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This paper demarcates a theoretically interesting class of evaluational adjectives. This class includes predicates expressing various kinds of normative and epistemic evaluation, such as predicates of personal taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral adjectives, and epistemic adjectives, among others. Evaluational adjectives are distinguished, empirically, in exhibiting phenomena such as discourse‐oriented use, felicitous embedding under the attitude verb 'find', and sorites‐susceptibility in the comparative form. A unified degree‐based semantics is developed: What distinguishes evaluational adjectives, semantically, is that they denote context‐dependent measure functions (evaluational perspectives)—context‐dependent mappings to degrees of taste, beauty, probability, etc., depending on the adjective. This perspective‐sensitivity characterizing the class of evaluational adjectives cannot be assimilated to vagueness, sensitivity to an experiencer argument, or multidimensionality; and it cannot be demarcated in terms of pretheoretic notions of subjectivity, common in the literature. I propose that certain diagnostics for "subjective" expressions be analyzed instead in terms of a precisely specified kind of discourse‐oriented use of context‐sensitive language. I close by applying the account to 'find x PRED' ascriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that mass deadjectival nominalizations like belleza 'beauty' encode imperfective states, which explains why they are compatible with temporal modifiers, but not with aspectual ones. In contrast to what is claimed in Fábregas & Marín (2012), this paper provides empirical evidence that Spanish nominalizations can encode not only information related to lexical aspect (i.e. (a)telicity), but also information related to viewpoint aspect (i.e. (im)perfectivity). My analysis is based on Anderson's & Morzycki's (2015) model on gradability, in which gradable adjectives express states and degrees are derived from state‐kinds, which allows accounting for the properties of mass deadjectival nominalizations compositionally, insofar as they inherit the adjectival properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with fronting of predicative adjectives (e.g., Big was his surprise) in French. From the present‐day usage emerge two main constructions, both with their own surface forms and syntactic, semantic and information‐structural properties. The first one, CxA, is a quasi‐specificational copular construction, with narrow focus on the post‐copular subject. The second one is a predicational copular construction, though with inverted word order, yielding sentence focus, hence thetic constructions. In the second part of the paper, we define the lexical profile (and the semantics) of both constructions by means of a collostructional analysis, and their productivity. CxA is more productive and seems to become even more productive in the newspaper corpus, while CxB exhibits symptoms of lexicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with fronting of predicative adjectives (e.g., Big was his surprise) in French. From the present‐day usage emerge two main constructions, both with their own surface forms and syntactic, semantic and information‐structural properties. The first one, CxA, is a quasi‐specificational copular construction, with narrow focus on the post‐copular subject. The second one is a predicational copular construction, though with inverted word order, yielding sentence focus, hence thetic constructions. In the second part of the paper, we define the lexical profile (and the semantics) of both constructions by means of a collostructional analysis, and their productivity. CxA is more productive and seems to become even more productive in the newspaper corpus, while CxB exhibits symptoms of lexicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic form of the superlative suffix in German is ‐st (kleinst‐), with some adjectives requiring a longer form, ‐est (lautest‐). While the superlative has long been a topic in teaching materials, the accuracy of textbook treatments continues to be less than satisfactory. The difficulty arises in characterizing the adjectives that require the longer form of the suffix. Grammars provide no standard treatment of the superlative and fail to present concise generalizations, crucial to the language learner. This paper provides a new analysis of the superlative that incorporates the insights revealed in an evaluation of accounts of the superlative in three grammars of German. Stress, secondary as well as primary, the feature [coronal], and the recognition of complex segments are argued to be crucial for describing the environments in which ‐e‐ must be inserted before the ‐st suffix. The rule describing these environments is stated both in formal terms and in terms that are accessible to the language learner, and suggestions are provided for teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been noticed that the Slavic superlative prefix nai‐/naj‐ comprises two components: *na + *i. The former can be identified with the preposition Sl na 'on(to)' which developed an intensifying meaning when used as a prefix. The origin of the second component, on the other hand, has not been determined satisfactorily so far. This paper argues that it can be identified with the Slavic definiteness marker. Drawing upon a typologically common pattern, it is supposed that at a pre‐stage of Slavic superlative was derived