Chapter 5 explores transitivity systems and structures. It concentrates on the evidence used to motivate descriptions of paradigmatic relations. At stake here is the weight given to evidence of different kinds, including arguing from above, around and below. This chapter also foregrounds the cline of delicacy with respect to both system and structure, exploring what happens when general transitivity classes are explored in greater detail and issues that arise with respect to how much subclassification should be reflected in function structure labelling.

This chapter gives an overview of the grammatical features of Chinese adjectives and how to use them, specifically the way they can be used as the main predicate in a sentence. The forms and functions of the reduplication of adjectives are also discussed.

This chapter introduces the two types of modification in a sentence: attributive and adverbial. Attributive modification generally assigns properties to nouns, and adverbial modification generally assigns properties to predicates. Special attention is paid to the uses of the marker 的 de for attributive modifications and the marker 地 de for adverbial modifications.

Although adjectives typically denote properties, that’s not definitive. The distinctive properties of prototypical adjectives are gradability inflection for comparative and superlative. Adjective phrases (AdjPs) function as predicative complements and modifiers in nominals, though some specialize in one of these. AdjPs take adverbs, notably ‘very’, as modifiers. These properties generally distinguish them from nouns and verbs which can be useful in fused modifier-heads or with overlap, as in ‘it’s flat’ vs ‘I have a flat’. AdjPs differ from DPs in always being omissible from an NP, while a DP in determiner function is often required. Also DPs, but not AdjP can occur in as a fused head in a partitive construction. AdjPs also occur as supplements, here differing from PPs in that AdjPs typically have a predicand that is the subject of the main clause. Like most other phrases, AdjPs allow complements, usually PPs or subordinate clauses.

The adverb category is the most heterogenous in the properties of its members. Many adverbs are formed from adjectives using the ‘⋅ly’ suffix, but AdvPs don’t function as attributive modifiers in nominals and rarely function as or allow complements.