Quantification Galore Morzycki, Marcin
Linguistic inquiry,
10/2011, Letnik:
42, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Morzycki discusses Chierchia's (1998) theory of how reference to kinds varies across languages, noting that within this framework, determiners can, in principle, apply to kinds and NPs can, in ...principle, denote them. As English is taken to realize the latter possibility, Morzycki argues that it also realizes the former by including a determiners that combines specifically with kind-denoting NPs. This paper highlights the grammar of 'galore,' a peripheral but widely attested postnominal expression that has this characteristic. Adapted from the source document
This squib points out that adjectives with measure phrases are incompatible with expressive modifiers such as goddamn. It shows that this otherwise mysterious fact can be explained relatively ...straightforwardly if, as Schwarzschild (2005) has argued, positive adjectives can support measure phrases only as the result of a type-shifting rule in the lexicon.
Degree Modification of Extreme Adjectives Morzycki, Marcin
Papers from the regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society,
01/2009, Letnik:
45, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper argues that degree modifiers such as flat-out, downright, positively, and straight-up constitute a distinct natural class specialized for modifying extreme adjectives (such as gigantic, ...fantastic, or gorgeous), and that extreme adjectives themselves come in two varieties:
ones that encode extremeness as part of their lexical meaning and ones that can acquire it on the basis of contextual factors. These facts suggest that a theory is required of adjectival 'extremeness' itself. I propose one, based on the idea that in any given context, we restrict
our attention to a particular salient portion of a scale. To reflect this, I suggest that quantification over degrees is-like quantification in other domains-contextually restricted. Extreme adjectives and corresponding degree modifiers can thus both be understood as a means of expressing
domain-widening for degrees.
IntroductionFlorence Nightingale suffered from two afflictions:• She had one leg shorter than the other.• She also had one leg longer than the other.This is according to the comedian Graeme Garden, ...who was lying. (Her legs were fine, both of them.) In doing so, he was playing on some relatively subtle intuitions about the semantics of the comparative. The joke would still have worked, more or less, if he had said this:(1) She also had one leg not as long as the other.But this would be worse, or in any case less funny than just weird:(2) She also had one leg not as short as the other.What the joke depends on – to kill it by explanation – is that the two afflictions entail each other, on either the original formulation or (1). The problem with (2) is that it introduces an unwelcome additional entailment: that her legs were short. Why the difference in entailments?This chapter will examine the semantics of comparatives and their grammatical relatives, such as the equative, which positively bristle with such subtle and often vexing puzzles. These puzzles provide insight into a surprisingly wide array of issues: the nature of comparison, of course, but also the ontology of degrees, scope-taking mechanisms, ellipsis, negative polarity items, modality, focus, type-shifting, contextual domain restrictions, imprecision, and semantic crosslinguistic variation. This will also give us an opportunity to address the syntax of the extended AP in earnest for the first time.Section 4.2 confronts the mapping between syntax and semantics in the adjectival extended projection, with special attention to the comparative. Section 4.3 provides a tour of other degree constructions, including differential comparatives, equatives, superlatives, and others. Section 4.4 is the one most directly relevant to the puzzle we began the chapter with: the question of why the entailments of apparently very similar degree constructions differ subtly. Finally, section 4.5 concludes with a discussion of the crosslinguistic picture. Throughout this chapter, I will assume a degree-based framework. This is chiefly because most of the work in this area does so – but that too is for a reason.
Adverbs Morzycki, Marcin
Modification,
11/2015
Book Chapter
IntroductionIf adverbs were sentient, we might pity them. Sometimes, they are treated as nothing more than adjectives crudely tarted up with some minor ornamental morphology. At other times, they are ...treated as the ‘wastebasket category’, because ‘adverb’ is what you call a word when you've run out of other names to call it. All sorts of stray mystery particles have been described as adverbs, for the most tenuous of reasons or for no particular reason at all. Worse still, the term is often taken to include not just a motley assortment of scarcely related lexical riffraff but also whole phrases without regard to their syntactic category. Loiter around the peripheries of a clause for too long, and you too might be accused of being an adverb.To be mistreated unjustly is bad. It's worse when it's precisely what you deserve. The prototypical exemplars of adverbs are genuinely very adjective-like, and languages don't always bother to make the distinction. And these expressions really do seem alarmingly and confoundingly promiscuous in their distribution. Even so, whatever their internal properties, the question of how they fit into the semantics of larger expressions is interesting. Equally interesting is what about their semantics accounts for their versatility. Adverbs in this more restricted sense – adjective-like things in non-adjective-like positions – will be the focus of this chapter. For the most part, modifiers of other categories will enter the discussion only to the extent that their semantic contribution resembles that of adverbs proper. More generally, I will observe a distinction between ‘adverb’, the name of a syntactic category, and ‘adverbial’, the collective term for phrases headed by adverbs and for phrasal modifiers of verbal projections and clauses.Part of the focus on adverbs in the more restricted sense is practical. Discussing adverbials as a class would entail discussing virtually all of formal semantics. There's hardly any area of the field that hasn't been concerned to a large extent with some class of adverbials in one way or another, and in certain areas – such as temporal semantics – the analysis of adverbials constitutes much of the enterprise. Unavoidably, though, I'll briefly touch on some adverbials whose serious examination is best undertaken by looking elsewhere (say, a book on temporal semantics). Many issues that fall under the broad rubric of ‘adverbials’ will also be taken up in Chapter 6 as instances of crosscategorial phenomena.
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