adjective 11

when a principled basis is established for deciding between alternative grammars,

all of which are descriptively adequate. More specifically, an explanatorily
adequate grammar will explain why language acquisition in a relatively short
period of time is possible on the basis of primary linguistic data.

adequate (adj.) see adequacy

adessive (adj./n.) A term used in grammatical description to refer to a

type of inflection which expresses the meaning of presence at or near a
place. The adessive case (the adessive) is found in Finnish, for example, along
with allative, elative and several other cases expressing local temporal and
spatial meanings.

adicity (n.) see valency

adjacency (n.) see adjacent

adjacency condition A condition on the assignment of case in government-

binding theory which blocks Case-assignment to those noun phrases not
adjacent to the Case-assigner. Since the Case filter requires every overt NP to be
Case-marked, the adjacency condition forces NP complements to appear closer
to their Case-assigner, and thus to precede non-NP complements, as in English
John put a book on the shelf but not *John put on the shelf a book.

adjacency pair A term used in sociolinguistic analyses of conversational inter-

action to refer to a single stimulus-plus-response sequence by the participants.
Adjacency pairs have been analysed in terms of their role in initiating, maintaining
and closing conversations (e.g. the various conventions of greeting, leave-taking,
topic-changing), and constitute, it has been suggested, an important methodo-
logical concept in investigating the ethnography of communication.

adjacent (adj.) An application of the general sense of this term in several areas
of linguistics, especially in generative models of language, where it refers
specifically to neighbouring elements in a representation. For example, some
phonological models require a locality condition: phonological rules apply
only between elements which are next to each other on a given tier. In feature
geometry, for instance, the neighbouring representation of features or nodes
on a tier are said to be adjacent, and those separated by other elements to be
non-adjacent. In this context, the notion of adjacency is sometimes extended to
include features on different tiers, which count as adjacent if they are linked to
adjacent root nodes. In metrical phonology, the metrical locality principle
requires that rules refer only to elements at the same or adjacent layers of metrical
structure. See also adjacency pair, adjacency condition, locality (2).

adjectival (adj./n.) see adjective

adjective (n.) (A, adj, ADJ) A term used in the grammatical classification of
words to refer to the main set of items which specify the attributes of nouns.
From a formal point of view, four criteria are generally invoked to define the