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Universal markedness in gradable adjectives revisited

The morpho-semantics of the positive form in Arabic

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Abstract

Cross-linguistically, comparative-form adjectives (like English taller) are consistently derived from (or in many languages identical to) their positive-form counterparts (like English tall). This fact stands in tension with prevailing formal semantic treatments of gradable adjectives as degree relations that require extra semantic machinery not only for comparative predication but also for positive predication; for the latter, scholars typically posit a null morpheme or type-shift pos. In this short article, we review morphophonological evidence showing that in Arabic, comparative-form adjectives (like aTwal ‘taller’) are of equal complexity with their positive-form counterparts (like Tawiil ‘tall’), both derived from a common tri-consonantal root (in this case \(\sqrt{Twl}\)), rather than one word being derived from the other. This raises the tantalizing possibility of Arabic becoming the first documented case of a language overtly realizing pos, with adjectives like Tawiil consisting of a degree-relation-denoting root and a pos-denoting template. We nonetheless conclude (albeit tentatively) that such an analysis is probably wrong, given (a) the idiosyncrasy in the phonological shape that the putative pos-denoting template takes across different adjectives, (b) the appearance of the same templatic shapes in non-adjectives, and (c) the appearance of adjectives like Tawiil in non-pos environments. We thereby uphold the generalization that no language realizes pos overtly. We close with a brief look at nominalized forms of gradable adjectives in Arabic and offer some preliminary remarks on the broader prospects of semantic de-composition for gradable adjectives, engaging with recent work on cross-linguistic variation in the grammar of property concepts.

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Notes

  1. See, among many others, Cresswell (1976), von Stechow (1984), Heim (1985). The tension described here applies as well to the measure function (type 〈e,d〉) analysis of gradable adjectives (Bartsch and Vennemann 1973; Kennedy 1999, 2007) as well as Moltmann’s (2009) trope-based semantics. Approaches to gradable adjective semantics that do not encounter the tension described here include the vague predicate analysis (Kamp 1975; Klein 1980) as well as Wellwood’s (2014) approach in which gradable adjectives denote predicates of states. It has also been suggested that whether or not gradable adjectives have a degree-based semantics may be subject to cross-linguistic variation (Beck et al. 2009; Bochnak 2015); see also Bogal-Allbritten (2013) for discussion of the degree-based approach in a cross-linguistic setting.

  2. This approach to comparative semantics is based roughly on Seuren (1973), Klein (1980), Schwarzschild (2008). For the sake of simplicity and because it is orthogonal to the concerns of this paper, we assume controversially that than is semantically vacuous and that the standard of comparison is individual-denoting. See Kennedy (2009) for discussion of the semantic type of the standard and see Alrenga et al. (2012) for an approach to comparative semantics in which both the comparative morpheme and the standard marker are contentful.

  3. See especially Cresswell (1976), von Stechow (1984), Kennedy (1999, 2007). See also Rett (2014) for a reformulation of positive semantics in terms of evaluativity.

  4. Grano explicitly recognizes the predictions concerning Patterns A, B, and C, but he does not explicitly recognize the hypothetical Pattern D or what his hypothesis would predict about it. (And the labeling of these various scenarios as Patterns A–D is not Grano’s; we coin this labeling convention here for expository convenience.) Somewhat ironically, Grano uses Arabic as one of his examples of (what we call) a Pattern B language—but in fact as we will see below, Arabic bears the hallmarks of a Pattern D language.

  5. Aside from Grano (2012), this phenomenon is also discussed and analyzed by Sybesma (1999), Huang (2006), Gu (2008), Liu (2010), He and Jiang (2011). Kennedy and McNally (2005a:350, fn. 5) cite Mandarin as evidence for the claim that “in some languages …the positive form is morphologically marked.”

  6. We transliterate Arabic using loosely IPA-based conventions, except for pharyngealized consonants for which we use capital letters: /T/, /D/, /S/, /Z/; and except for /š/ and /y/ which replace IPA / / and /j/, respectively.

  7. According to an anonymous reviewer, the final vowels in a la ‘sweeter’ and awTa ‘lower’ should be long (i.e., the forms should be a laa and awTaa respectively). But here we simply follow the transcription indicated in Davis’s (2016a) sources, which include especially Badawi and Hinds (1986).

  8. Assigning the root a type 〈d,〈e,t〉〉 meaning may in fact be an oversimplification, since many of the tri-consonantal roots found in gradable adjectives also appear in other words whose meanings would be difficult to derive from a type 〈d,〈e,t〉〉 base. But we abstract away from this issue here and return to it in Sect. 4 below.

  9. According to our consultant, the zero-marked strategy for forming comparatives is not typical of Cairene Arabic but is found in the variety spoken in Alexandria. One might wonder whether (27) could be analyzed as an implicit comparison in the sense of Kennedy (2009). An implicit comparison is a sentence like (26) that can be analyzed as involving pos but also involving an overt phrase (compared to…) that helps fix the threshold for ‘standing out’ that pos introduces.

    1. (i)

      Compared to Basem, Ahmad is tall.

    But according to our consultant, (27), unlike (25), would be truthful even in a context where Ahmad and Basem differ in height by only a very small degree (the so-called ‘crisp judgment’ test for explicit comparison: see Kennedy 2009). This argues against an implicit comparison analysis of (27).

  10. For the sake of completeness, we note that superlative meanings in Arabic are built on the comparative form, as in (34). From a cross-linguistic perspective, this is no surprise at all: see Bobaljik (2012).

    1. (i)
      figure s

    See Hallman (2016) for an in-depth investigation of the syntax and semantics of superlatives in Syrian Arabic.

  11. See also Baglini (2015) for another approach to the semantic relationship between adjectival and nominal property concepts. Unfortunately, we lack the space here to compare Baglini’s approach with Menon and Pancheva’s.

  12. We depart from Menon and Pancheva (2014) here in essentially two ways. First, their proposed nominalizing function introduces a degree argument whereas ours does not. Our decision not to include a degree argument stems from our working hypothesis that Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2015) are correct in not positing a degree argument for substance-denoting property concepts. Second, we employ set-theoretic and mereological notions in describing the relationship between x and Π whereas Menon and Pancheva’s denotation describes the relation informally as ‘x is an instance of Π.’ We do this in order to suggest that their ‘is an instance of’ relation is reducible to familiar concepts in set theory and mereology.

  13. We depart here from Menon and Pancheva in replacing their ‘is an instance of’ relation with set-theoretic and mereological notions. See fn. 12.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our Arabic language consultant Abdelhalim Elamroussy for his help and comments regarding the data presented in this paper. We would also like to thank Chris Kennedy for insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and Andrew Koontz-Garboden for helpful suggestions. Finally, we thank three anonymous NLLT reviewers for very helpful comments regarding the paper’s data and organization.

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Grano, T., Davis, S. Universal markedness in gradable adjectives revisited. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 36, 131–147 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-017-9365-0

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