subsective

Adjective

subsective (comparative more subsective, superlative most subsective)

1. Having the property that when used to modify a noun, it denotes a subset of the all possible denotations of the noun, but does not modify any other meanings of the entity that the noun denotes. For example "habitual" in the phrase "habitual liar" is subsective. If the liar is also a woman, the fact that she is a habitual liar does not imply that she is a "habitual woman".
   • But, as a matter of a fact, this syllogism failure can be a problem for any analysis that deals with languages that allow subsective predicates to occur as predicates inside RCs.2002, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics - Volumes 42-43, page 84
   • Since the nouns were controlled for both length and frequency, one might want to interpret this finding as indicative that adjective-noun phrases are harder to understand when there is no subsective bias.2003, University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers, page 108