Modification at the interfaces: An introduction

Abstract While we can name examples of modifiers (e.g. adjectives, adverbs, PPs, relative clauses), it is not uncontroversial to what extent “modifier” is a syntactic term and how we should represent modification as part of a semantic model. This being true, modification is not only interesting because it challenges a simple composition system that proceeds through application of functions to arguments. In this introduction we present four papers that show that research on modification proves to be relevant for current investigations on the syntax–semantics interface as well as the language–cognition interface.

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