Abstract
This paper provides a new account of positive versus negative antonyms. The data includes well-known linguistic generalizations regarding negative adjectives, such as their incompatibility with measure phrases (cf. two meters tall/ *short) and ratio phrases (twice as tall/ #short) as well as the impossibility of truly crosspolar comparisons (*Dan is taller than Sam is short). These generalizations admit a variety of exceptions, e.g., positive adjectives that do not license measure phrases (cf. #two degrees warm/cold) and rarely also negative adjectives that do (cf. two hours late/early). Furthermore, new corpus data is presented regarding the use of twice with positive and negative adjectives. The analysis the paper presents supposes that grammar associates gradable adjectives with measure functions—mapping of entities to a set of degrees isomorphic to the real numbers (Kennedy, Projecting the adjective: The syntax and semantics of gradability and comparison, 1999). On this analysis, negative adjectives map entities to values that are linearly reversed and linearly transformed in comparison with their values in the positive antonyms. As shown, the generalizations, as well as their exceptions, directly follow. Negative polarity is explained in terms of function reversal, and non-licensing of measure phrases is explained in terms of transformation by an unspecified value.
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This paper is based on my dissertation (Sassoon 2007, Chap. 9) and extends a short paper from the proceedings of SALT 18 (Sassoon 2009). My work was made possible by the Orgler Scholarship for excellent PhD students in the humanities, Tel Aviv University (2004–2007) and the Pratt postdoc scholarship, Ben Gurion University of the Negev (2007–2008). Part of the research for this paper was carried out in the project ‘On vagueness—and how to be precise enough’, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO 360-20-201). I warmly thank Nirit Kadmon, Fred Landman, Robert van Rooij, Frank Veltman, and the audiences of SALT 18, Amherst, the conference ‘Vagueness and Language Use’, Paris, and the linguistic colloquiums of Jerusalem, Bar-Ilan, and Bee’r-Sheva for their most helpful comments. Special thanks to Arik Cohen, Nomi Shir, Idan Landau, Dorit Ben-Shalom, Lavi Wolf, Rachel Giora, Roger Schwarzschild, Irene Heim, Chris Kennedy, Louise McNally, Yael Sharvit, Jonathan Bobaljik, Gabi Danon, Jonathan Fine, Susan Rothstein, Yael Greenberg, Idit Doron, Anita Mittwoch, Ivy Sichel, Micha Breakstone, and Adar Weidman.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Sassoon, G.W. The degree functions of negative adjectives. Nat Lang Semantics 18, 141–181 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-009-9052-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-009-9052-8