from the comparative with the aid of a definiteness marker. Definiteness of a noun phrase in earlier Slavic and its neighbouring branch Baltic was denoted by adding a definiteness marker of pronominal origin to the right edge of the adjective. As data from Old Lithuanian show, this morpheme was originally not bound to the position following the adjective. When an adjective/participle was preceded by a prefix/preverb, it could be placed between these two elements. I argue that this state of affairs is also reflected in the Slavic superlative prefix naj‐/nai‐. Based on the proposed scenario, the article discusses certain general issues related to the externalization of trapped inflectional morphology and the phenomenon of endoclisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a systematic study of the Mycenaean adjectives in ‐te‐ri‐jo / ‐tḗrios. Its purpose is twofold: first, to examine whether the suffix ‐tḗrios was already fossilized in the Mycenaean period (‐tḗrios vs. ‐tḗr + ios); second, to define the semantic values associated with this suffix in the same period. Particular attention will be paid to the interpretation of the Mycenaean words pu‐te‐ri‐ja and ko‐re‐te‐ri‐jo El presente trabajo presenta un estudio sistemático de los adjetivos micénicos en ‐te‐ri‐jo / ‐tḗrios. El propósito es doble: por un lado, determinar si el sufijo ‐tḗrios está ya fosilizado en época micénica (‐tḗrios vs. ‐tḗr + ios); por otro, delimitar los valores semánticos asociados a este sufijo en este periodo. Se presta especial atención a la interpretación de los vocablos micénicos pu‐te‐ri‐ja y ko‐re‐te‐ri‐jo. [Spanish] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a uniform analysis of canonical and noncanonical French and Dutch attributive adjectives. Canonically, French adjectives are postnominal and Dutch adjectives are inflected. The noncanonical counterparts are prenominal, for French, and lacking inflection, for Dutch. A review of the literature indicates several proposed locations in the noun phrase for adjectives, and this analysis utilizes three: Spec‐Subj in the D‐layer, Spec‐Agr, and NP‐internal. Adjectives in Spec‐Agr produce a canonical reading, functioning like predicates of the noun phrase. The subjective nature of the D‐layer and the proximity of NP‐internal adjectives to N accounts for the noncanonical interpretations. The formal distinction in canonicity arises because Dutch adjective inflection is the exponent of the Agr‐head, so that only Spec‐Agr adjectives are inflected, and because French NP movement crosses the adjective in Spec‐Agr, so that only Spec‐Agr adjectives are postnominal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One aim of this essay is to contribute to understanding aesthetic communication-the process by which agents aim to convey thoughts and transmit knowledge about aesthetic matters to others. Our focus will be on the use of aesthetic adjectives in aesthetic communication. Although theorists working on the semantics of adjectives have developed sophisticated theories about gradable adjectives, they have tended to avoid studying aesthetic adjectives-the class of adjectives that play a central role in expressing aesthetic evaluations (e.g., 'beautiful', 'ugly', 'elegant'). And despite the wealth of attention paid to aesthetic adjectives by philosophical aestheticians, they have paid little attention to contemporary linguistic theories of adjectives. We take our work to be a first step in remedying these lacunae. In this paper, we present four experiments that examine one aspect of how aesthetic adjectives ordinarily function: the context-sensitivity of their application standards. Our results present a prima facie empirical challenge to a common distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives because aesthetic adjectives are found to behave differently from both. Our results thus also constitute a prima facie vindication of some philosophical aestheticians' contention that aesthetic adjectives constitute a particularly interesting segment of natural language, even if the boundaries of this segment might turn out to be different from what they had in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sophisticated senator and legislative onion. Whether or not you have ever heard of these things, we all have some intuition that one of them makes much less sense than the other. In this paper, we introduce a large dataset of human judgments about novel adjective-noun phrases. We use these data to test an approach to semantic deviance based on phrase representations derived with compositional distributional semantic methods, that is, methods that derive word meanings from contextual information, and approximate phrase meanings by combining word meanings. We present several simple measures extracted from distributional representations of words and phrases, and we show that they have a significant impact on predicting the acceptability of novel adjective-noun phrases even when a number of alternative measures classically employed in studies of compound processing and bigram plausibility are taken into account. Our results show that the extent to which an attributive adjective alters the distributional representation of the noun is the most significant factor in modeling the distinction between acceptable and deviant phrases. Our study extends current applications of compositional distributional semantic methods to linguistically and cognitively interesting problems, and it offers a new, quantitatively precise approach to the challenge