Abstract
The adjective ‘is justified’ has all the hallmarks of a gradable adjective. But the relationship between gradable uses and straightforward predications of the form ‘x is justified’ has been underexplored by epistemologists. In this paper we undertake to do some ground clearing as a prelude to better understanding this relationship.
Highlights
IntroductionThe relationship between gradable uses and straightforward predications of the form ‘x is justified’ has been underexplored by epistemologists
The adjective ‘is justified’ has all the hallmarks of a gradable adjective
It is very natural to model them in the following way: They are associated with a certain scale and in context, a threshold on the scale is imposed
Summary
The relationship between gradable uses and straightforward predications of the form ‘x is justified’ has been underexplored by epistemologists. Questions of the form ‘How justified is/was x’ are not hard to find:. Many degree modifiers are completely felicitous for ‘justified’:. (6) Defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute said those concerns are completely justified given the Trump administration’s penchant for using whatever means necessary to get foreign countries to buy U.S products.. Not all degree modifiers are felicitously combined with ‘justified’. ‘x is slightly justified’ and ‘x is very justified’ and ‘x is almost justified’ are pretty marginal to our ear It is common even for paradigmatic gradable adjectives to be somewhat choosy about which degree modifiers they admit.. We will not get to the bottom of that issue here
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