Natural languages have a wide variety of lexical items that express degree or quantity, or that modify expressions of degree and quantity. An important aspect of many of them is that they are polarity sensitive. This project, which builds on the results of the DFG-funded project ‘Scales and their Structures’, investigates degree attenuators (DAs), a class of scalar polarity items that are characterized by their attenuating effect (Israel 1996).
Paradigm examples of this class are the negative polarity item much (e.g. Fred *has / doesn’t have much money) and the positive polarity item fairly (e.g. Fred is / *isn’t fairly tall). The defining characteristic of DAs is that they are comparatively uninformative, in that in the contexts where they are licensed, they produce weaker assertions than salient alternatives. For example, ‘doesn’t have much money’ is weaker than ‘doesn’t have money/any money/a dime’, and ‘fairly tall’ is weaker than ‘very/extremely tall’. This attenuating or weakening character is a surprising property: better known polarity items – e.g. any, ever and minimizers such as (lift) a finger – have the opposite effect of strengthening the utterances in which they occur, and some prominent theories have taken such strengthening effect to be a necessary component of polarity sensitivity.
DAs constitute a large natural class, including not only vague quantifiers/quantity adverbials (much, far, Japanese anmari) but also precision regulators (about, ungefähr) and a variety of adjectival degree modifiers (e.g. all that, sonderlich, ziemlich). Yet while DAs lie at the intersection of two extensively researched topics in semantics, namely degree modification and polarity sensitivity, they have received relatively little attention in either tradition.
The goal of the Degree Attenuators project is to develop a comprehensive semantic theory of the class of DAs. The project approaches their polarity sensitivity via an in-depth investigation of their scalar semantics, drawing on insights from the ‘Scales’ project. As such, this is not only the first large-scale study of attenuating polarity items, but also the first to investigate polarity sensitivity from the perspective of a degree-based semantic framework.
Publikation 21.12.2021
Umbach, Carla & Stephanie Solt
Publikation 17.09.2021
Solt, Stephanie & E. Cameron Wilson
Publikation 11.09.2020
Tanaka, Eri, Kenta Mizutani & Stephanie Solt
Benz, Anton & Adina Camelia Bleotu 20. - 22.09.2023
Bleotu, Adina Camelia & Anton Benz 05. - 08.09.2023
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Anton Benz & Gabriela Brozbǎ 12.05.2023 - 14.05.2023
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Anton Benz & Gabriela Brozba 30.11.2022 - 02.12.2022
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Rudmila Rodica Ivan, Gabriela Bîlbîie, Monica Casa, Mara Panaitescu, Andreea Nicolae, Anton Benz & Lyn Tieu 25.11.2022
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Anton Benz & Gabriela Brozba 06.10.2022 - 08.10.2022
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Anton Benz & Nicole Gotzner 01.10.2021 - 02.10.2021
Gotzner, Nicole & Anton Benz 08.09.2021 - 10.09.2021
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Anton Benz & Nicole Gotzner 08.09.2021 - 10.09.2021
Bleotu, Adina Camelia, Anton Benz & Nicole Gotzner 08.07.2021 - 09.07.2021
Bleotu, Camelia Adina, Anton Benz & Nicole Gotzner 26.09.2020 - 27.09.2020
Bleotu, Camelia Adina, Anton Benz & Nicole Gotzner 26.09.2020 - 27.09.2020
Bleotu, Camelia Adina, Anton Benz & Nicole Gotzner 16.09.2020 - 18.09.2020
Bleotu, Camelia Adina, Anton Benz & Nicole Gotzner 16.09.2020 - 18.09.2020
Gotzner, Nicole 26.06.2020
Gotzner, Nicole 25.06.2020 - 26.06.2020
Breheny, Richard, Chao Sun, Nicole Gotzner & Anton Benz 05.03.2020 - 06.03.2020
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 13.02.2020 - 15.02.2020
Conference 20.11.2019
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 20.11.2019 - 21.11.2019