of predicting when humans will find novel linguistic expressions acceptable and when they will not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is concerned with the internal structure of Germanic what for phrases. A comparative look at what for across Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Swiss German leads to a drastic revision of the traditional view on what for. The proposal recognizes an (often silent) functional nominal SORT as a constitutive part of the what for construction. For is analyzed as a prepositional complementizer whose complement contains the (silent) nominal and the trace of what, to which for assigns accusative Case. The projection of for, forP, is argued to sit in a specifier position in the extended projection of the head noun, similar to adjectival modifiers on a Cinquean view. What moves out of forP into the left periphery of the noun phrase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic memory encompasses one's knowledge about the world. Distributional semantic models, which construct vector spaces with embedded words, are a proposed framework for understanding the representational structure of human semantic knowledge. Unlike some classic semantic models, distributional semantic models lack a mechanism for specifying the properties of concepts, which raises questions regarding their utility for a general theory of semantic knowledge. Here, we develop a computational model of a binary semantic classification task, in which participants judged target words for the referent's size or animacy. We created a family of models, evaluating multiple distributional semantic models, and mechanisms for performing the classification. The most successful model constructed two composite representations for each extreme of the decision axis (e.g., one averaging together representations of characteristically big things and another of characteristically small things). Next, the target item was compared to each composite representation, allowing the model to classify more than 1,500 words with human‐range performance and to predict response times. We propose that when making a decision on a binary semantic classification task, humans use task prompts to retrieve instances representative of the extremes on that semantic dimension and compare the probe to those instances. This proposal is consistent with the principles of the instance theory of semantic memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds' incremental interpretation of size adjectives, focusing on whether contrastive inferences are modulated by speaker behavior. Children (N = 120, 59 females, mostly White, tested between July, 2018 and August, 2019) encountered either a conventional or unconventional speaker who labeled objects in a correspondingly typical or atypical way. Critical utterances contained size adjectives (e.g., "Look at the big duck"). With conventional speakers, gaze measures indicated that children rapidly used the adjective to differentiate members of a contrasting pair, indicating that even 4‐year‐olds derive contrastive inferences. With unconventional speakers, contrastive inferences were delayed in processing. The findings demonstrate that preschoolers adjust their use of pragmatic cues when presented with evidence disconfirming their default assumptions about a speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, I investigate the DP‐internal occurrence of the German modal particle ja. I first demonstrate what kind of attributive configurations seem to prefer the presence of the particle ja inside the DP domain. In this context, I focus on the occurrence of particles within simple‐adjective configurations and examine the roles of restrictive and so‐called extreme content. I demonstrate that the DP‐internal occurrence of modal particles cannot be analyzed analogous to the occurrence of modal particles in other attributive constructions such as certain types of relative clauses. Given this demonstration, I sketch a fine‐grained syntactic representation of DP‐internal particles, and I point out parallels to the functional makeup of CPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was first observed over a decade ago that the presence of experiencers leads to degradation in English tough movement. In the literature, this has been linked to either syntactic or semantic intervention. I will show that a crucial piece of data has been ignored in this debate, the possibility of extracting the tough adjective without the nonfinite CP. Under previous approaches, this seems to require extraposition of the CP. However, once extraposition is possible, the intervention configuration can no longer be prevented. I will argue instead that the restrictions on experiencer placement can be accounted for if the nonfinite CP is instead projected as an external argument and if null‐operator clauses of this type cannot be extraposed. The "intervention" effect thus turns out to be completely unrelated to intervention but rather follows from basic word‐order properties of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We can communicate linguistic information by asserting sentences that are not explicitly about linguistic matters. Stalnaker offers a pragmatic account of this phenomenon. It is not clear that such an account is correct. In this article I offer an alternative account that does not rely on pragmatic mechanisms and which captures many of the insights in Stalnaker's theory of linguistic communication. The view is inspired by Barker's semantics