Morzycki, Marcin. 2013. ‘Vagueness, Degrees, and Gradable Predicates’. This is a chapter of an in-preparation book to be called Modification (in the Cambridge University Press series Key Topics in Semantics an Pragmatics). The book is something between a textbook for people with a basic background in semantics and an introductory survey of work on the semantics of modification. More information about the whole project and additional chapters are also available. I’d really appreciate any feedback on this. BibTeX

The chapter begins with a discussion of vagueness in section 2. Section 3 gives a thumbnail sketch of theories of vagueness and gradability and explores one approach that hasn’t much captured the imagination of formal semanticists. Sections 4 and 5 presents two approaches that have. Section 6 compares them, considering the question of the status the notion ‘degree’ should have in the grammar. Finally, section 7 turns to scalar issues in the lexical semantics of adjectives.

vagueness, degrees, gradability, adjectives, antynomy, comparison classes, degree modification, degrees, extension gaps, gradable predicates, imprecision, lexical semantics, scale structure