Aesthetic adjectives lack uniform behavior
The goal of this short paper is to show that esthetic adjectives—exemplified by “beautiful” and “elegant”—do not pattern stably on a range of linguistic diagnostics that have been used to taxonomize the gradability properties of adjectives. We argue that a plausible explanation for this puzzling dat...
| Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | article |
| Status: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Publication Date: | 2016 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repository: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:recercat.cat:10230/32802 |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10230/32802 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2016.1208927 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Aesthetic adjectives Aesthetic concepts Gradable adjectives Predicates of personal taste Experimental semantics Experimental philosophy Experimental philosophical aesthetics Context Comparison class |
| Summary: | The goal of this short paper is to show that esthetic adjectives—exemplified by “beautiful” and “elegant”—do not pattern stably on a range of linguistic diagnostics that have been used to taxonomize the gradability properties of adjectives. We argue that a plausible explanation for this puzzling data involves distinguishing two properties of gradable adjectives that have been frequently conflated: whether an adjective’s applicability is sensitive to a comparison class, and whether an adjective’s applicability is context-dependent. |
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