of vague adjectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When communicating, people adapt their linguistic representations to those of their interlocutors. Previous studies have shown that this also occurs at the semantic level for vague and context‐dependent terms such as quantifiers and uncertainty expressions. However, work to date has mostly focused on passive exposure to a given speaker's interpretation, without considering the possible role of active linguistic interaction. In this study, we focus on gradable adjectives big and small and develop a novel experimental paradigm that allows participants to ask clarification questions to figure out their interlocutor's interpretation. We find that, when in doubt, speakers do resort to this strategy, despite its inherent cognitive cost, and that doing so results in higher semantic alignment measured in terms of communicative success. While not all question–answer pairs are equally informative, we show that speakers become better questioners as the interaction progresses. Yet, the higher semantic alignment observed when speakers are able to ask questions does not increase over time. This suggests that conversational interaction's key advantage may be to boost coordination without committing to long‐term semantic updates. Our findings shed new light on the mechanisms used by speakers to achieve semantic alignment and on how language is shaped by communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights striking similarities of three well-known but hitherto disparately treated alternations in Germanic morphosyntax: (i) the positional alternation of the finite verb between a low and a left peripheral (V2) position; (ii) the morphological alternation in adnominal adjectives between so-called weak and strong agreement; and (iii) the contrast in definiteness marking between a free DP-initial definite article and a so-called suffixed article. The number and kinds of punctual similarities among these alternations suggest that we are dealing with a parallelism that is non-accidental (even if not always fully surface apparent). In an attempt to propose a principled account of this parallelism, I argue that the familiar syntactic CP/DP analogy must (A) be extended to include the extended adjectival projection (xAP), and (B) that it is more than an analogy. It is, I claim, a point-wise isomorphism. I identify a shared complementizer head C, which, I claim, extended projections of all colors converge on. In Germanic, C is either lexicalized/identified qua head, as d-, or it attracts the lexical category of its containing extended projection, indiscriminately of whether it is verbal, nominal, or adjectival. Movement of the lexical category to the left periphery results, in many cases, in its preceding material which it does not precede in the absence of such movement, notably inflectional material. If correct, the proposed isomorphism hypothesis has consequences for the analysis of the phenomena involved in that it allows us to transfer insights from one domain to another. In particular, it supports an analysis of the adjectival inflection alternation in terms of adjective movement; and an analysis of V2 as involving two merger steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the properties of relational adjectives at the syntax/morphology interface. Specifically, it proposes an analysis of relational adjectives that accounts of the mismatch between their nominal semantics/syntax and the adjectival morphology. Relational adjectives are semantically underlying nouns but they show several syntactic properties that set them apart from nouns such as deficient number, lack of anaphoric properties and incompatibility with complex event nouns. I account for these deficiencies by analyzing them as underspecified nouns with a minimal syntactic structure on a par with the one of default mass nouns proposed by Borer (2005). Moreover, positive evidence is provided for a split classification of relational adjectives as proposed in Bosque & Picallo (1996) according to which Thematic relational adjectives are arguments of deverbal nouns while Classificatory adjectives, restrictive modifiers of simple nouns. Special focus is placed on the parallel between Thematic adjectives and genitives in Romance that provides a theoretical answer to the syntax/morphology mismatch: In the spirit of Distributed Morphology (cf. Embick & Noyer 2006), I argue that the Case features of the nouns underlying in Thematic adjectives are relevant only at PF, conditioning the choice of Vocabulary Items expressing Case: the adjectival suffix or the de genitival preposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjectives are a powerful tool for enriching vocabulary and developing conceptual understanding. In early elementary and primary classrooms, across core and foundation subjects, children are expected to describe, measure, classify, and compare objects and events—all processes that require a mastery of adjective meanings and use. While teachers are trained in vocabulary learning, they may be less familiar with: (i) the psychological processes by which children learn adjectives, and (ii) how a focus on adjectives can support learning in domains beyond language and literacy lessons. To address these gaps, we have collaborated as a unique interdisciplinary team with linguistic, psychological, and pedagogical expertise. We synthesise research across our disciplines to provide an accessible, practical, evidence‐based primer of research findings on