Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (6):618-631 (2016)
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Abstract |
The goal of this short paper is to show that esthetic adjectives—exemplified by “beautiful” and “elegant”—do not pattern stably on a range of linguistic diagnostics that have been used to taxonomize the gradability properties of adjectives. We argue that a plausible explanation for this puzzling data involves distinguishing two properties of gradable adjectives that have been frequently conflated: whether an adjective’s applicability is sensitive to a comparison class, and whether an adjective’s applicability is context-dependent.
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Keywords | aesthetic adjectives gradable adjectives predicates of personal taste experimental semantics experimental philosophy experimental philosophical aesthetics context comparison class |
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DOI | 10.1080/0020174x.2016.1208927 |
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What Metalinguistic Negotiations Can't Do.Teresa Marques - 2017 - Phenomenology and Mind (12):40-48.
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