Subjectivity in gradable adjectives: The case of<i>tall</i>and<i>heavy</i>

Verheyen, Steven; Dewil, Sabrina; Égré, Paul

doi:10.1111/mila.12184

Cited by 41 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…The second goal we had was to investigate the connection between typicality and graded membership at the individual level. Because relative gradable adjectives are subjective (Égré, ; Kennedy, ; Sæbø, ), we assessed the CS framework at the individual level by investigating dimensional adjectives for which individual differences in graded membership have already been established (Hersh & Caramazza, ; Verheyen et al., ). We found considerable individual differences in typicality that replicated over different tasks.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For if one were to generate/select subjectively typical values, one would assume to see better fits at the individual level compared to the aggregate level, but cheap/expensive was not well accounted for at either level. Existing research on subjectivity suggests that in addition to typicality, other factors also contribute to the application of terms (e.g., egocentric reference, see Verheyen et al., ; practical interests, see Fara, , ; or a representation of what counts as ideal, see Bear & Knobe, ). Whether the CS framework should embrace idiosyncratic typicality distributions or rather assume a shared typicality distribution but allow for additional influences on graded membership deserves further investigation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another issue with relative gradable adjectives such as tall , heavy, and expensive is that they show subjectivity (Égré, ; Kennedy, ; Sæbø, ; Verheyen et al., ). For tall and heavy as applied to persons, for example, one can observe reliable differences in the membership degree judgments of different participants (Verheyen et al., ; see also Hersh & Caramazza, on small and large ). It remains unclear whether an account of degrees of membership based on the notion of typicality can accommodate this interindividual variability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives

Verheyen

Égré

2018

Cognitive Science

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This paper concerns an investigation of the manner in which typicality constrains graded membership in antonymous dimensional adjectives such as short/tall and cheap/expensive using the conceptual spaces framework. In this framework, items are organized in a space comprised of one or more dimensions along which they can be compared. The items' graded membership is established by their relative proximity in this space to the prototypical instances of contrasting concepts. Because dimensional adjectives can be applied to an indefinite variety of things and grammatically have no upper bound to serve as cognitive reference point, they have been argued to lack prototypes. We present the results of an empirical study showing that the conceptual spaces framework can nevertheless be extended successfully to dimensional adjectives by complementing them with a comparison class argument (such as short/tall for an adult man and cheap/expensive for a smartphone), allowing participants to retrieve meaningful prototypical instances, which can be used to establish membership degree. Since dimensional adjectives are subjective, we investigate how the framework can accommodate interindividual variability in membership degree judgments. We find that the predictions of the framework significantly improve if prototypical instances themselves are assumed to come with a gradient instead of being considered equally typical, thereby providing a more fine-grained account of typicality and furthering the development of the conceptual spaces framework.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives

Verheyen

Égré

2018

Cognitive Science

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“…Categorization decisions are regarded the outcomes of a probabilistic decision process that operates on a latent dimension (Verheyen, Hampton, & Storms, 2010). The latent dimension can comprise one (Verheyen, Dewil, & Egré, 2018) or a weighted combination of several (Verheyen, De Deyne, Dry, & Storms, 2011) substantive criteria. The items’ positions on the latent dimension reflect the extent to which they meet the categorization criteria, with items being positioned further down the dimension, the more they fulfill the categorization criteria.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-Related Degree and Criteria Differences in Semantic Categorization

Verheyen

Droeshout

Storms

2019

Journal of Cognition

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Individual differences in semantic categorization are commonplace. Individuals apply a word like SPORTS to different instances because they employ different conditions for category membership (vagueness in criteria) or because they differ regarding the extent to which they feel the term can be applied given fixed conditions (vagueness in degree). Three individuals may, for instance, disagree as to whether chess and hiking are SPORTS , because one believes SPORTS are competitive in nature, while the other two require SPORTS to be effortful (vagueness in criteria). On the basis of whether they consider hiking sufficiently effortful or not, the latter two individuals might still disagree as to whether to call it a SPORT (vagueness in degree). We investigated whether there are systematic age-related differences in semantic categorization by analyzing the categorization decisions of 1,868 adults for eight semantic categories with a formal model that allows the two sources of categorization differences to be disentangled. We found that young and older adults assess instances differently with respect to the categorization conditions and that older adults employ a lower threshold for category membership than young adults do. We recommend that these criteria and degree differences are taken into account in studies of age-related semantic processing.

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“…In other scenarios a range of other entities could fulfil that role. I will not say much here about what makes an entity suitably salient, although I think this could plausibly depend on a wide range of factors, including: the discourse context; the nature of the subject of predication; and, perhaps, subjective factors of the kind discussed by Verheyen, Dewil, and Égré (2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Meaning and framing: the semantic implications of psychological framing effects

Fisher

2020

Inquiry

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I use the psychological phenomenon of 'attribute framing' as a case study for exploring philosophical conceptions of semantics and the semanticspragmatics divide. Attribute frames are pairs of sentences that use contradictory expressions to predicate the same property of an individual or object. Despite their equivalence, pairs of attribute frames have been observed to induce systematic variability in hearers' responses. One explanation of such framing effects appeals to the distinct 'reference point information' conveyed by alternative frames. Although this information is taken to be pragmatic, a live debate in the philosophy of language concerns the extent to which pragmatic information can really be held apart from semantics. Therefore, in this article I examine whetherand howreference point information might be thought to intrude on the semantics of an attribute frame. I describe two ways in which the information might be considered broadly semantic, due to its being directly communicated or conventional. However, I argue that the framing data in fact support a narrower conception of semantics, and a semantics-pragmatics distinction that separates standing sentence meaning from enriched communicated meaning.

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Subjectivity in gradable adjectives: The case oftallandheavy

Cited by 41 publications

References 79 publications

Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives

Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives

Age-Related Degree and Criteria Differences in Semantic Categorization

Meaning and framing: the semantic implications of psychological framing effects

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