Being tall compared to compared to being tall and being taller

Authors

  • Jaime Castillo-Gamboa University of Southern California
  • Alexis Wellwood University of Southern California
  • Deniz Rudin University of Southern California

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/elm.1.4872

Keywords:

gradable adjectives, implicit comparatives, degree semantics, experimental semantics

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantics of implicit comparatives (Alice is tall compared to Bob) and its connections to the semantics of explicit comparatives (Alice is taller than Bob) and sentences with adjectives in plain positive form (Alice is tall). We consider evidence from two experiments that tested judgments about these three kinds of sentence, and provide a semantics for implicit comparatives from the perspective of degree semantics.

Author Biographies

  • Jaime Castillo-Gamboa, University of Southern California
    Graduate Student, USC School of Philosophy
  • Alexis Wellwood, University of Southern California
    Associate Professor, USC School of Philosophy
  • Deniz Rudin, University of Southern California
    Assitant Professor, Department of Linguistics

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Published

2021-07-30

Issue

Section

Articles