Oxford Mini Dictionary and Thesaurus About the Author Violeta Demonte is Research Professor of Linguistics at the Spanish National Research Council. Her research has mostly concentrated on the areas of syntax and lexical semantics. Among her research topics are complement clauses, the syntax and semantics of adjectives, NP structure, aspect in secondary predication, and syntactic variation. She was the Director (with I. Bosque) of the Gramatica descriptiva de la lengua espanola (RAE-Espasa Calpe, 5.500 p.)Louise McNally is Professor of Linguistics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Her research focuses on various aspects of nominal, verbal, and adjectival semantics, the semantics of modification, and more generally on the syntax/semantics and semantics/pragmatics interfaces. Her most recent book, co-edited with Christopher Kennedy, is Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse (Oxford, 2008).