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In:Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 29, Nijmegen
Edited by Janine Berns, Haike Jacobs and Dominique Nouveau
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13] 2018
► pp. 225–244

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Spanish adjectives of completeness as maximizers of property concept nouns

 | Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Published online: 13 July 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.13.14mas
Maximizers (completely, fully) are degree modifiers sensitive to the scale structure of the adjective they combine with. Spanish adjectives of completeness (completo ‘complete’, total ‘total’) show a distribution similar to that of their adverbial counterparts when modifying property concept [PC] nouns (libertad ‘freedom’, sabiduría ‘wisdom’). This paper argues that adjectives of completeness are degree modifiers in the nominal domain. It adopts a semantics of PC nouns according to which they denote substances, following Francez & Koontz-Garboden (2015). These substances can be bounded or unbounded, just like their related adjectives (libre ‘free’, etc.). By establishing a strict parallelism between adverbs and adjectives of completeness, this paper contributes to the understanding of completeness contributes to the understanding of scalarity across categories and the relation between degrees and measurements.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Maximality modifiers in the adjectival domain
  • 3.Adjectives of completeness modifying property concept nouns
  • 4.The semantics of property concept nouns
    • 4.1Properties of property concept nouns
    • 4.2Property concept nouns as predicates of portions of a substance
    • 4.3Source of gradability and collapse between amount and intensity
  • 5.Adjectives of completeness as maximizers of property concept nouns
    • 5.1Introducing degrees in the semantics of PC nouns
    • 5.2Adjectives of completeness are maximizers
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
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