Adjective/adverb semantics and verb semantics

Note that a strictly semantic account of the distribution of degree modifiers presupposes that not only adjectives and adverbs but also verbs and nouns must have gradability properties, since degree morphemes can occur with all grammatical categories. Though Kennedy and McNally mainly discuss adjectival predicates, they show that indeed there is a relationship between the scales with respect to which adjectives are interpreted and the semantics of the modified nominal in some cases. Doetjes (this volume) examines nominal predicates in greater detail and shows that they vary in gradability properties depending in part on whether they are count or non-count.

The relation between part structure and gradability is also observable with respect to verbs. Hay et al. (1999) and Kennedy and Levin (this volume) show how deadjectival verbs inherit the scalar properties of the adjectives from which they are derived. These scalar properties, in turn, largely determine the aspectual properties of the verb. As a general rule, adjectives with closed scales yield telic verbs, while adjectives with open scales yield atelic verbs. However, the task of establishing the precise relationship of scale structure to telicity is complicated in the case of verbs of variable telicity, as the different views expressed in Kearns (2007), Kennedy and Levin (this volume), and Pinon (this volume) show.

A careful consideration of the gradability properties of verbs can lead to other kinds of insights into verb semantics. Katz (this volume) maintains that stative verbs differ from non-stative verbs in not allowing true manner modification, and uses this observation to support a classical Davidsonian treatment of stative verbs on which they contrast with non-stative verbs in lacking an eventuality argument. However, this claim faces a number of apparent counterexamples in which stative verbs do appear with what appear to be manner adverbials, such as to know well. Katz argues that most such counterexamples in fact involve not manner modification but rather a special kind of degree modification. In addition to its implications for verb semantics, this work points to the need to explore further the lexical semantics of a whole family of adverbs such as well which manifest characteristics of both manner and degree modifiers.