adjective development. We then provide guidance on how these findings can be used to enhance teaching and learning practices across subjects for children aged five to seven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, the principal typological difference between Latin and Romance is taken to involve a distinction between morphology and syntax: while Latin predominantly has recourse to synthetic structures, the morphologically poorer Romance varieties make greater use of analytic structures. In this paper I reconsider this traditional theme of Romance linguistics and its repercussions on argument realisation and positional licensing, showing that the predominant analytic patterns of Romance are nothing more than the partial reflex of a more deep-rooted structural change. A priori, this change can be interpreted in terms of at least two competing theoretical explanations, on the one hand the emergence of full configurationality and concomitant projection of functional structure, and a change in the head-directionality parameter with a concomitant shift from specifier- to head-oriented syntax in the domain of functional structure on the other. Following a critical review of the former, it is argued that the relevant changes in the passage from Latin to Romance are best characterised in relation to the latter theory, which also offers a highly natural way of capturing claims about a move from dependent- to head-marking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persian Light Verb Constructions (LVCs), consisting of a light verb and a preverb, fall into two groups: separable and inseparable. The nominal preverbs in the former, unlike those in the latter, can function as direct object DP argument, can be modified by an adjective, and can be relativized, scrambled and focused on by Wh-interrogatives. In this paper, it is argued that the (in)separability of LVCs cannot necessarily be an indication of the fact that LVCs are formed at two levels of representation. It is shown that (in)separability of LVCs follows from the semantic and morphosyntactic properties of preverbs and light verbs in the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the English adjective same. As noted in the OED (s.v. same, a.), this adjective almost exclusively occurs as part of the determiner units the + same and demonstrative + same, which function as one word. In previous studies, I have argued that same performs the role of postdeterminer supplementing the identifiability of the noun phrase referent, which is expressed by the or the demonstrative, in three different ways: by confirming it more strongly (emphasising postdeterminer use), by setting up an identifying link between the referent and another discourse referent (phoricity-marking postdeterminer use), or by conveying that the referent is associated with different situations present in the discourse (single-referent-marking postdeterminer use). The claim I will develop here is that the phoricity and single-referent-marking postdeterminer uses are the result of two distinct processes of secondary grammaticalisation from the earlier emphasising postdeterminer use starting in the Middle English period. On the basis of the analysis of historical data from the LEON corpus (1251–1500), I will confirm and elaborate this claim, paying particular attention to the semantic and syntactic features of the (surrounding) context and the extra-textual motivations triggering the grammaticalisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally assumed that intensifying uses of adjectives and nouns, as in a mess and what of jerk, are a later development of other uses of these elements. This paper investigates the question whether the source of the intensifying uses is formed by descriptive or (primary or secondary) identifying uses, as both hypotheses have been put forward in the literature. It does this by considering two cases, c omplete and sort of, reconstructing the precise paths of development of their intensifying uses. On the basis of study of diachronic data, it is established that complete developed its intensifying meanings from descriptive uses and sort of from – intensified –quantifier uses. Hence, the hypotheses of unitary paths have to be given up in favour of multiple paths. The question is also considered how complete and sort of developed the intensification scales inherent in their intensifying meanings. For complete two shifts are posited: from bounded descriptive to closed-scale emphasizing ( the complete establishment→ a complete wreck), and from unbounded descriptive to open-scale emphasizing uses ( God’s complete (‘perfect’) law→ a complete knave). For sort it is argued that its intensifying uses developed from early quantifying complex determiners such as all sort of, a good/great sort of. The unbounded scale of absolute quantification incorporated by these could easily be transformed into the open intensification scale of the intensifying uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines context shifting arguments (CSA). Central premise in all CSA; Factors that determine intuitions about imagined contexts of utterance; Outline of the Collective Description test using a comparative adjective.

Discusses the simplest adjective-noun constructions and the apparent problem that they pose for compositionality. Two distinct levels of meaning associated with constructions of the sort in question, both of which are compositionally determined. Principle of compositionality; Linguistic data; Problem of adjectives.

