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Article published In: Asian Languages and Linguistics
Vol. 6:2 (2025) ► pp.384–405

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Syntactic compositionality of property concept (PC)-expressions in Telangana Telugu

 | SRM University-AP
 | IIT-Delhi
Published online: 29 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/alal.24018.thi
Abstract
This paper explores the syntactic composition of Property Concept (PC)-expressions in Telangana Telugu. The study reveals two distinct ways in which PC-roots are composed into PC-adjectives and PC-nouns in syntax. These are: (1) PC-roots directly merge with an a-cat to form PC-adjectives and (2) PC-roots base-merge with an n-cat to form PC nouns, which necessitate more complex compositional structures such as relativization and case marking for their appearance in modification structures. 57 PC-expressions are selected from TT and four syntactic tests are employed to ascertain the syntactic category of each expression. It was found that 12 PC-roots exhibit adjectival properties and are categorized as PC-adjectives, being merged directly in the attributive modification position as adjectives. The remaining 45 PC-roots exhibit nominal properties, leading to their categorization as PC-nouns. The syntactic composition of these PC-nouns involves additional mechanisms like relativization. Some PCs use the CoS copula avu ‘become’ while others use a ∅ equative copula, resulting in variations in sub-eventual semantics.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Adjectival (AP) modification vs. Argument (NP) modification
  • 3.PC-expressions in Telangana Telugu
    • 3.1The question of base merge: A-cat vs. n-cat
      • 3.1.1AP structure
      • 3.1.2NP structure
    • 3.2Result
  • 4.Compositionality of PC-expressions in TT
    • 4.1PC-adjectives
      • Step 1: Categorization
      • Step-2: Modification
    • 4.2PC-nouns
    • 4.3PC-nouns: Sub-types
      • 4.3.1CoS RCPCs
        • Step 1: Categorization
        • Step 2: Predication
        • Step 3: Event structure
        • Step 4: Temporal information
        • Step 5: Relativization
        • Step 6: Information structure
      • 4.3.2Equative RCPCs
        • Step 1: Categorization
        • Step 2: Predication
        • Step 3: Event structure
        • Step 4: Temporal information
        • Step 5: Relativization
        • Step 6: Information structure
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (16)
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