Attributive adjectives: the distinction between ascriptive and associative

In dealing with adjectives, we shall take the simplest and most straightforward cases first. We shall postpone until Chapter 3 the task of setting out the full array of intensional patterns which are expressed in the syntactic structures involving English adjectives. In this chapter we shall examine a construction which has the basic value of providing a subordinate property to assist in identification of some entity when this is not fully achieved by the noun. In addition, it throws up a syntactic-semantic distinction which is important in its own right and which will make its presence felt in the other adjectival positions also. The construction is, of course, that of the ordinary attributive adjective, the adjective which is the exponent in observable syntax of the subordinate property in the intensional structure: 1

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