The paper investigates the triggers and the motivation for noun raising in combination with the interpretation and placement of adjectives within the DP across languages. I point out that first the nature of noun movement is empirically and conceptually problematic. Second, the post-nominal position of adjectives in languages for which it has been argued to result from noun movement is consistent with an analysis of those that capitalizes on their predicative source. Thus the cross-linguistic asymmetry concerning the relative order of nouns with respect to adjectives has its source in the syntactic configurations available in UG for adjectival modification and is not a result of syntactic head raising within the DP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue for a severely restricted use of zero morphemes and against the use of features which are not strictly motivated by the distribution of the element with which the feature is assumed to be associated. We consider an element to have a particular value for a feature only if the element in question can occur exclusively in environments where that feature value is present on some other element and never in environments where that feature has another value. We apply this definition of features and feature values to noun phrases in Germanic, particularly to Dutch and Danish. We use Optimality Theory in conjunction with our approach to features and values and show that in this way, the distribution of features relating to definiteness, number and gender can be correctly predicted for these languages. We then consider the consequences this view of features has for the choice of an approach to morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicate nominals (e.g., "is a female") seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their adjectival correlates (e.g., "is female") merely attribute a property. Predicate nominals also elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential and stable explanatory membership. Data from psychology and semantics support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated semantic account on which predicate nominals attribute kind membership and trigger a presupposition that underpins our essentialist judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way in which intensifiers affect the meaning of the phrases to which they are applied is investigated. Previous research demonstrates that they often have little impact in between-subject designs. Here we present research which demonstrates that their effects in within-subject designs do not conform to the multiplicative hypothesis. Both the psychological mechanisms employed and the implications for survey methodologists are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collocations are word combinations essential for achieving fluency in a given language. Considerable emphasis should therefore be placed on teaching collocations as a part of vocabulary instruction in language teaching. However, there is no current consensus on how best to teach collocations, and few studies have addressed the issue. This quasi‐experimental study investigated the effectiveness of online tools for learning English adjective‐noun collocations compared to learning collocations via traditional activities. A quasi‐experimental design with a pretest and immediate and delayed posttests was applied to 53 participants (n = 25 for the control group; n = 28 for the experimental group). The test results reveal that participants in the experimental group who learned collocations with online tools performed significantly better on both immediate and delayed posttests, demonstrating the effectiveness of these tools on learning adjective‐noun collocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an investigation of the ways in which speakers' subjective perspectives are likely to affect the meaning of gradable adjectives like tall or heavy. We present the results of a study showing that people tend to use themselves as a yardstick when ascribing these adjectives to human figures of varied measurements: subjects' height and weight requirements for applying tall and heavy are found to be positively correlated with their personal measurements. We draw more general lessons regarding the definition of subjectivity and the ways in which a standard of comparison and a significant deviation from that standard are specified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objects in the world usually have names at different hierarchical levels (e.g., beagle, dog, animal). This research investigates adults' ability to use cross‐situational statistics to simultaneously learn object labels at individual and category levels. The results revealed that adults were able to use co‐occurrence information to learn hierarchical labels in contexts where the labels for individual objects and labels for categories were presented in completely separated blocks, in interleaved blocks, or mixed in the same trial. Temporal presentation schedules significantly affected the learning of individual object labels, but not the learning of category labels. Learners' subsequent generalization of category labels indicated sensitivity to the structure of statistical input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The words many, much, few, and little (and their cross‐linguistic counterparts) are quite unusual semantically. They have traditionally been characterized as quantifiers (like every) or adjectives (like tall); however, these analyses can only account for instances of these terms in which they encode information about an individual or a set of individuals, as they do when they occur prenominally (in e.g., much traffic). Recent degree‐semantic analyses instead characterize the meaning of these words in terms of intervals or sets of degrees; this accounts for their canonical uses and uses in which they don't appear to be ranging over individuals (as in their differential use, e.g., much taller). