The paper investigates the properties of relational adjectives at the syntax/morphology interface. Specifically, it proposes an analysis of relational adjectives that accounts of the mismatch between their nominal semantics/syntax and the adjectival morphology. Relational adjectives are semantically underlying nouns but they show several syntactic properties that set them apart from nouns such as deficient number, lack of anaphoric properties and incompatibility with complex event nouns. I account for these deficiencies by analyzing them as underspecified nouns with a minimal syntactic structure on a par with the one of default mass nouns proposed by Borer (2005). Moreover, positive evidence is provided for a split classification of relational adjectives as proposed in Bosque & Picallo (1996) according to which Thematic relational adjectives are arguments of deverbal nouns while Classificatory adjectives, restrictive modifiers of simple nouns. Special focus is placed on the parallel between Thematic adjectives and genitives in Romance that provides a theoretical answer to the syntax/morphology mismatch: In the spirit of Distributed Morphology (cf. Embick & Noyer 2006), I argue that the Case features of the nouns underlying in Thematic adjectives are relevant only at PF, conditioning the choice of Vocabulary Items expressing Case: the adjectival suffix or the de genitival preposition. Studia Linguistica 69(3) 2015, pp. 304-332.

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Bruening (2014) has recently challenged the status of defective intervention as a real syntactic phenomenon, arguing that it is actually the effect of linear order. Our first goal is to show that Bruening’s (2014) potential counterexamples to the existence of syntactic defective intervention are only apparent. We will provide an explanation for his data based on adverb placement and the hierarchical architecture of clauses with experiencers. Moreover, we aim to provide a typology of Romance languages that either prohibit defective intervention like Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and Italian or languages of the Romanian/Spanish-type that obviate defective intervention on the basis of the availability of clitic doubling (Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005).