Adjectives, stereotypicality, and comparison

Authors: McCready, Eric¹; Ogata, Norry²

Source: Natural Language Semantics, Volume 15, Number 1, March 2007 , pp. 35-63(29)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

Japanese has a large number of evidential and modal expressions. Many of the inferential evidentials - mitai, yoo, rashii - also have an adjectival use. On this use, they make a claim about the prototypicality of some object or individual with respect to another class of object, in the case of rashii, or about the similarity of these two objects, for yoo and mitai. This paper provides a compositional semantics for these adjectives, claiming that they are evaluated in terms of the degree to which they instantiate a set of properties (conventionally) associated with a class of object.

Keywords: Japanese; Adjectives; Prototypes; Scales; Normality; Comparatives

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11050-007-9009-8

Affiliations: 1: Email: mccready@cl.aoyama.ac.jp 2: Email: ogata@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp

Publication date: 2007-03-01