The Possessive and Adjective Phrases in Croatian

Matasović, Ranko. (2000). The Possessive and Adjective Phrases in Croatian. Suvremena lingvistika, 49-50(1). pp. 99-109. ISSN 1847-117X

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Abstract

It is argued that the syntactic behaviour of the Croatian possessive NPs can be accounted for by Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). The prohibition against possessive NPs with more than one possessive adjective is a consequence of a basic claim of RRG, namely, that adjectives are operators and are not represented in the constituent projection. Therefore, adjectives, including the Croatian possessive adjectives, cannot have a branching structure, so possessive adjectives are replaced by postnominal possessive genitives whenever a possessed noun is modified by more than one possessor. Adjectives taking complements (e. g. full of beer) are also invariably postnominal in Croatian and English, as well as in other right- branching languages. Such adjective phrases should be analyzed as a kind of reduced relative phrase.

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