The Several Faces of Adnominal Degree Modification

One of the best tools we have for probing the lexical semantics of adjectives is degree modification. Different degree modifiers impose different requirements on the adjectives they combine with, and the patterns these restrictions reveal can be used to establish a typology of adjectives. This line of research—pursued by Kennedy & McNally (2005), Rotstein & Winter (2004), and many others since— has demonstrated that a major axis along which adjectives vary is the structure of the scales they are associated with. But adjectives are not alone in admitting degree modification. Other syntactic categories do, too. Some recent research (Morzycki 2005, 2009, Sassoon 2007, de Vries 2010, and Xie 2010) points to the conclusion that nouns are among them. My aim here is to use such adnominal degree modifiers to probe the lexical semantics of nouns. What this will suggest is that nouns differ from their adjectival cousins in that a major axis of variation among them is the means by which a gradable meaning is achieved. For adjectives, the contrasts relevant to this kind of inquiry include those in (1):