasión. According to the standard theoretical analysis, it is this copy that preserves the integrity of the structural principle enshrined in schema (10). For an extended discussion of this issue in relation to Spanish, see Zagona 2002 (pp. 110–15).
Alarcos Llorach, Emilio. 1994. Gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Zagona, Karen. 2002. The syntax of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.