Behavior adjectives : Dynamic, agentive and unergative
Résumé
This paper examines the question of aspect with relation to adjectives. We argue that there exists a set of adjectives in French that exhibit linguistic properties similar to those of dynamic verbs, like imprudent ‘careless’ or méchant ‘mean’. All dynamic adjectives take a syntactic subject interpreted as “agent” and are unergative. We support our claim by showing that behavior adjectives pass the same tests as their verbal counterparts. Subsequently, we propose that French behavior adjectives and non behavior adjectives are syntactically different in that the former type projects into syntax as an aP whose head, a, takes an AP as its complement, whereas the latter simply projects as an AP.