THE DEVELOPMENT OF ADJECTIVES USED AS NOUNS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of adjectives used as nouns (N-adjectives) in the history of English, and its relation to the loss of adjectival inflection and the rise of the prop-word one. The correlation among these historical events is confirmed by an investigation based on historical corpora, and it is shown to be explained in terms of the DP structure which contains a phonologically null pronominal, the availability of which depends on the interpretability of φ-features on adjectives, under the Agree system proposed within the recent Minimalist framework.