TY - JOUR AU - Burnett, Heather PY - 2019/05/09 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - A Pragmatic Solution to the Paradox of Absolute Adjectives JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 17 IS - 0 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/338 SP - 149-166 AB - <p>This paper presents a new solution to a longstanding puzzle in the study of the semantics of gradable adjectives: the <em>paradox of absolute adjectives</em>. Absolute adjectives (AAs: ex. <em>empty</em>, <em>straight</em>, <em>dry</em>, <em>wet</em>, <em>bent</em>. . . ) display a semantic behaviour that appears to be a hybrid between the behaviour of members of the relative adjectival class (RAs: ex. <em>tall</em>, <em>short</em>, <em>expensive</em>. . . ) and the non-scalar adjectival class (NSs: ex. <em>atomic</em>, <em>prime</em>, <em>hexagonal</em>. . . ). I argue that this behaviour creates a puzzle for the formal analysis of the basic lexical meaning of these expressions: do they have a semantic denotation that is of the same type as relative adjectives or of the same type as non-scalar adjectives? I argue that there are empirical reasons for adopting a treatment of the semantics and pragmatics of AAs in which these predicates have a semantics that is more parallel to NSs than RAs. Finally, I provide a new solution to the paradox of absolute adjectives within the <em>Delineation TCS</em> framework, which is a non-classical logical system developed by Burnett (2012b) for analyzing the interaction between context-sensitivity, imprecision and gradability with adjectival predicates.</p> ER -