Vagueness and grammar: the semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives

By Christopher Kennedy. 2007

1,043 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Language and Linguistics, Philosophy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/52be64be92b587c466d54386bd95b18b5d265e7a

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Citations in the corpus

Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number marking (2010, neutral): “This is very similar to how gradable adjectives like big change their meaning depending on their nominal complement (see Klein 1980, 1982; Kennedy 2007 and references therein) – what counts as big is different when considering big elephants vs. big mice.7 An example of a possible subsective…”
Is the Red Square Big? MALeViC: Modeling Adjectives Leveraging Visual Contexts (2019, background): “As for the non-inﬂected, so-called positive form of GAs (e.g., Saturn is a big planet), its interpretation involves applying a statistical function that makes use of a standard threshold degree (Kamp, 1975; Pinkal, 1979; Barker, 2002; Kennedy, 2007).”
Gradable epistemic modals, probability, and scale structure (2010, methodology): “Except where noted, tests are from Kennedy & McNally (2005) or Kennedy (2007).”
Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation (2010, methodology): “20 Cf. Kennedy (2007), Lasersohn (1999), Pinkal (1989), among many others.”
The positive morpheme in Chinese and the adjectival structure (2010, methodology): “Third, as discussed by Rotstein and Winter (2004), Kennedy and McNally (2005), and Kennedy (2007b), not all gradable adjectives have context dependent standards in the positive form; for instance, adjectives like wet, open, bent, and impure are special in having positive forms in which the standard…”
Dimensions and their poles: A metric and topological approach to opposites (2011, methodology): “Modifying the Kennedy (2007) terminology slightly, we can distinguish between: (1) closed poles, which are the minimum or the maximum of a scale, such as closed in OPEN CLOSED or both EMPTY and FULL in EMPTY FULL and (2) open poles, which are unbounded, such as tall in SHORT TALL (for related…”
Perspective in Taste Predicates and Epistemic Modals (2011, background): “See Ludlow (2008: especially § 1) for a skeptical take on the distinction. already needs to have judged that the interposed phrase is an adjunct.”
The Degree Semantics Parameter and cross-linguistic variation (2015, methodology): “The extra individuals in the model ensure that the small difference in height between Amy and Betty becomes significant enough to place Amy under the positive extension of tall and Betty under the negative extension, allowing the comparative to go through.”
Absolute vs. Relative Adjectives - Variance Within vs. Between Individuals (2011, methodology): “We have moved away from the notions of semantically determined, fixed scales (Kennedy 2007) and comparison classes (van Rooij 2011), arguing instead that the interpretation of all adjectives, irrespective of their type, is influenced by context: entities that comprise a comparison class are selected”