Projecting the Adjective

The Syntax and Semantics of Gradability and Comparison

Christopher Kennedy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138983939
• eBook ISBN: 9781136532399
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

First Published in 1999. The main argument presented in this volume is that gradable adjectives like bright, dense and short denote measure functions- functions from objects to abstract representations of measurement, or scales and degrees. This proposal is shown to provide a foundation for principled explanations of a wide range of syntactic and semantic properties of gradable adjectives and the constructions in which they appear, ranging from the syntactic distribution of gradable adjectives to the scopal characteristics of comparatives and the empirical effects of adjectival polarity.

CHAPTER 1

Gradable Adjectives

This chapter provides an overview of the semantic properties of gradable adjectives-the core set of facts that any theory must explain-and surveys the primary approaches to the semantic analysis of gradable adjectives that have been developed in the literature, focusing on two approaches. The first, which I refer to as the “vague predicate analysis”, builds on the hypothesis that gradable adjectives denote partial functions from individuals to truth values. I survey the basic claims of this type of analysis, then discuss several sets of facts which are highly problematic for it, concluding that the analysis, in its basic form, cannot be maintained. I then discuss a second account, which I refer to as the “scalar analysis”, in which gradable adjectives are analyzed as expressions that denote relations between objects and abstract measures, or degrees, and degree constructions are analyzed as expressions which quantify over degrees. I show that this type of approach contains the machinery necessary for an explanation of the data which is problematic for the vague predicate analysis I conclude by laying out some additional facts which are problematic for a traditional scalar analysis, focusing on the scopal properties of comparatives.

1.1 THE SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF GRADABLE ADJECTIVES

A defining characteristic of gradable adjectives is that there is some gradient property associated with their meaning with respect to which the objects in their domains can be ordered. For example, any set of objects that have some positive linear dimension can be ordered according to how long the objects are or how short they are, and any set of objects that move can be ordered according to how fast or slow they are.¹ Some connection between gradable adjectives and ordering relations is incorporated into all approaches to their semantics; what distinguishes the two analyses that I will discuss in the sections 1.2 and 1.3 of this chapter is the way in which the ordering on the domain is determined, in particular, whether the ordering on the domain is presupposed and the adjective is analyzed as a function from objects in an ordered set to truth values, or whether the ordering on the domain is actually determined by the meaning of the adjective. In order to appreciate the differences between the two approaches, however, it is necessary to first review some of the crucial facts that any analysis must explain. One important set of facts was discussed in the introduction: the presence of gradable adjectives in comparatives and other degree constructions. The goal of this section is to introduce several additional empirical domains that provide important insight into the semantic characteristics of gradable adjectives.

1.1.1 Vagueness

Sentences containing adjectives are inherently vague; (1), for example, may be judged true in one context and false in another.

(1)The Mars Pathfinder mission is expensive.

In a context in which the discussion includes all objects that have some cost associated with them, (1) would most likely be judged true, since the cost of sending a spacecraft to Mars is far greater than the cost of most things (e.g., nails, dog food, a used Volvo, etc.). If the context is such that only missions involving interplanetary exploration are salient, however, then (1) would be judged false, since a unique characteristic of the Mars Pathfinder mission was its low cost compared to other projects involving the explzoration of outer space.

This discussion brings into focus an important aspect of the vagueness of gradable adjectives: determining the truth of a sentence of the form x is φ (where φ is a gradable adjective in its absolute form) involves a judgment of whether x “counts as” φ in the context of utterance. The problem of resolving the vagueness of a gradable adjective, then, can be viewed as the problem of answering the question does x count as φ in context c? Although there may be many different ways to construct an algorithm for answering this question, two approaches have predominated in research on the semantics of gradable adjectives. In the following paragraphs, I will present an informal outline of these two approaches, returning to a more formal discussion of the same issues in Sections 1.2 and 1.3.

The first approach, which I will refer to as the “vague predicate analysis” (see McConnell-Ginet 1973, Kamp 1975, Klein 1980, 1982, 1991, van Benthem 1983, Larson 1988a, and Sánchez-Valencia 1995), starts from the assumption that gradable adjectives are of the same semantic type as non-gradable adjectives and other predicates: they denote functions from objects to truth values. What distinguishes gradable adjectives from other predicative expressions is that the domains of the former are partially ordered with respect to some property that permits gradation, such as cost, temperature, height, or brightness. On this view, the observation that objects can be ordered according to the amount to which they possess some property is interpreted as basic principle (see Sapir 1941 for relevant discussion), and the meaning of a gradable adjective is built on top of it. Specifically, a gradable adjective φ is analyzed as a function that induces a partitioning on a partially ordered set into objects ordered above some point and objects below that point: for objects ordered towards the upper end of the set, x is (p is true, and for objects ordered towards the lower end, x is φ is false.²

In this type of approach, the problem of vagueness can be characterized as the problem of determining how the domain of a gradable adjective should be partitioned in a particular context. One way to go about solving this problem is to assume a very general algorithm whereby a gradable adjective partitions any partially ordered set according to some “norm value”, and to allow for the possibility that in different contexts, instead of applying the adjective to its entire domain, only a subset of the domain is considered.³ Specifically, when evaluating a sentence of the form x is φ in a context c, attention is restricted to a subset of the domain of φ that contains only objects that are deemed to be “like x” in some relevant sense in c (assuming that the relation “is like x” is reflexive, this subset will always include x), and then checking to see whether the partitioning of the subset by φ is such that x is φ is true.

Following Klein, I will refer to this contextually relevant subset as a comparison class. Intuitively, a comparison class is a subset of the domain of a gradable adjective that contains just those objects that are determined to be relevant in a particular context of utterance, in particular, those objects that are similar to x in some appropriate respect. The intuition underlying this type of approach is that in order to make a precise judgment about whether an object “counts as” φ, it is first necessary to focus attention on a subset of the domain that contains objects that are in some way similar to x, and then check to see whether x falls “at one end of the other” of the ordered subset. The basic idea can be illustrated by considering example (1). Assume that the domain of the adjective expensive is the set of entities that can have some cost value. Among this set are the objects in (2)...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Gradable Adjectives
• Chapter 2: Projecting the Adjective
• Chapter 3 Polar Opposition and the Ontology of Comparison
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index