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetoencephalography was used to examine the effect on the N400m of reading words that create emotional violations in sentences. The beginnings of the sentences were affectively negative and were completed with either a negative congruous, positive incongruous, or neutral incongruous adjective (e.g., 'My mother was killed and I felt bad/great/normal'). The task conditions were also manipulated to favor semantic over affective processing. Compared to the sentences with the congruous negative adjectives, the results of sensor space analysis showed that there was an N400m effect with the sentences with the neutral but not positive adjectives, despite both types of sentences containing an emotional violation. Source localization results showed a similar pattern where the sentences with the incongruous positive versus congruous negative adjectives showed no significant N400m effect in the temporal and frontal areas examined, but the sentences with the incongruous neutral versus incongruous positive adjectives in the temporal areas did, particularly the left middle temporal gyrus. These results suggest that (a) the N400m effect was likely to be caused by the incongruous neutral adjectives being comparatively harder to integrate into a negative emotional context than the incongruous positive ones, (b) emotional context created by the negative sentence stems caused deeper semantic processing of the incongruous positive adjectives to be bypassed, and (c) negative affective context was generated from reading the sentences even in task conditions where it has not been generated with isolated words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I offer a new objectivist theory of the contents of color language and color experience, intended especially as an account of what normal intersubjective variation in color perception and classification shows about those contents. First I explain an abstract account of the contents of (utterances of) color and other gradable adjectives; on the account, these contents are certain objective properties constituted in part by contextually intended standards of application, which are in turn values in the dimensions of variation associated with the adjectives. Then I propose an explanation of normal variations in linguistic color classification; these are postulated to be effects of differences in intended standards for the color adjectives appearing in the classifying predicates. Next, I consider a potential objection to this explanation, based on the suggestion that contextual content should be more accessible than the explanation predicts. In reply, I point out that contextual content is occasionally opaque to unsophisticated reflection. Finally, I present a companion account of the contents of color experiences on which these represent an object as lying on certain salient intervals in the chromatic dimensions, and I show how the account accommodates intersubjective variation in color perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we refine the design of context shifting experiments, which play a central role in contextualist debates, and we subject a large number of scenarios involving different types of expressions of interest to contextualists, including 'know' and color adjectives like 'green', to experimental investigation. Our experiment (i) reveals an effect of changing contexts on the evaluation of uses of the sentences that we examine, thereby overturning the absence of results reported in previous experimental studies (so-called null results), (ii) uncovers evidence for a 'truth bias' in favor of positive over negative sentences, and (iii) reveals previously unnoticed distinctions between the strength of the contextual effects displayed by scenarios involving knowledge ascriptions and scenarios concerning color and other miscellaneous scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Modality' is defined as a semantic supercategory distinct from 'modals', which are structural expressions. Recent diachronic cross-linguistic work on both modality and modals is reviewed, with particular attention to the role of dynamic ('ability') modality in the rise of modal expressions. Since much research in the last decade has focused on non-verbal expressions of modality, the historical development of adjectives into modals, e.g. had better, Japanese -(r)eba ii 'it is good if', is highlighted, as is the development of modal adjectives, e.g. essential, and adverbs, e.g. surely. Modal expressions are shown to be subjectified over time, e.g. both deontic and epistemic must originated in relatively objective expressions, but are extended to meanings based in the speaker's perspective, Japanese -be-si 'appropriate, inevitable' (future-oriented) came to be used subjectively to express speaker's conjecture (present-oriented). Finally some hypothesized correlations between culture, cultural change and shifts in modal meanings and uses are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extending the self-reference effect to the level of group identities, previous research has shown that participants' encoding of trait adjectives with reference to ingroups facilitates recall relative to a control condition in which judgments are made about adjectives' meanings. We contend that this experimental comparison may have exaggerated the extent of the group reference effect. Two studies are reported that examine this contention. In Study 1 participants encoded adjectives with reference to an ingroup, an outgroup or to its semantic properties. Study 2 was nearly identical but required that adjectives be encoded with reference to an ingroup, the personal self or a specific person other than the self. Notwithstanding the use of more stringent controls, both studies provided evidence for the group reference effect. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the functions of modifiers. It posts a question whether every modifier can be treated as sentence modifier in the sense of being replaced by a corresponding sentence modifier without loss of expressive power. It also questions whether the replacement could be possible to make it look rather different syntactically from the original in different ways. Moreover, details on how to replace modifiers are also presented.