Sun, Chao, Anton Benz, Nicole Gotzner & Richard Breheny 20.11.2019 - 21.11.2019
Workshop/AG 25.09.2019 - 26.09.2019
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 19.09.2019 - 20.09.2019
Jördens, Kim A., Nicole Gotzner & Katharina Spalek 04.09.2019 - 07.09.2019
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 19.06.2019 - 21.06.2019
Gotzner, Nicole & Diana Mazzarella 19.6.2019 - 21.6.2019
Sun, Chao, Richard Breheny, Nicole Gotzner & Anton Benz 19.06.2019 - 21.06.2019
Gotzner, Nicole, Stephanie Solt & Anton Benz 23.05.2019-24.05.2019
Workshop/AG 23.05.2019 - 24.05.2019
Workshop/AG 27.03.2019 – 28.03.2019
Gotzner, Nicole & Diana Mazzarella 20.03.2019 – 21.03.2019
Mazzarella, Diana & Nicole Gotzner 16.01.2019 - 17.01.2019
Gotzner, Nicole 29.11.2018 – 30.11.2018
Gotzner, Nicole, Jacopo Romoli & Paolo Santorio 23.11.2018
Gotzner, Nicole, Jacopo Romoli & Paolo Santorio 22.11.2018
Hesse, Christoph 01.11.2018
Gotzner, Nicole, Stephanie Solt & Anton Benz 31.10.2018
Gotzner, Nicole, Jacopo Romoli & Paolo Santorio 31.10.2018
Hesse, Christoph 26.09.2018 – 28.09.2018
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 26.09.2018 – 28.09.2018
Hesse, Christoph & Anton Benz 19.09.2018 - 21.09.2018
Hesse, Christoph & Anton Benz 06.09.2018 - 08.09.2018
Benz, Anton 21.08.2018 - 23.08.2018
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 06.06.2018 - 07.06.2018
Gotzner, Nicole, Stephanie Solt & Anton Benz 18.05.2018 - 20.05.2018
Gotzner, Nicole, Jacopo Romoli & Paolo Santorio 18.05.2018 - 20.05.2018
Gotzner, Nicole 20.03.2018
Gotzner, Nicole, Anton Benz & Lisa Raithel 15.03.2018 - 17.03.2018
Benz, Anton 07.03.2018 - 09.03.2018
Gotzner, Nicole & Katharina Spalek 07.03.2018 - 09.03.2018
Hesse, Christoph & Anton Benz 10.01.2018
Gotzner, Nicole 22.10.2017 - 26.10.2017
Gotzner, Nicole 12.10.2017
Benz, Anton, Carla Bombi Ferrer & Nicole Gotzner 07.09.2017 - 10.09.2017
Benz, Anton, Lisa Raithel & Nicole Gotzner 07.09.2017 - 10.09.2017
Spalek, Katharina, Nicole Gotzner & Beate Bergmann 26.06.2017 - 27.06.2017
Benz, Anton, Nicole Gotzner & Lisa Raithel 21.06.2017 - 23.06.2017
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 22.03.2017
Benz, Anton, Nicole Gotzner & Lisa Raithel 13.03.2017
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 04.09.2016 - 06.09.2016
Gotzner, Nicole & Jacopo Romoli 04.09.2016 - 06.09.2016
Benz, Anton & Maria Spychalska 20.06.2016 - 21.06.2016
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 20.06.2016 - 21.06.2016
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 02.06.2016 - 03.06.2016
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 25.05.2016 - 27.05.2016
Timothy Leffell, Alexandre Cremers, Jacopo Romoli & Nicole Gotzner 07.01.2016 - 10.01.2016
Gotzner, Nicole & Anton Benz 03.09.2015 - 05.09.2015
Gotzner, Nicole, David Barner & Stephen Crain 03.09.2015 - 05.09.2015
Gotzner, Nicole, David Barner & Stephen Crain 03.09.2015 - 05.09.2015
Gotzner, Nicole & Anton Benz 02.09.2015 - 05.09.2015
Gotzner, Nicole & Jacopo Romoli 16.07.2015 - 18.07.2015
Gotzner, Nicole, David Barner & Stephen Crain 16.07.2015 - 18.07.2015
Gotzner, Nicole 14.07.2015
Gotzner, Nicole & Anton Benz 26.06.2015 - 27.06.2015
Benz, Anton & Maria Spychalska 26.06.2015 - 27.06.2015
Gotzner, Nicole, Judith Degen & Noah Goodman 26.06.2015 - 27.06.2015
Gotzner, Nicole & Anton Benz 01.06.2015 - 03.06.2015
Gotzner, Nicole 19.03.2015 - 20.03.2015
Gotzner, Nicole, John M. Tomlinson & Katharina Spalek 19.03.2015 - 21.03.2015
Gotzner, Nicole 10.12.2014
Benz, Anton 14.10.2014 - 15.10.2014
Gotzner, Nicole 15.09.2014 - 17.09.2014
Gotzner, Nicole, Katharina Spalek & Isabell Wartenburger 03.09.2014 - 06.09.2014
Benz, Anton 26.08.2014
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 11.08.2014 - 15.08.2014
Gotzner, Nicole & Katharina Spalek 11.08.2014 - 22.08.2014
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 08.05.2014
Benz, Anton & Nicole Gotzner 21.02.2014 - 24.02.2014
Gotzner, Nicole 07.02.2014
Benz, Anton 18.11.2010 - 20.11.2010