Differential measure phrases with implicit comparatives in Gitksan

Abstract

In most of the literature of degree semantics, whether gradable adjectives receive context-independent or -dependent denotations has been a correlate of whether a language is analyzed as having degrees as semantic primitives (Cresswell 1976; von Stechow 1984; Kennedy 1999) or not (Klein 1980, 1982, 1991). A third logical possibility is to postulate context-dependent yet degree-based denotations of gradable adjectives (Beck, Oda & Sugisaki 2004, Oda 2008 on Japanese; Breakstone 2012, Cariani, Santorio & Wellwood 2023b on English; see also Cariani, Santorio & Wellwood 2023a and Wellwood 2024). I argue that this third option predicts (i) availability of readings of implicit comparison (in Kennedy’s (2007a) sense) in positive constructions when the context provides a degree or entity to serve as the standard and that some implementations of this proposal (Beck et al. 2004; Oda 2008; Breakstone 2012) also predict (ii) compatibility of measure phrases with implicit comparatives. Both are wrong predictions for English, and
while (ii) is documented in Japanese (e.g., Snyder, Wexler & Das 1995; Beck et al. 2004; Oda 2008), existing evidence for (i) in Japanese (Beck et al. 2004; Oda 2008) is somewhat theory-dependent. I demonstrate that Gitksan (Tsimshianic) exhibits both (i) and (ii), providing support for the idea that degree-based GA denotations can be inherently context-dependent. Being the first systematic description and formal analysis of degree semantics in the Tsimshianic language family, this paper also demonstrates that Gitksan lacks semantic distinction between comparatives and superlatives, and analyzes a degree operator k’aa as a superlative morpheme.