Underspecification in Degree Operators. (9th January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Thomas, Guillaume
• Is Part Of: Journal of semantics. Volume 35:Number 1(2018:Feb.)
• Page Start: 43
• Page End: 93
• Publication Date: 2018-01-09
• Subjects: Semantics -- Periodicals; Semantik; Semantics; Periodicals; 401.43
• DOI: 10.1093/jos/ffx015
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0167-5133

Abstract

Abstract: The goal of this article is to account for the recurrent homophony between comparison, additivity and continuation cross-linguistically. Building on Roger Schwarzschild's recent work on comparison in scale segment semantics, I propose that comparative, additive and continuative sentences all assert the existence of a rising scale segment, and differ in terms of (i) the nature of the scale and (ii) the identification of the extremities of the scale segments. At a morphosyntactic level, all three types of sentences involve the combination of a feature that denotes a property of rising scale segments with other features whose denotations constrain the identification of the extremities of the segments in a way that is characteristic of each interpretation (additivity, comparison or continuation). Homophony results from the underspecification of Vocabulary Items in Distributed Morphology.