Lecture: Gradability, scale structure and deadjectival verbs

I present work done for my Master's thesis, which I am currently working on. It deals with the semantic properties of gradable adjectives and deadjectival verbs and the relations that hold between them.

Gradability is a central property of adjectives and is semantically formalized as a set of degrees that are ordered along a scale. These scales can vary with regards to various properties, specifically boundedness (the presence of minima/maxima) and standard positioning (locating the degree that must be exceeded for the adjective to apply). An important question is how to determine the scale structure associated with an adjective. Kennedy & McNally (2005) show that predictions can be made for the scale structures of deverbal adjectives based on the semantic properties of the corresponding root verbs (e.g. reasoning about 'closed' from 'to close'). I am looking for similar strategies that are applicable outside the realm of deadjectival verbs. My main focus is the direct reversal of Kennedy & McNally's approach: What can I tell about an adjective's scale from the semantics of a derived verb? I look at different properties of deadjectival verbs and how they may be helpful in determining adjectival scale structure (e.g. reasoning about 'flat' from 'to flatten').

References
Kennedy, Christopher, and Louise McNally. 2005. Scale structure,
degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicates.
Language 81(2). 345-381.

Info

Day: 2024-05-11
Start time: 16:40
Duration: 00:30
Room: Seashell (33.4.032)
Track: Theoretical Linguistics
Language: en

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