Four experiments investigated 4-year-olds’ understanding of adjective-noun compositionality and their sensitivity to statistics when interpreting scalar adjectives. In Experiments 1 and 2, children selected tall and short items from 9 novel objects called pimwits (1–9 in. in height) or from this array plus 4 taller or shorter distractor objects of the same kind. Changing the height distributions of the sets shifted children’s tall and short judgments. However, when distractors differed in name and surface features from targets, in Experiment 3, judgments did not shift. In Experiment 4, dissimilar distractors did affect judgments when they received the same name as targets. It is concluded that 4-year-olds deploy a compositional semantics that is sensitive to statistics and mediated by linguistic labels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard view of superlatives treats them as a subkind of adjectives. However, in many languages, superlatives require the presence of a determiner, even in the predicate position. This leads to an apparent contradiction, since it is independently known that determiners syntactically combine with extended NP projections and are excluded with APs. This issue is resolved if superlative adjectives always appear in an attributive (modificational) position. Superlative phrases without an overt noun (e.g., in the predicative position) modify a null head noun. I show that this hypothesis immediately explains the restrictions on the distribution of superlatives in languages as diverse as Russian, French, German, Dutch, Breton, Spanish and Portuguese. I propose that the modificational nature of superlative adjectives can be derived from their semantics, and I argue that such a proposal yields a natural explanation of the behavior of superlatives in Hebrew and Persian. Finally, I discuss the interaction between this theory and the standard, movement-based analyses of comparatives and superlatives and provide an explanation for apparent counterexamples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report an experiment in which we test the relationship between gender and number in subject-predicate agreement. We also test the link between two different number-agreement relations—subject-verb and subject-predicative adjective. Participants saw first an unmarked adjective and then a sentence fragment consisting of a complex subject with a head noun and a modifier containing a second noun and were asked to make a whole sentence using the adjective with the proper gender and number markings. The gender of the subject head and the gender and number of the attractor noun were manipulated. Number errors in the verb and number and gender errors in the predicative adjective were measured. The results suggest gender agreement is computed independently of number agreement. In contrast, subject-verb number agreement and subject-predicative adjective number agreement are a unitary process. The implications for psycholinguistic and linguistic theories of gender and number are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Children aged 4-8 were given 2- term relational problems (e.g., "John is bigger than Bill. Who is smaller?") to test Olson's hypothesis that only older children can process sentences as propositions and realize their logical implications. Contrary to expectations, even the youngest Ss were able to perform this task. Results also revealed that transformational processing was harder when assertions contained marked rather than unmarked adjectives, and processing was especially difficult when marked adjectives were negated. However, performance was not impaired by the lack of congruence between adjective terms contained in assertions and questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the relation of psychiatric evaluation adjectival category scales to numerical scales. It states that measurement of subjective judgmental continua by means of partition or category scale procedures has been widely used although such measurement schemes are known to be extremely open to error. When adjectives are used to label categories in such a partition type of scale, questions can be raised with respect to the measurement level attempted and achieved. Another possible contention pertains to the use of partition scale measurement with prothetic judgmental continua.

The difficulty in scientifically attacking the basic aspects of the linguistic behavior of the child has forced investigators to concern themselves largely with extrinsic determinants and concomitants of speech development, such as intelligence, sex, home environment and sibling status and with the more obvious and radically measurable intrinsic characteristics of speech as vocabulary growth and sentence length. The analysis of basic grammatical processes must, however be made before such higher-order phenomena as sentence length can be adequately understood.

This article describes the process of editing articles for scientific journals and report common errors. Although it is obviously illegal to use "more" and "most" or the terminations "-er" and "-est" with certain adjectives, there are many violators. The common uncomparable adjectives include absolute, basic, complete, contemporary, devoid, empty, entire, essential, final, full, ideal, impossible, perfect, possible, pure, sufficient, superior, and unique. Participles have been found hanging in some of the otherwise respectable sentences. Some of these maniacal boners successfully elude the editor's blue pencil and take refuge in print, from where they continue their depradations.