Roles and the compositional semantics of role-denoting relational adjectives

Abstract

The semantics of adjectives related to nominals denoting societal roles, such as
presidential (from president), have remained understudied. We examine the semantics of what
we call role-denoting relational adjectives, providing a formal analysis using the notion of a
frame, a unified representation for lexical knowledge, world knowledge, and context. The frames
we propose are based on a constructivist philosophical understanding of social roles, leading us
to posit a multi-tiered ontology of events and individuals. Using frames and our ontology, we
provide a general semantics for role-denoting relational adjectives and roles.
Keywords: modification, adjectives, relational adjectives, events, non-intersective adjectives,
roles, natural language metaphysics, frame semantics.