Gradable Adjectives and Degree Expressions

This chapter provides an overview of the semantics of gradable adjectives and the grammatical mechanisms by which the meaning of these adjectives is modulated. This entails a discussion of how gradability and vagueness are related, and of how best to model that relation semantically. Perhaps the most informative window into this domain is the class of degree constructions – which includes comparatives, equatives, superlatives, and their less‐well‐understood grammatical cousins. These provide a view of how adjectives fit into larger structures, but it's possible to look in the other direction as well, by using a variety of degree morphemes (such as very and fully ) to explore subtle distinctions in the lexical semantics of adjectives themselves. Finally, over the last decade or so, major strides have been made toward answering a central question: how do languages differ in how they express gradation and comparison?