Open AccessScale exhaustivity and the Modification Condition
Author(s) -
M. Ryan Bochnak
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
proceedings from semantics and linguistic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2163-5951
pISSN - 2163-5943
DOI - 10.3765/salt.v0i0.2677
Subject(s) - locative case , generalization , scale (ratio) , semantics (computer science) , set (abstract data type) , computer science , space (punctuation) , range (aeronautics) , measure (data warehouse) , distributional semantics , linguistics , mathematics , programming language , data mining , engineering , cartography , geography , mathematical analysis , philosophy , aerospace engineering , operating system
This paper pursues a Vector Space Semantics (VSS) analysis of evaluative and extreme adjectives in absolute and comparative constructions, with a particular emphasis on the licensing of measure phrases (MPs) in these environments. I show that the Modification Condition (Winter 2005), which restricts the distribution of MPs with locative/directional PPs and dimensional adjectives, can be extended to account for MP licensing with evaluative and extreme adjectives as well. Importantly, the non-satisfaction of the Modification Condition is entailed when a set of vectors does not exhaust the range of possible values on a particular scale. This observation thus allows us to link a long-standing generalization that scale exhaustivity and MP licensing are crucially related (Bierwisch 1989) with the formal denotational properties of certain linguistic expressions.