Size Adjectives as Degree Modifiers

Although the traditional focus of research into degree modification has been the adjectival extended projection, it has long been recognized that degree modification or something quite like it is possible in other categories as well (Bolinger 1972, Abney 1987, Deutjes 1997, Kennedy and McNally 2004, a.o.). The conditions under which it is possible, though, and mechanisms that bring it about remain largely mysterious. In this talk, I'll examine one peculiar species of such modification, exemplified by that enormous idiot or a big beer-drinker, in which a size adjective characterizes a degree associated with the modified noun. Across a number of languages, these readings manifest two intriguing properties, apparently not previously noted: they are possible prenominally but not postnominally, and systematically with adjectives that predicate bigness but not with ones that predicate smallness. I'll consider two ways of thinking about how this phenomenon comes about. One of these builds on the intuition that the contextually-supplied standards relative to which gradable predicates are evaluated cannot vary as widely in the nominal domain as elsewhere. The other approach begins instead with the idea that the contrast between adjectives of bigness and adjectives of smallness observed here is analogous to cross-polar anomaly (Kennedy 1997, Kennedy 2001, Winter 2004, a.o.). Both of these approaches build a compositional semantics for degree readings of size adjectives and account for their distribution by relying on a independently-motivated and often overtly realized Degree head in the extended NP. The difference between degree and size readings that is at the heart of the puzzle here is a true ambiguity, not mere vagueness—(1) is not contradictory, unlike (2): (1) a. Gladys isn't very big, but she is a very big beer-drinker. b. Harry isn't enormous, but he is an enormous idiot. (2) a. # This chair isn't very big, but it is a very big chair. b. # That building isn't enormous, but it is an enormous building. Degree readings are possible inside DP and behave quite regularly in a variety of grammatical environments, as (3–4) reflect, but, as (5) shows, they are never possible in predicative positions: (3) a. Gladys is a big beer-drinker. b. Harry is an enormous idiot. (4) a. Gladys is a bigger idiot than Floyd. b. How big an idiot is Gladys? c. Gladys is too big an idiot to talk to. (5) a. *That beer-drinker is big. (here and below, * is wrt the degree …