Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Degrees as kinds

  • Published:
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper argues that a variety of constructions in a variety of languages suggest a deep connection between kinds, manners, and degrees. We articulate a way of thinking about degrees on which this connection is less surprising, rooted in the idea that degrees are kinds of Davidsonian states. This enables us to provide a cross-categorial compositional semantics for a class of expressions that can serve as anaphors to kinds, manners, and degrees, or introduce clauses that further characterize them. A consequence of this is that equatives emerge as a special case of a more general cross-categorial phenomenon. The analysis is undergirded by independently motivated assumptions about free relatives and type shifting. It provides evidence for a view of degrees on which they are significantly more ontologically complex than is typically thought.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Jak also has other uses. Citko (2000) points out that in embedded contexts it has a use as a temporal adverbial and as the antecedent of a conditional, though she argues that these involve a different form of the word that is a wh-complementizer rather than the phrasal wh-expression that gives rise to the readings in (2).

  2. Indeed, German solch ‘such’ is in fact historically derived from so and a morpheme similar to like, which suggests construing the like morpheme as a means of deriving adjectival solch from adverbial so (Berit Gehrke, p.c.).

  3. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this important connection, which we embarrassingly overlooked in earlier versions of this paper.

  4. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

  5. For some such cases, one might attempt a propositional paraphrase (e.g., for (27a), ‘it’s visible that Clyde is happy’), but even this strategy is unavailable for (28). For a few, one might imagine an intersective property-of-individuals interpretation (e.g., for (28b), ‘Gaudí furniture is bulbous and dynamic’), but this is not possible for most of (27) or openly contemptuous.

  6. This yields an exactly-reading for the measure phrase. The at-least reading could be obtained by a denotation closer to what’s suggested for the eval morpheme in (35).

  7. We have adapted the denotation to accord with the Chierchia-style conception of kinds and with our other notational conventions.

  8. This is precisely what Landman (2006) proposes for like, and she considers such a denotation for such for the same reason.

  9. On the other hand, tak is, in its adnominal use, obligatorily inflected, which suggests an adjectival syntax.

  10. Again, however, both options are in principle available. On the newer view, one could place the tak phrase in the specifier of DegP, the position occupied by measure phrases.

  11. A closely related strategy might be to appeal to the distinction between ordinary and well-established kinds, which Gehrke shows is relevant to the modification possibilities of German adjectival passives. Running any given distance is not a well-established kind of event, but perhaps being any given height is in fact a well-established kind of state—all heights are well-established kinds of tallness, but not all distances are well-established kinds of running.

  12. Again, the precise implementation of this is not crucial. Other possibilities include a default binding mechanism or operator movement as in English that relatives in the style of Heim and Kratzer (1998). The most appealing alternative, though, is to suppose that jak actually spells out this relativizing operator. This would entail assuming it occurs as the complement of tak, denotes a function, and therefore must wh-move and leave behind a kind-denoting trace. Because of the identity-function denotation, it would have no effect in its displaced position apart from triggering lambda abstraction.

  13. A reviewer points out that this isn’t actually so obvious. We happily refer to discontinuous spatial locations (the territory of the US), so why can’t there be a unique but discontinuous location where no one has gone before? It’s not obvious. But on such an analysis, one might expect where no man has gone before to introduce a discourse referent for this discontinuous region. Yet it would be odd to follow (51) with It is a vast place or What is its area?

  14. This interpretation actually predicts potential scope interactions. The judgments rapidly get precarious, but in a sentence such as Every linguist thought she saw a dog such as Floyd, every linguist should scope over the existential contributed by the as-phrase, meaning that the sentence should be true if some linguists think they saw a terrier, others think they saw a male dog, others still a 3-year-old dog, and so on, so long as Floyd actually has all these properties. This seems plausible. Thanks to an audience at Ohio State for discussion on this point.

  15. A reviewer points out that it’s not actually obvious that an existential interpretation is appropriate here. Perhaps Floyd and Clyde count as having sung the same way only if their singing was identical in all relevant manners? Indeed, we use a definite description in characterizing the way he sang (not # a way he sang). It’s a delicate question because the individuation criteria for manners are so unclear and the notion of relevance so elastic. But it seems reasonable to say e.g. Floyd died as Clyde did: poor and alone, even if one was stabbed to death and the other died of dysentery. The definiteness requirement in the way he sang may stem from the same slightly mysterious source as in the wrong answer (not # a wrong answer, even though there are almost invariably many; Schwarz 2006).

  16. One avenue left unexplored here is the idea that different levels of structure above AP might be properties of different varieties of states.

