Degree Operators and Scope

By Irene Heim. 2000

551 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A sentence like (1)a can be analyzed very simply: tall denotes a relation between physical objects and degrees of height, John and six feet denote respectively an individual and a degree, and the whole thing (ignoring the vacuous copula) is hierarchically structured and compositionally interpreted just like an ordinary transitive sentence. The adjective's degree argument appears to be syntactically projected, just like the individual argument, and interpreted in an analogous fashion. Argument positions where an individual is selected may be occupied by referential DPs as well as by quantificational DPs. How about argument positions for degrees? Do we also sometimes find quantificational degree arguments in the same slots as referential ones? This indeed is a plausible diagnosis of what goes on in gradation constructions like (2).

Subfields: Computational Theory and Mathematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d07e1778342d07181f30e4307e42d13ad40c711b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computational Theory and Mathematics

Citations in the corpus

Degree modification of gradable nouns: size adjectives and adnominal degree morphemes (2009, background): “In such a system, tall denotes a measure function from individuals to their degrees of tallness, as in (48a) (though see Heim 2000 for arguments against this view).”
Vagueness and grammar: the semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives (2007, methodology): “…individuals (type hd; he; tii), and comparatives and other degree constructions saturate the degree argument of the predicate; see Kennedy (1999), Heim (2000), Meier (2003), Bhatt and Pancheva (2004) and Neeleman, Van de Koot, and Doetjes (2004) for discussion of the issues at stake in choosing…”
The grammar of standards: Judge-dependence, purpose-relativity, and comparison classes in degree constructions (2014, background): “, 2004) and builds on an observation from (von Stechow, 1984; Heim, 2001).”
"Wh"-exclamatives in Catalan (2006, background): “For instance, the supporters of the classical view (Chomsky, 1965; Selkirk, 1970; Bresnan, 1973; Heim, 2001) claim that the degree operator selects for the degree clause (that is why there is a correspondence between more.”