CHAPTER 2 ADJECTIVE MEANINGS
C. Constructions with adjectives
The comparative forms discussed in Section 2.2.4 are an aspect of something more general: many adjectives (and also adverbs, though they are ignored here) are gradable, which is to say that the language has ways of expressing different levels or degrees of the qualities that they denote.
Examples are given in (2.18), with the relevant indicators of gradability in italics.
(2.18) Card is thicker than paper.
Showers will be more frequent tomorrow.
He is the rudest person I’ve ever met.
They are too rare to stand any chance of survival.
Just how patient do you have to be?
The conditions were very harsh.
The adjectives in the examples given in (2.18) are all members of antonym pairs. They denote regions towards either end of scales. For instance, there is a scale of thickness, with thick denoting values towards one end, thin denoting values towards the other end, and a region in between that is neither thick nor thin. Interestingly, there is frequently one member of each pair that signals bias regarding the answer if it is used in asking questions about positions on the scale, whereas the other member of the pair is used in asking unbiased questions. See the short conversations in (2.19).
(2.19) a. A: “How thin is that piece of wood?” B: “It’s very thin.”
b. C: “How thin is that piece of wood?” D: “It’s not thin; it’s as thick as my forearm.”
c. E: “How thick is that piece of wood?” F: “It’s very thick.”
d. G: “How thick is that piece of wood?” H: “It’s pretty thin, about 4 millimetres.”
The questions with thin (2.19a, b) show a bias: the senders, A and C, expect answers that place the piece of wood somewhere in the ‘thin’ region.
That is why it is natural for speaker D, who is faced with a thick piece of wood, to first negate C’s expectation by saying “It’s not thin”. But the unbiased question with thick (2.19c, d) simply enquires where the piece of wood is on
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the thin–thick scale, without bias towards an answer in the thick region. Thus, there is no pressure for speaker H to begin the reply by saying “It’s not thick”.
The members of complementary pairs (same–different, right–wrong and so on) are resistant to grading. See the examples in (2.20).
(2.20) *Twins are samer/more same than siblings.
*That is the rightest answer I have heard today.
*The jury heard evidence that was too false to accept.
?How disconnected is this kettle from the power supply?
?They left the door very open.
Superlatives (such as best and fastest) and covert superlatives (such as freezing) denote extreme ends of scales. Some examples are given in (2.21) of their tendency towards non-gradability.
(2.21) *The other team was bester than ours.
*In the inner city walking is more fastest.
*The presentation was very excellent.
?The hospital kitchen was too spotless.
*How scorching was the weather in Luxor?
There are some adverbs that will go with both complementaries and covert superlatives, but not with most ordinary antonyms. The “maximisers”
absolutely and completely are among these adverbs. Some examples are presented in (2.22).
(2.22) with antonyms: *The shrink wrapping was absolutely thin.
*Her friends were completely proud of her.
with complementaries: You’ll look completely different with your hair restyled.
What you say is absolutely true.
with covert superlatives: ?Digital sound reproduction is completely perfect.
The weather has been absolutely freezing 2. Adjectives modifying nouns
How are noun and adjective meanings put together when an adjective modifies a noun as in green bicycles? Just enough will be said here to show that interesting issues arise in this area. A simple interpretation in terms of the intersection of sets, as depicted in Figure 2.3, will work in some cases.
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In Figure 2.3, the left-hand oval represents the set denoted by green, all the green entities that there could be. The right-hand oval represents the
green green
things bicycles bicycles
Figure 2.3 Simple cases of an adjective modifying a noun are like the intersection of sets set of entities denoted by bicycle, all bicycles. The intersection of the two ovals encompass things that are included in both sets, things that are green and also bicycles. This is a satisfactory enough account of how these two meanings are put together. Adjectives that fit this scheme of interpretation are called intersective adjectives.
Some adjectives are straightforwardly non-intersective: former, imaginary, fake. Former champions are no longer denoted in an uncomplicated way by the word champion; a fake Stradivarius is not a Stradivarius. Lappin (2001) gives a short overview of some proposals in formal semantics for handling such cases.
Two further types of non-intersective modification will be mentioned here. One class arises from what can be called relative adjectives (Cruse 2000:
290). Two examples are given in (2.23).
(2.23) A big molecule is a small thing.
A narrow shipping lane can be a wide stretch of water (if you are thinking of swimming it).
The problem for an intersective account of modification with small or big, wide or narrow, or any of numerous other relative adjectives is that the adjective is interpreted relative to the norms of the entities denoted by the noun: ‘big as molecules go’, ‘narrow when compared to an average shipping lane’.
Another set of cases where an intersective explanation of modification is not feasible is illustrated by the ambiguity of (2.24).
(2.24) He’s the best politician in the country.
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One can use (2.24) either to describe someone who is skilled at politicking, whether or not one approves of him as a person, or of someone who is good and happens to be a politician, whether or not he is competent in the practice of politics. The fifirst meaning appears to rely on there being characteristic roles, duties, activities or functions for certain classes of people:
a politician engages in politics, an embroiderer embroiders, a farmer farms, a plumber installs and repairs water systems. Now some adjectives can be taken as qualifying the extent to which the characteristic role is carried out (on this reading the best politician is the one who practises politics best). There is an ambiguity if the same adjective could also be used to describe the nature of people as people (the best politician could be understood as the most virtuous one). When the noun denotes something inanimate, then the only interpretation is likely to be the one in which its function is qualified by the adjective, for example a good shovel is one that is better than averagely suited for shovelling.
3. Larger sets than pairs
Most of the adjectives discussed in this chapter have been ones that come in pairs, though I pointed out that synonymy is not restricted to pairs. In Chapter 3 another sense relation that holds between the meanings of sets of words that can be larger than pairs will be introduced. It is called incompatibility. In advance of that discussion it should be noted that some adjectives with apparently interesting interrelationships in meaning occur in sets of more than two; for examples, see (2.25).
(2.25) {black, purple, blue, brown, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, white, grey}
{circular/round, triangular, rectangular}
{previous, current, next}
If one is truthfully told that a particular rock is yellow, then it follows that it is not any of the other colours listed in the first set of (2.25). Is this blindingly obvious? Is it not always true that if something is said to have one property, then it does not have others? No, that only holds within such sets: a yellow rock could perfectly well be triangular, and, it could be the previous, current or next specimen in a batch being examined by a geologist.
34 D. Semantic Types of the Adjectives