Lexical Semantics of Adjectives - CiteSeerX

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jectives to which front stands in a relation described in (114). An antonym like back usually comes
to mind the easiest. We may want to add the left-side, right-side, and even top and bottom value to
the same scale, but we will not get away with adding inside and outside as values because front and
inside, for instance, will fail the (112) test. (There are, in fact, reasons not to add top and bottom to
the same scale with front and back as well, because there are objects with fronts and backs but no
tops and bottoms, such as a fence.)
Similar considerations guide the postulation of new numerical values, except that the tests are, of
course, based on (110). Antonyms still play an important role, evoking in a way the status accorded
them in the work of Miller and his associates (see Section 1.8). If, for instance, the currently processed
adjective is humble, arrogant is likely to follow, and modest (in one of its senses) and proud
may be prompted by such a tool as a thesaurus or a synonym dictionary. These tools have to be
used with caution because they list words in each entry quite loosely, quickly abandoning the domain
of real synonyms or even closely related meanings. The greater availability of such tools for
numerical values does make their acquisition easier than that of literal values. These adjectives will
quickly pass the (110) test among themselves, but they will fail it with regard to other scales. This
is a serious reason to open a new scale such as PRIDE-ATTRIBUTE.
The procedures described in this section go beyond mere heuristics because they are firmly anchored
in the adjective microtheory within the ontological semantic approach. The choices the acquirer
faces are much more rigid than the questions themselves may imply; the choices are limited
by the framework; and the decision-making is rigorous and, occasionally and with luck, algorithmic.
It is customary to believe both in linguistics and in the philosophy of science, in general, that heuristics
are a matter of experience, trial and error, and the resulting intuition. What we claim here is
that a microtheory-based heuristics is much more--and much more useful--than just that.
Acknowledgements
The authors benefited from many discussions of the material with the members of the MikroKosmos
team --- Steve Beale, Kavi Mahesh, and especially Evelyne Viegas. Special thanks are due to
Boyan Onyshkevych for help with the formalism and to Sara J. Shelton for some helpful ideas.