Two types of degree nominalizations: Degree concepts and qualities

Abstract

Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2017) propose that in many languages, gradable predication is fundamentally about not degrees but qualities qua portions of an abstract substance, like wisdom or beauty, that an individual can be said to possess. Both notions—qualities and degrees—are crucial, we propose, to understanding an important distinction between two varieties of degree nominalization in English (e.g. height in Ingo is Bertha’s height vs tallness in Ingo has Bertha’s tallness). Building on Bochnak (2013) and Gobeski (2019), we marshal a range of unnoticed or under-noticed contrasts that we argue show that some nominalizations denote qualities and others denote what we’ll call 'degree concepts', which are intensionalized degrees.