Negation, polarity and scale structure: Different inferences of absolute adjectives

Abstract

This work investigates the interpretation of absolute gradable adjectives like clean in comparison with their stronger scalemates (pristine) and corresponding antonyms (dirty and filthy) in the scope of negation or in the absence of it. We find that participants distinguish between non-negated absolute terms differing in informational strength (e.g., clean vs. pristine). However, such distinctions are fewer in the scope of negation. Under negation, weak absolute adjectives entail the antonym of a given pair (e.g., not clean → ‘dirty’), while the fine granularity of the underlying measurement scale appears to be responsible for additional interpretations of absolute adjective expressions, such as middling interpretations (‘neither clean nor dirty’) and inferences to the antonym. Overall, our findings endorse both the standard ab- solute, contradictory effect of negation on the interpretation of absolute adjectives as well as the less typical attenuating effect of negation, mostly discussed in relation to relative gradable adjectives (Horn, 1989). We conclude that different properties of measurement scales—scale structure and scale granularity—as well as evaluative polarity, play an essential role in the derivation of different (pragmatic) inferences of gradable adjectives (see also Gotzner et al., 2018b).