  17. It’s worth noting that (73a) doesn’t naturally get the speaker-oriented reading paraphrasable as Strangely, Floyd is tall.

References

  • Abney, Steven. 1987. The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. PhD diss., MIT.

  • Anderson, Curt. 2010. Manner modification and ‘like that’. Handout, Semantics Workshop of the American Midwest and Praries (SWAMP).

  • Anderson, Curt. 2013a. Gradability in the absence of degree scales. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Curt. 2013b. Hedging verbs and nouns using an alternative semantics. In Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE XXI).

    Google Scholar 

  • Bach, Emmon. 1989. Informal lectures on formal semantics. Stony Brook: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhatt, Rajesh, and Roumyana Pancheva. 2004. Late merger of degree clauses. Linguistic Inquiry 35(1): 1–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bolinger, Dwight L. 1972. Degree words. The Hague: Mouton.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Borsley, Robert D. 1981. Wh-movement and unbounded deletion in Polish equatives. Journal of Linguistics 17(2): 271–288. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4175592.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bresnan, Joan. 1973. Syntax of the comparative clause construction in English. Linguistic Inquiry 4(3): 275–343.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caponigro, Ivano. 2003. Free not to ask: on the semantics of free relatives and Wh-words cross-linguistically. PhD diss., UCLA.

  • Caponigro, Ivano. 2004. The semantic contribution of wh-words and type shifts: Evidence from free relatives crosslinguistically. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 14, ed. Robert B. Young, 38–55. Ithaca: CLC Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, Greg. 1977a. Amount relatives. Language 53(3): 520–542. http://www.jstor.org/stable/413175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, Greg. 1977b. Reference to kinds in English. PhD diss., University of Massachusetts Amherst. Published in 1980 by Garland.

  • Castroviejo Miró, Elena. 2008. Adverbs in restricted configurations. In Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 7: the colloque de syntaxe et sémantique à Paris, eds. Olivier Bonami and Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, 53–76. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castroviejo Miró, Elena. 2011. So as a weak degree expression. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 21, eds. Neil Ashton, Anca Chereches, and David Lutz, 76–94. Ithaca: CLC Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castroviejo Miró, Elena, and Magdalena Schwager. 2008. Amazing DPs. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 18. Ithaca: CLC Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chierchia, Gennaro. 1984. Topics in the syntax and semantics of infinitives and gerunds. PhD diss., University of Massachusetts Amherst. http://search.proquest.com/docview/303307786?accountid=12598.

  • Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6(4): 339–405. doi:10.1023/A:1008324218506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Citko, Barbara. 2000. On the syntax and semantics of Polish adjunct clauses. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 8: 1–38.

    Google Scholar 

  • Constantinescu, Camelia. 2011. Gradability in the nominal domain. PhD diss., Rijksuniversiteit Leiden.

  • Corver, Norbert. 1990. The syntax of left branch extractions. PhD diss., Tilburg University.

  • Cresswell, Max J. 1976. The semantics of degree. In Montague grammar, ed. Barbara H. Partee, 261–292. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desmets, Marianne, and Estelle Moline. 2007. Manner and degree in French comparison and in exclamative constructions, Abstract, ‘Manner’ in the Theory of Language. Symposium held at the University of Tampere, Finland.

  • Ernst, Thomas. 2011. Modification of State Predicates. Handout, Workshop on Modification With and Without Modifiers, Madrid.

  • Feldstein, Ron F. 2001. A concise Polish grammar. Durham: SEELRC.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gehrke, Berit. 2011. Stative passives and event kinds. In Sinn und Bedeutung, eds. Ingo Reich, Eva Horch, and Dennis Pauly. Vol. 15, 1–16. Saarbrücken: Universaar: Saarland University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gehrke, Berit. 2015, this volume. Adjectival participles, event kind modification, and pseudoincorporation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.

  • Geuder, Wilhelm. 2005. Manner modification of states. In Sinn und Bedeutung, Vol. 10

    Google Scholar 

  • Grimshaw, Jane. 1991. Extended projection. Ms., Brandeis University.

