This book explores why different languages have systematically different ways of saying the same thing. It focuses on adjectival predication and shows that systematic differences in the meaning of words expressing adjectival notions have systematic effects on the form of the sentences they appear in.

Itamar Francez is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. His research interests are mostly in the interaction of lexical, compositional, and contextual aspects of interpretation, and in the role of meaning in structuring morphosyntactic form. His work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Semantics, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, and Language.
Andrew Koontz-Garboden is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at The University of Manchester. He is interested in how word meaning shapes the grammars of particular languages and underpins aspects of the structural diversity of all languages. He also has interests in language documentation and description, and has done extensive work on the Misumalpan language Ulwa.

• 1: Introduction: Lexical semantics and morphosyntactic patterns


• 2: Variation in the form of property concept sentences: The explananda


• 3: The lexical semantic variation hypothesis


• 4: The locus of variation in property concept sentences


• 5: Meaning and Category: Semantic constraints on parts of speech


• 6: Quality nouns and other mass nouns


• 7: Conclusion