From change to value difference in degree achievements

Annual Review of Linguistics, 2019

In this review, we discuss the empirical landscape of degree constructions cross-linguistically as well as the major analytical avenues that have been pursued to account for individual languages and cross-linguistic variation. We first focus on comparatives and outline various compositional strategies for different types of comparative sentences as well as points of cross-linguistic variation in the lexicalization of comparative operators and gradable predicates. We then expand the discussion to superlatives, equatives, and other degree constructions. Finally, we turn to constructions beyond the prototypical degree constructions but where degree-based analyses have been pursued; we focus on change-of-state verbs and exclamatives. This is an area that is especially ripe for future cross-linguistic research. We conclude by mentioning connections to other subfields of linguistics, such as language acquisition, historical linguistics, and language processing. Expected final online publi...

1999

Montagovian semantics treats word meanings in terms of intensions and extensions which are meant to capture speakers' ability to decide which words are to be used for what objects, properties, events, etc. The aim of the present paper is to refine this view in order to model facts about language change, acquisition, and knowledge of language. I will reconstruct intensions in terms of (a) given core referents, and (b) contextually determined ways to generalize these to full sets of (real or counterfactual) extensions. This reconstruction of word meanings is clarifying in several ways. It can explain how speakers can install the meanings of new words in a language on the basis of a limited set of intended referents, it makes clear how the limited knowledge of single speakers allows them to grasp the meaning of words in their language, and it allows to model certain types of historical meaning change and creative language use. The approach will finally be related to conceptual sema...

Journal of Pragmatics, 2004

Historical Semantics and Cognition, 1999

When changes happen to the meanings of words, we speak of semantic change. Meanings of words can be extended creatively (a possibility afforded by the human cognitive system), or their meanings can change through reanalysis, chiefly but not exclusively during language acquisition. Any speaker without direct access to the intent of the speakers around him or her must figure out what words mean from the contexts in which he or she encounters them. As Nerlich (1990: 181) puts it, " Words do not convey meaning in themselves, they are invested with meaning according to the totality of the context. They only have meaning in so far as they are interpreted as meaningful, in so far as the hearer attributes meaning to them in context " (emphases in original). If an interpretation of a word different from the intended interpretation is possible, and if this new interpretation is the one seized upon by the listener or learner and entered into the lexicon (" new " from the point of view of other speakers, that is), semantic change has happened. Limiting the term " semantic change " to such reinterpretations, or reanalyses, naturally and correctly excludes the everyday creative synchronic extension of meanings mentioned above (the latter not usually considered as constituting " language change " ; see further below). Textbooks in linguistics commonly list various types or categories of semantic change. 1 Although below I will be arguing that they are not very helpful for our understanding, an introductory discussion such as this one would be incomplete without taking them into account and briefly reviewing the types most commonly referred to: i Metaphoric extension. A metaphor expresses a relationship between two things based on a perceived similarity between them. When a word undergoes metaphoric extension, it gets a new referent which has some characteristic in common with the old referent. Words denoting body parts commonly undergo metaphoric extension: the head of an animal is its frontmost part, so one can also speak of the head of a line; the head of a person is his or her highest part, so one can speak of the head of a community, the person having the highest standing. Similarly, we speak of the foot of a mountain, the leg and back of a chair, the knees of a bald cypress, being on the heels of victory, and the heart of a palm. Another cross-linguistically common metaphor is the use of verbs meaning 'grasp, take hold of' in the meaning 'understand,' as English grasp, get, German fassen, begreifen, Mandarin li n g, huì. ii Metonymic extension. Metonymic extension results in a word coming to have a new referent that is associated in some way with the original referent. The two referents here stand in a contiguity relationship with one another, rather than in a similarity relationship as with metaphoric change. When we say, " The White House issued a bulletin, " we do not mean that the actual building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue engaged in this action; rather, we are referring to certain people associated with that building, that is, the executive branch of the US government. The phrase White House thus can refer to both the physical structure and the people associated with it; this latter meaning is a result of

Explorations of the Syntax-Semantics Interface, 2021

adverbs have received comparatively little attention in RRG. Degree adverbs have not been analyzed in RRG at all and have also been given comparatively less attention in other frameworks (for di erent analyses embedded in a generative tradition cf. Doetjes 1997, Vecchiato 1999). In this paper, I will primarily focus on adverbially used degree expressions, as exempli ed by the English examples in (1). A lot is used to indicate the intensity of frightening in (a). Following Bolinger (1972), cases like in (a) are called '(verbal) degree gradation' (I adopt the terminology put forward in Löbner 2012). In (b) a lot is used to specify the temporal duration of the sleeping event, whereas in (c) it indicates the frequency of his going to the cinema. Examples (b) and (c) are subsumed under the label 'extent gradation. ' (1) a. The dog frightens the boy a lot. b. Last night, the boy slept a lot. c. He goes to the cinema a lot. Although English makes use of a single adverb for extent and degree gradation, other languages like Polish use di erent adverbs for both subtypes of verb gra-Jens Fleischhauer, Anja Latrouite & Rainer Osswald (eds.). 2016. Explorations of the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Düsseldorf: dup.

The special properties that psych(ological) verbs manifest cross-linguistically have given rise to ongoing debates in syntactic and semantic theorizing. Regarding their lexical aspect classification, while verbal psych predicates with the Experiencer argument mapped onto the subject (SE psych predicates) have generally been analyzed as stative, there is little agreement on what kinds of eventualities object Experiencer (OE) psych predicates describe. On the stative reading, OE psych predicates have been classified as atelic causative states. On the (non-agentive) eventive reading, they have been widely analyzed as telic change of state predicates and classified as achievements or as accomplishments. Based on Polish, Rozwadowska (2003, 2012) argues that non-agentive eventive OE psych predicates in the perfective aspect denote an onset of a state and that they are atelic rather than telic. This paper offers further support for the view that Polish perfective psych verbs do not denote a change of state, i.e., a transition from α to ¬α. The evidence is drawn from verbal comparison and the distribution of the comparative degree quantifier jeszcze bardziej 'even more' in perfective psych predicates. It is argued here that in contexts including jeszcze bardziej 'even more', the perfective predication denotes an onset of a state whose degree of intensity exceeds the comparative standard. While a degree quantifier attached to the VP in the syntax contributes a differential measure function that returns a (vague) value representing the degree to which the intensity of the Experiencer's state exceeds the comparative standard in the event, it does not affect the event structure of the perfective verb and it does not provide the VP denotation it modifies with a final endpoint. As the perfective picks the onset of an upper open state, perfective psych predicates typically give rise to an atelic interpretation.