Lexical Semantics of Adjectives - CiteSeerX

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in the literature: the degrees of comparison of the gradable adjectives is the dominant one; the concept
of the scale is the other issue, and it will prove to be more pertinent to our work.
A sticky issue for some formal semanticists (see, for instance, Hoepelman 1983), the degrees of
comparison have been looked at, somewhat inconclusively, from the point of view of their relations
with presuppositions (Kiefer 1978) and classified at length on quasi-logical principles
(Rusiecki 1985). The morphology and syntax of comparative adjectives are typically researched
more than their semantics--see, for instance, Lees (1961), Bolinger (1967b, 1972), Grundt (1970),
Ultan (1972), Bresnan (1973), Hankamer (1973), Gnutzman (1974), Boguslawski (1975), Cygan
(1975), Topolinska (1975), Entich (1975), Kamp (1975), Rivara 1975, Post 1981, Klein 1982,
Pinkham 1982, Noailly 1993).
The meaning of the positive, noncomparative adjective, such as good and big, in its relation to its
comparative degree has been puzzled over--at least since Sapir wrote in a seminal essay, “It is very
important to realize that psychologically all comparatives are primary in relation to their corresponding
absolutes (‘positives’)” (1944: 125). Lyons forcefully supports this thesis: “Rather less
obvious is the fact that the use of a gradable antonym always involves grading, implicitly if not
explicitly. This was stressed by Sapir (1944), who seems to have been the first linguist to employ
the term ‘grading’ in this sense” (Lyons 1977: 273-274), and, Lyons points out, “[t]he point Sapir
was making is well known to logicians and goes back at least as far as Aristotle (cf. Categories 56)”
(op.cit: 274, fn. 4). This thesis suggests the analysis of a positive adjective tall in (31i) as (31ii):
(31) (i) John is a tall man.
(ii) John is taller than an average man.
Following Sapir again, Lyons (1977: 270-272) makes a popular distinction between two major
kinds of scales involved in the meaning of the gradable adjectives: the continuous scale, such as
good/bad, corresponding to the gradable antonyms, that he calls the “contraries,” and the discreet,
bipolar scale, such as dead/alive, corresponding to the complementary antonyms that he calls the
“contradictories”--cf. the discussion in Section 1.4 above of Levi’s (9ii) and the references there as
well as Kiefer (1978), Gross et al. (1989). Scales have been often mentioned, at least casually, in
the literature on adjectives--see, for instance, Aarts (1976, especially 41-42), Rivara (1993). They
play an important part in Miller’s and his associates’ view of the adjectives as dominated by antonym
pairs and their synonyms, a vision that lies in the foundation of their valuable online resource
WordNet--see, for instance, Miller et al. (1988), Charles and Miller (1989), Gross et al. (1989),
Miller and Fellbaum (1991), Beckwith et al. (1991).
An interesting property of some scales is their asymmetry--see Sapir (1944: 132-133), Bierwisch
(1967). Rusiecki’s (1985: 7) example of asymmetry is the dry/wet scale, with the dry end of it
bound, as it were, and the wet end open: one can get wetter and wetter and one cannot achieve absolute
wetness but one can achieve absolute dryness 3 . Somewhat related to the asymmetry is the
category of the markedness/unmarkedness of antonyms--see, for instance, Bierwisch (1967),
Givón (1984), Rusiecki (1985), Miller and Fellbaum (1991). Thus, in the long/short pair of gradable
antonyms, long is unmarked (and short is marked) by the fact, according to Miller and Fellbaum
(1991: 212-213)--and Bierwisch (1967)--that one can say (32i) but not (32ii)--at least, not in
the same meaning:
3 Again, more so in language than in reality.