JJPR Predicative adjectives
Definition
Adjectives in predicative position after a copular verb (e.g., “the man is tall”, “she felt happy”).
Detection Rules
mfte
MFTE line 1161-1163: Sweep all remaining JJ/JJR/JJS as JJPR. Phase 3 runs after JJAT phases 1-2, so cat=JJAT tokens are excluded via [cat=“JJ.*”]. Sets cat=JJPR for residual calculation.
all_jj
cql[cat="JJ|JJR|JJS"]
combine: all_jj & !QUAN & !AMP & !DWNT & !EMPH & !HDG
semgrex{pos:/VB.*/}=cop >acomp {pos:JJ}=adj
pybiber
pybiber uses UPOS for all checks: linking verb (VERB or AUX) + ADJ (not JJ specifically) + next token not NOUN/ADJ/ADV. Excludes hyphenated adjectives.
cql[lemma={words} & upos="VERB|AUX"] [upos="ADJ" & word!=".*-.*"] [upos!="NOUN|ADJ|ADV"]
Word list (12 items)
act
appear
be
become
feel
get
look
prove
remain
seem
sound
turn
Normalization
Per finite_verbs
Examples
That’s right.
Source: le_foll_2024
One of the main advantages of being famous...
Source: le_foll_2024
It must be absolutely wonderful.
Source: le_foll_2024
Sources
- mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
- xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
Notes
Biber 1988 counted only attributive adjectives.