Degrees as kinds

Anderson, Curt; Morzycki, Marcin

doi:10.1007/s11049-015-9290-z

Cited by 54 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The duality exhibited in (16) is parallel to that widely assumed to obtain in the nominal domain (Chierchia 1998), according to which bare plurals and mass nouns have denotations as both kinds (singular terms) and properties. This connection between degree and kind expressions is explored in depth by Anderson & Morzycki (2015) and more recently Scontras (2017), whose proposal we will return to in Section 5 below.…”

Section: Building Blocksmentioning

confidence: 97%

Some three students: towards a unified account of some

Solt

Stevens

2018

SALT

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This paper investigates the semantics of the some+numeral construction (e.g. Some 20 cars were involved in the accident). Contra previous analyses, we demonstrate that some+numeral is not inherently approximating, but instead can be aligned to the canonical use of some as an indefinite determiner. Drawing on estab- lished theories of the semantics of degree expressions and epistemic indefinites, we propose that on all of its uses, some encodes a domain-shifting function, which op- erates on sets of pluralities of some sort. We demonstrate that this analysis accounts for both the variable presence of an approximating effect as well as constraints on the distribution of some+numeral, and discuss some consequences for the semantics of number and degree, and for the treatment of some more generally.

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Section: Building Blocksmentioning

confidence: 97%

Some three students: towards a unified account of some

Solt

Stevens

2018

SALT

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“…Beginning with degrees themselves, a first distinction found in the literature is between whether degrees should be understood to be primitive (i.e., not reducible to abstractions based on other objects; the default assumption) or as labels for equivalence classes of objects (as in Cresswell, 1976), possible objects (Schwarzschild, 2013), or of states (Anderson and Morzycki, 2015), etc. Appeal to degrees simpliciter, or to aspects of their nature, has important consequences for the data coverage of a degree-based theory.…”

Section: Matters For Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting Degree Semantics

Wellwood

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Contemporary research in compositional, truth-conditional semantics often takes judgments of the relative unacceptability of certain phrasal combinations as evidence for lexical semantics. For example, observing that completely full sounds perfectly natural whereas completely tall does not has been used to motivate a distinction whereby the lexical entry for full but not for tall specifies a scalar endpoint. So far, such inferences seem unobjectionable. In general, however, applying this methodology can lead to dubious conclusions. For example, observing that slightly bent is natural but slightly cheap is not (that is, not without a "too cheap" interpretation) leads researchers to suggest that the interpretation of bent involves a scalar minimum but cheap does not, contra intuition-after all, one would think that what is minimally cheap is (just) free. Such claims, found in sufficient abundance, raise the question of how we can support semantic theories that posit properties of entities that those entities appear to lack. This paper argues, using theories of adjectival scale structure as a test case, that the (un)acceptability data recruited in semantic explanations reveals properties of a two-stage system of semantic interpretation that can support divergences between our semantic and metaphysical intuitions.

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“…(It is assumed that the subject of a verb like run saturates its agent argument, while its event argument is bound existentially; see Champollion 2015. ) In some theories of the syntax-semantics interface (Kratzer 1996 and work inspired by it), these thematic roles are treated as separate syntactic heads; but for simplicity (like, e.g., Anderson & Morzycki 2015), I do not adopt that assumption here.…”

Section: The State Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While it is very common for verb phrases to be analyzed to relate individuals to events (1) (Castañeda 1967;Davidson 1967;Higginbotham 1985;Parsons 1990;Kratzer 1996), the parallel "neo-Davidsonian" analysis of adjectives -taking them to relate individuals to states (2) -remains a minority position (advocated by Higginbotham 1985;Parsons 1990;Rothstein 1999;Landman 2000;Mittwoch 2005;Fults 2006;Husband 2010;Wellwood 2014;Anderson & Morzycki 2015;Baglini 2015;Ernst 2016: but still outnumbered in the vast literature on adjective meaning).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adjectives relate individuals to states: Evidence from the two readings of English Determiner + Adjective

Glass

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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As an argument in favor of the (minority) view that adjectives involve a neo-Davidsonian state argument, I argue that it grounds an analysis of the English Determiner + Adjective construction (the old). On its " individuated" reading (the old are generally happier), this construction seems to refer to old individuals; on its "mass" reading (the old is never ordinary), to something like oldness. Empirically, this paper uses naturally-occurring data to show that both readings are more productive than sometimes suggested. Theoretically, the two readings are parsimoniously derived by existentially closing off one or the other of the two arguments (the individual argument x, the state argument s) made available by the state analysis-λxλs[old(s) ∧ holder(x,s)]-deriving a predicate of individuals for the individuated reading, and a predicate of states for the mass reading. This account of Determiner + Adjective further reflects the philosophical idea that properties can be construed as predicates of individuals or as the abstract thing that those individuals share; and connects to other ways of nominalizing both verb phrases and adjectives.

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Degrees as kinds

Cited by 54 publications

References 43 publications

Some three students: towards a unified account of some

Some three students: towards a unified account of some

Interpreting Degree Semantics

Adjectives relate individuals to states: Evidence from the two readings of English Determiner + Adjective

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