| Summary: | This thesis constitutes an example of a meaning-based approach to English morphology. Its central aim is to study various topics related to collateral adjectives (CAs), such as paternal (base noun (BN): father), vernal (BN: spring), canine (BN: dog) etc. In Chapter 1, the notion of CAs is introduced, defined as 'Latinate suppletive relational adjectives (RAdjs)'. The specific properties of CAs in the more general context of RAdjs are discussed. In Chapter 2, it is shown that the existence of CAs poses serious problems to form-based approaches to morphology in general because, in spite of their apparent derivational status, they provide us with extreme cases where CAs and base nouns are formally unconnected. However, they all share a constant semantic relationship with their BNs; therefore, it is argued that there is a certain meaning-based paradigmaticity observable between CAs and BNs, based on which derivational suppletion can be defined between them. Chapter 3 deals with the syntax and semantics of RAdjs, of which CAs constitute a proper subset. Through comparing CAs with attributive nouns, possessives, etc., it is concluded that RAdjs have weak, type-indicating referentiality, in spite of their adjectival morphology, which causes them to display many 'nounlike' characteristics. In this chapter, it is also shown that the decompositional lexical-semantic analysis successfully accounts for the attribution and that RAdjs easily undergo semantic shift to become qualitative adjectives. Chapter 4 discusses the lexicographical treatment of CAs. Firstly, through surveys of various dictionaries past and present, it is shown that the treatment of semasiological dictionaries is insufficient, whereas onomasiological dictionaries tend to contain too much information on CAs. It is concluded that upper-level semasiological dictionaries should contain onomasiological information concerning CAs and that the best way is to treat them in the microstructures of their BNs, preferably with some appropriate cross-referencing. Chapter 5 presents sociolinguistic and contrastive studies of CAs. It is shown that CAs belong to the Latinate vocabulary in English, which means that they constitute the 'language bar' in the English-speaking world. In a contrastive analysis of Japanese and English, I conclude that in Japanese, special character-based pseudo-paradigmaticity (as defined above) is prevalent - at substantial cost to education but resulting in high literacy. In English, on the other hand, in the absence of a mediating writing system, knowledge of CAs is not acquired automatically with literacy and hence has come to matter in sociolinguistic terms. Chapter 6 summarises the discussion and states the outcome of the research reported in the thesis.
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