Keeping Fake Simple

Abstract

In this paper, I argue against two common claims about so-called privative adjectives like ‘fake’: first, I argue against the idea that their semantic complexity requires a richer notion of lexical meaning than the standard one (see, e.g., Del Pinal, 2018); second, I argue against the idea that ‘fake’ is a subsective adjective ‘in disguise’ and does not semantically negate its input (see, e.g., Partee, 2010). I propose that a fake P is (i) intended to resemble a P and (ii) is not a P. This makes correct predictions for multiple applications of ‘fake’, a task at which other theories fail. In cases of double application of ‘fake’, the interaction between its conjunctive meaning and the negation hard-coded into clause (ii) yields a complex meaning, compatible with a variety of objects, which aligns with intuitions about what should count as a fake N. While the core meaning of ‘fake’ is quite simple, its mode of composition bears some complexity. In line with Martin (2022), I propose that ‘fake’ can alternatively (a) combine directly with the noun via Functional Application or (b) saturate its property argument via an implicit, contextually provided variable via Functional Application and then combine with the noun via Predicate Modification. Mode of composition (a) is clearly visible in syntactic parses that only allow for Functional Application: for instance, in Italian, if pre-nominal, ‘fake’ can only directly take the noun as an input (cf. Cinque, 2010). Positing (b) correctly predicts readings where ‘fake’ is not apparently privative: ‘fake watch’ can designate a watch that is made to resemble a Rolex but isn’t one, i.e. a fake(-as-a-Rolex) watch. When the intersection between the $[\![ \mathit{fake} ]\!] (*\mathit{implicit\ argument}*)$ complex and the noun is empty, rescuing principles originally proposed by Partee kick in to rescue from vacuous modification: this explains why we can refer to a fake gun as a gun, as in the sentence ‘this gun is fake’. As a result, besides correctly predicting iterated ‘fake’, this theory provides clear predictions on when and how Partee’s pragmatic principles of noun modulation apply. I conclude the paper arguing that this view of privatives calls for a classification of adjectives in terms of their mode of composition, rather than in terms of their emergent entailment pattern.