Abstract
It has been observed that sentences containing expressive adjectives modifying a DP can have different readings. In one reading it is the DP referent that is negatively evaluated (called “local interpretation”), while in another reading it is a different DP referent that is evaluated (called “argument hopping”), and in yet another reading it is the whole situation described in the sentence that is being evaluated (called “sentence-level interpretation”). There are two opposing views on how to capture this ambiguity: pragmatic accounts arguing that the interpretation is governed by contextual factors (via inference) and a recent syntactic account (using an upward-looking version of Agree) arguing that expressive adjectives are scope-taking elements. The goal of the present paper is to clearly identify the different predictions and testing environments necessary to decide which account is more suitable to capture the data. While the results of an experiment designed to test these predictions show a lot of variation, they also suggest that the syntactic constraints proposed by the syntactic account are not responsible for the interpretation of expressive adjectives.
Highlights
This squib was concerned with two competing accounts of the interpretation of expressive adjectives, namely pragmatic accounts arguing that it is mainly contextual factors driving their interpretation and a recent syntactic account using an upward-looking version of Agree
The upwards-looking Agree model predicts that expressive adjectives in root clauses containing positively evaluating sentential adverbs only allow a local interpretation, i.e., argument hopping should not be possible
This model predicts that an expressive adjective located in an embedded clause cannot be used to negatively evaluate a referent or a proposition expressed in the matrix clause
Summary
The reading in which it is the DP which is not modified by the expressive and yet is negatively evaluated is shown in (1b) This reading is quite surprising because the adjective is interpreted on a constituent different from the one it is overtly modifying. Cases like these are called “argument hopping” by Gutzmann (2019). With the sentence-level interpretation it is the whole situation described by the sentence which is evaluated Such cases, in which the scope of the evaluation applies to a larger constituent are called “argument extension” by Gutzmann. Though multiple interpretations are possible, especially when embedded clauses are considered, the current study mainly focus on the following possibilities:
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