LA NUCLEARIDAD Y LAS CONSTRUCCIONES DE GRADO ADJETIVAS

in this article different criteria will be used in order to identify the head of sequences formed by a degree term and a gradable adjective. we will see how both, degree terms and adjectives, act as heads depending on the criterion being considered. thus, based on a notion of headness according to which the head is the member of a phrase that determines the properties of the phrase and selects the complement, the adjective will be responsible for the properties of the sequence [deg+a], while degree terms will be responsible for semantic and categorial selection inside this sequence. on the other hand, a series of formal arguments will show that degree terms take the adjective as their complement. we will conclude that structure of the sequence [deg+a] is headed by deg and we will use the notion of “extended projection” to account for the fact that both degree terms and adjectives are responsible for certain properties of this sequence.