  • Grosu, Alexander, and Fred Landman. 1998. Strange relatives of the third kind. Natural Language Semantics 6(2): 125–170. doi:10.1023/A:1008268401837.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haspelmath, Martin, and Oda Buchholz. 1998. Equative and similative constructions in the languages of Europe. In Adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe, eds. Johan van der Auwera and Dónall Ó Baoill, 277–334. Dordrecht: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heim, Irene. 1987. Where does the definiteness restriction apply? Evidence from the definiteness of variables. In The representation of (in)definiteness, eds. Eric Reuland and Alice ter Meulen, 21–42. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heim, Irene. 2000. Degree operators and scope. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 10, eds. Brendan Jackson and Tanya Matthews, 40–64. Ithaca: CLC Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heim, Irene, and Angelika Kratzer. 1998. Semantics in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higginbotham, James. 2005. Event positions: suppression and emergence. Theoretical Linguistics 31(3): 349–358. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=truedb=ufhAN=19107853site=ehostlivescope=site.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kamp, Hans. 1975. Two theories about adjectives. In Formal semantics of natural language, ed. Edward L. Keenan, 123–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Katz, Graham. 2003. Event arguments, adverb selection, and the stative adverb gap. In Modifying adjuncts, eds. Ewald Lang, Claudia Maienborn, and Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen. Vol. 4 of Interface explorations, 455–474. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, Graham. 2005. Attitudes toward degrees. In Sinn und Bedeutung, eds. Emar Maier, Corien Bary, and Janneke Huitink, Vol. 9. Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, Graham. 2008. Manner modification of state verbs. In Adjectives and adverbs: syntax, semantics, and discourse, eds. Louise McNally and Christopher Kennedy, Studies in theoretical linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, Christopher. 1997. Projecting the adjective: the syntax and semantics of gradability and comparison. PhD diss., UC Santa Cruz. Published in 1999 by Garland, New York.

  • Kim, Jaegwon. 1976. Events as property exemplifications. In Action theory: the Winnipeg conference on human action, eds. Myles Brand and Douglas N. Walton, 159–177. Dordrecht: Reidel.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Klein, Ewan. 1980. A semantics for positive and comparative adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy 4(1): 1–45. doi:10.1007/BF00351812.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klein, Ewan. 1982. The interpretation of adjectival comparatives. Journal of Linguistics 18(1): 113–136. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4175620.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kratzer, Angelika. 1989. An investigation of the lumps of thought. Linguistics and Philosophy 12(5): 607–653. doi:10.1007/BF00627775.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landman, Meredith. 2006. Variables in natural language. PhD diss., University of Massachusetts Amherst.

  • Landman, Meredith, and Marcin Morzycki. 2003. Event-kinds and the representation of manner. In Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL) 2002, eds. Nancy Mae Antrim, Grant Goodall, Martha Schulte-Nafeh, and Vida Samiian. Vol. 14, 136–147. Fresno: California State University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loux, Michael J. 2006. Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction. New York: Routledge. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0611/2005057647.html.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienborn, Claudia. 2005a. Eventualities and different things: a reply. Theoretical Linguistics 31(3): 383–396. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=truedb=ufhAN=19107856site=ehostlivescope=site.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienborn, Claudia. 2005b. On the limits of the Davidsonian approach: the case of copula sentences. Theoretical Linguistics 31(3): 275–316. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=truedb=ufhAN=19107854site=ehostlivescope=site.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maienborn, Claudia. 2007. On Davidsonian and Kimian states. In Existence: semantics and syntax, eds. Ileana Comorovski and Klaus von Heusinger, 107–130. Dordrecht: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6197-4_4.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matushansky, Ora. 2002. Movement of degree/degree of movement. PhD diss., MIT.

  • Meier, Cécile. 2003. The meaning of Too, Enough, and So … That. Natural Language Semantics 11(1): 69–107. doi:10.1023/A:1023002608785.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mittwoch, Anita. 2005. Do states have Davidsonian arguments? Some empirical considerations. In Event arguments: foundations and applications, eds. Claudia Maienborn and Angelika Wöllstein, 69–88. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moltmann, Friederike. 2004. Properties and kinds of tropes: new linguistic facts and old philosophical insights. Mind 113(449): 1–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3488939.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moltmann, Friederike. 2007a. Comparatives without degrees: a trope-based analysis. Technical report, IHPST, Paris.

  • Moltmann, Friederike. 2007b. Events, tropes, and truthmaking. Philosophical Studies 134(3): 363–403. doi:10.1007/s11098-005-0898-4. http://www.springerlink.com/content/k11q6u51p35t0213/.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moltmann, Friederike. 2009. Degree structure as trope structure: a trope-based analysis of positive and comparative adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy 32(1): 51–94. doi:10.1007/s10988-009-9054-5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montague, Richard. 1970. English as a formal language. In Linguaggi nella societ’a e nella tecnica, eds. Bruno Visentini et al., 189–224. Milan: Edizioni di Communita. Reprinted in Formal Philosophy, by Richard Montague. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1974, 188–221.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morzycki, Marcin. 2008. Adverbial modification in AP: evaluatives and a little beyond. In Event structures in linguistic form and interpretation, eds. Johannes Dölling and Tatjana Heyde-Zybatow, 103–126. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morzycki, Marcin. 2011. Degrees and state kinds. Handout, Workshop on Modification With and Without Modifiers, Madrid.

