Labels Possession, PartPortion, and its subtype Stuff, OrgMember, and QuantityValue and its subtype Approximator are defined for some important subclasses.

Characteristic applies directly to:

1. A property value:#

• Adnominal: Characteristic↝Identity

  • a car of high quality 001

  • a man of honor 002

  • a business of that sort [contrast with Species, Species] 003

• Secondary predicate adjective: Characteristic↝Identity

  • She described him as sad. 004

  • He strikes me as sad. 005

2. Role of a complex framal Gestalt that has no obvious decomposition into parts:#

• the restaurant with a convenient location/an extensive menu 006

• a party with great music 007

3. That which is located in a container denoted by the governor:#

• a room with 2 beds [beds are among the things in the room] 008

• Characteristic↝Stuff where the object of the preposition is construed as describing the contents in their entirety:

  • a shelf of rare books 009

  • a cardboard box of snacks 010

4. With a transitive verb like search, examine, or test, the attribute of the Theme that is being examined:#

• He examined the vase for damage. 012

• He searched the room for his laser pistol. [contrast intransitive Theme, Theme#010] 013

• He was tested for low blood sugar. 014

5. The scale or dimension by which items are compared:#

• The children are sorted/screened by height 015

• She exceeds him in height 016

• There is no difference in height 017

6. The form or shape that an entity takes, or in which elements are arranged. This includes language of communication within an information source, and unit of measure (only the unit, not a full measurement) in relation to the attribute measured:#

• Characteristic↝Locus:

  • The ribbon is (tied) in a bow. 019

  • The sand is in a pyramid shape. 020

  • I skipped lunch for_Frequency three days/the third day in a row. [see Frequency#007] 021

  • The book is in French. 022

  • music in C major 023

  • the desk's height (measured) in inches 045

7. An adverbial depictive characterizing a participant of an event:#

• She entered the room in a stupor/drunk. (= she was in a stupor when she entered) (Characteristic↝Locus) [repeated for contrast: Manner#007] 024

8. Anything that is borderline between the Possession and PartPortion subcategories#

9. The state or condition that something is in#

The PP or intransitive preposition is used (especially predicatively) to describe a qualitative state or condition of an entity that is not simply a relation of location, time, possession, quantity, causation, etc. between governor and object. For example:

1. With the noun state, condition, etc.:

   • Characteristic↝Locus:

     • The chairs are in excellent shape. 025

     • I’m in no condition to go outside. 026

2. Bodily/medical conditions presented as applying to the governor:

   • John is on his back/on antibiotics/on the ventilator/in pain/in a coma. (Characteristic↝Locus) 027

3. Miscellaneous qualitative senses of specific prepositions used statively:

   • John is for/against the war. [opinion] (Characteristic↝Beneficiary) 028

   • John is into sports. [hobbies/interests] (Characteristic↝Goal) 029

4. Idiomatic PPs expressing states, for example:¹

   • on fire (contrast in the fire), on time (contrast at the time), in trouble, in love, in tune, in a hurry, at odds, out_of business, out_of control (Characteristic↝Locus) 030

5. Intransitive prepositions expressing a qualitative state (not location, time, etc.):

   • Characteristic↝Locus:

     • The lights are on/off/out. [also Source#015 for contrast] 031

     • Political TV shows are in. [in fashion] 032

Contrast intransitive predicative prepositions describing an event:

• The party tomorrow is on. (Temporal↝Locus) [see: Temporal#003] 043

A few observations about these state PPs are in order.

1. In a reversal of the usual asymmetry between governor and adpositional object, semantically, the PP defines the kind of scene that the governor participates in. To an extent, this may be true of all predicative PPs, but the state PPs are often such that the object of the preposition is neither an event nor a referential entity. I.e., John is in a hurry does not exactly express a relation between the entities John and a hurry; rather, it expresses something qualitative about the entity John’s condition.

2. The most idiomatic of the state PPs seem to resist questions of the form What?+NP-supercategory with a stranded preposition:

   • More productive prepositional usages:

     • The party is in January. → What month is the party in? [Or: When is the party?] (Time) 033

     • John is on aspirin. → What medication is John on?² (Characteristic↝Locus) 034

   • Less productive/more idiomatic preposition + NP combinations:

     • John is in a hurry/a coma. ↛ What _ is John in?³ (Characteristic↝Locus) 035

     • John is on fire. ↛ What _ is John on? (Characteristic↝Locus) 036

3. Typically these states are binary: something is either on fire/on time, or not. For some, the negation may be expressed by substituting a contrasting preposition: an orchestra that is not in tune is out_of tune.

State PPs with complements.

The Characteristic↝Locus construal is also used when there is effectively a preposition+NP+preposition combination that links two arguments:

• Characteristic↝Locus:

  • John is in love (with_{Stimulus↝Topic} Mary). [cf. Stimulus#012] 037

  • That is at odds with_{ComparisonRef↝Topic} our agreement. 038

Change-of-state PPs.

Note that Characteristic does not apply to an initial or result state, where Source and Goal are the respective scene roles (collapsing the usual state/location distinction):

• John came out_of a coma. (Source) 039

• John slipped into a coma. (Goal) 040

• The drugs put John in a coma. (Goal↝Locus) 041

• They chopped the wood in pieces. (Goal↝Locus) 042

For some usages but not all, one of “Gestalt {HAS, CONTAINS} Characteristic” is entailed. This does not help to distinguish subtypes.

Versus Circumstance#

State PPs like at odds and on medication, which receive the construal Characteristic↝Locus, are similar to situating events like at the party and on vacation, which are analyzed as Circumstance↝Locus. What matters for the scene role is whether the object of the preposition is an event or not.

Versus Manner#

If a property pertains to an entity—whether that entity is the syntactic governor or not—then Characteristic. Manner is limited to descriptors of events.