Lexical Semantics of Adjectives - CiteSeerX

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(SYN-STRUC
(1 ((root $var1)
(cat n)
(mods ((root $var0)))))
(2 ((root $var0)
(cat adj)
(subj ((root $var1)
(cat n))))))
(SEM-STRUC
(LEX-MAP
(attitude (type salience)
(attitude-value (value (> 0.75)))
(scope ^$var1)
(attributed-to *speaker*))))))
We found it useful to identify large classes of gradable scalars and check out their homogeneity in
terms of the type of lexical entries each class utilizes. In case some heterogeneity is detected in the
process of representation, an adjective can be moved to another class. This rough classification is
discussed in the next section.
3.3 Classes of English Adjectives and Their Representation
Besides scalars, this section deals with adjectives whose meanings derive from meanings of verbs.
3.3.1 Scalar Subclasses and Their Representation
The quick and dirty non-exhaustive first-run classification of scalars produced the following results.
(54) Rough taxonomy of true scalars
Subclass
Number
in
Corpus
Basis/Explanation Examples
Attitude-based 116 Evaluation, salience good, superb, important
Numerical scale 318 Size, weight, price, age
and other measurements
Literal Scale 23 Color, shape, orientation,
direction, etc.
big, heavy, forte, pricey,
opulent, ripe, young
red, magenta, oval, front,
backward
Member 85 Set membership authentic, fake, similar
We will now comment on each of the four above classes. The membership class was somewhat of
a surprise because it had been largely ignored in the literature (we will defer for now its rather complex
version of scalarity). There had been a sporadic interest in the adjective fake (see Iwańska
1995--cf. Raskin 1981) because it clearly violated the simplistic subset-forming notion of adjective
meaning (see, for instance, Strawson 1959: 168; Riegel 1993: 5-10; Iwańska 1995), such that red
houses are a subset of all houses; intersective meaning (see Section 1.4 above) is, of course, a sub-