  • Nouwen, Rick. 2011. Degree modifiers and monotonicity. In Vagueness and language use, eds. Paul Égré and Nathan Klinedinst, Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition, 146–164. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Parsons, Terence. 1990. Events in the semantics of English: a study in subatomic semantics. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Partee, Barbara H. 1986. Ambiguous pseudoclefts with unambiguous Be. In North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 16, eds. Steve Berman, Jae-Woong Choe, and Joyce McDonough, 354–366. Amherst: GLSA Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portner, Paul. 1991. Gerunds and types of events. In Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 1, eds. Steven K. Moore and Adam Zachary Wyner. Ithaca: CLC Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portner, Paul, and Raffaella Zanuttini. 2005. The semantics of nominal exclamatives. In Ellipsis and non-sentential speech, eds. Robert Stainton and Reinaldo Elugardo, 57–67. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rett, Jessica. 2008. Degree modification in natural language. PhD diss., Rutgers University.

  • Rett, Jessica. 2011. Exclamatives, degrees and speech acts. Linguistics and Philosophy 34: 411–442. doi:10.1007/s10988-011-9103-8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Russell, Bertrand. 1905. On denoting. Mind 14: 479–493.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schwager, Magdalena. 2009. What is amazement all about? In Sinn und Bedeutung, eds. Arndt Riester and Torgrim Solstad, Vol. 13, 499–512. Stuttgart: Online Publikationsverbund der Universität Stuttgart (OPUS).

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwarz, Bernhard. 2006. Attributive wrong. In West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 25, eds. David Montero, Donald Baumer, and Michael Scanlon, 362–370. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwarzschild, Roger. 2005. Measure phrases as modifiers of adjectives. In L’adjectif. Vol. 34 of Recherches linguistiques de vincennes, 207–228. Paris: Presses universitaires de Vincennes.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwarzschild, Roger, and Karina Wilkinson. 2002. Quantifiers in comparatives: a semantics of degree based on intervals. Natural Language Semantics 10(1): 1–41. doi:10.1023/A:1015545424775.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Seuren, Pieter A. M. 1973. The comparative. In generative grammar in Europe, eds. Ferenc Kiefer and Nicolas Ruwet, 528–565. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Siegel, Muffy E. A. 1994. Such: binding and the pro-adjective. Linguistics and Philosophy 17(5): 481–497. doi:10.1007/BF00985832.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Svenonius, Peter, and Christopher Kennedy. 2006. Northern Norwegian degree questions and the syntax of measurement. In Phases of interpretation, ed. Mara Frascarelli. Vol. 61 of Studies in generative grammar, 133–161. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Umbach, Carla, and Cornelia Ebert. 2009. German demonstrative ‘so’: intensifying and hedging effects. Sprache und Datenverabeitung (International Journal for Language Data Processing) 1–2: 153–168.

    Google Scholar 

  • von Stechow, Arnim. 1984. Comparing semantic theories of comparison. Journal of Semantics 3: 1–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zanuttini, Raffaella, and Paul Portner. 2003. Exclamative clauses: at the syntax-semantics interface. Language 79(1): 39–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4489385.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This paper grows out of work conducted by one of the authors in collaboration with Meredith Landman (Landman and Morzycki 2003). Thanks also to Adam Gobeski, Ai Matsui, Alex Clarke, Ania Łubowicz, Anne-Michelle Tessier, Berit Gehrke, Carlos de Cuba, Chris O’Brien, Elena Castroviejo Miró, Erik Wedin, Gabriel Roisenberg Rodrigues, Geraldine Legendre, Greg Johnson, Jan Anderssen, Judith Tonhauser, Kay Ann Schlang, Kyle Rawlins, Leila Rotschy, Louise McNally, Olga Eremina, Paul Portner, Paul Smolensky, Peter Culicover, Phil Pellino, Tom Ernst, Vesela Simeonova, and audiences at The Ohio State University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Calgary, and the 2011 Workshop on Modification With and Without Modifiers in Madrid; and to Andrea Beltrama, Ryan Bochnak, and an anonymous NLLT reviewer for very helpful written comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages, Michigan State University, 619 Red Cedar Road B-331 Wells Hall, East Lansing, MI, 48823, USA

    Curt Anderson & Marcin Morzycki

Authors
  1. Curt Anderson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Marcin Morzycki
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Curt Anderson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Anderson, C., Morzycki, M. Degrees as kinds. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 33, 791–828 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9290-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9290-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation