A Typology of Multidimensional Adjectives

Abstract

This paper presents corpus-based evidence for a typology of multidimensional adjectives, like for example, healthy and sick. The interpretation of the latter is sensitive to multiple dimensions, such as blood pressure, pulse, sugar, cancer, etc. The study investigated the frequency of exception phrases, which operate on an implicit universal quantifier over adjectival dimensions, as in healthy, except for a slight cold, and not sick, except for high cholesterol. On the emerging typology, adjectives classify by the way their dimensions are glued together to create a single, uniform interpretation. The default interpretation of adjectives such as healthy involves implicit universal quantification over dimensions (dimension conjunction), while that of adjectives such as sick involves existential quantification (dimension disjunction). In adjectives like intelligent, the force of quantification over dimensions is context relative. Moreover, the paper presents support to the hypotheses that antonym polarity and modifier distribution guide our choice of quantifiers over dimensions in different adjectives. Thus, this research sheds new light on the nature of negative antonymy in multidimensional adjectives, and on the distribution of degree modifiers and exception phrases among multidimensional antonyms. Finally, it raises new questions pertaining to multidimensional comparisons.