Inherently context-sensitive gradable adjectives

Abstract

In most analyses of languages that are argued to have degrees as semantic primitives (e.g., Cresswell 1976; von Stechow 1984), gradable adjectives (GAs) receive context-independent denotations. When evaluativity (i.e., norm-relatedness) arises, it is added to the meaning of GAs by a covert operator (e.g., 'pos' in Cresswell 1976, von Stechow 1984; EVAL in Rett 2007, 2008) or a pragmatic process (Rett 2014). In this paper, I argue that Japanese takes the opposite route to evaluativity: Japanese GAs are inherently context-dependent, and evaluativity arises by default. Empirical evidence comes from 1) obligatory differential readings of measure phrases (MPs) occurring with positive forms of GAs and 2) evaluativity of equatives and degree questions involving GAs. In fact, cross-linguistically, the two phenomena, the unavailability of absolute MP readings occurring with a GA and evaluativity of that GA in equatives and degree questions, are observed to be related (Bierwisch 1989; Winter 2005; Krasikova 2009; Sassoon 2011; Breakstone 2012; Bochnak 2013), which motivated proposals that (some) relative GAs in English are inherently context-dependent (Sassoon 2011; Breakstone 2012). I demonstrate that all relative GAs in Japanese exhibit this link and motivate their inherently context-dependent denotations.