Discourse

As the body of descriptive work on the lexical semantics of adjectives and adverbs grows, we learn more about how these expressions interact with the discourse context. Adjectives and adverbs differ substantially from nouns and verbs in their sensitivity to the speaker and in their ability to carry out metalinguistic or metadiscoursal functions. This difference is immediately evident in descriptive grammatical classifications of adverbs such as “connective,” “evaluation,” or “speech-act related” (Huddleston and Pullum 2002).

However, there are less obvious manifestations of discourse sensitivity as well. For example, Barker (2002) argues that one of the main effects of the use of a gradable adjective is to clarify what constitutes the standard for truthful application of that adjective in a given context. That is, asserting that someone is tall can tell us something not only about the individual’s height but also about what counts as tall. Moreover, Barker argues that adjectives such as stupid when accompanied by an infinitival complement, as in (1), have only this function.

(1) Feynman is stupid to dance like that.

Taranto (this volume) makes a similar claim about adjectives such as clear, namely that their contribution to the discourse is fundamentally that of helping to synchronize the common ground by establishing which propositions are or should be evident to the conversation participants versus subject to differences of opinion.

Adverbs manifest much more heterogeneous interactions with discourse. Perhaps the best studied of these is the behavior of focus adverbs (e.g. Rooth 1985). However, the recent development of interest in incorporating speech act theory and the theory of implicature into formal semantics (e.g. Ginzburg and Sag 2001, Gunlogson 2001, Potts 2005) has turned attention particularly to those adverbs which contribute information about the speaker’s attitude towards the proposition expressed; the contribution by Olivier Bonami and Daniele Godard is an example of such work.

The special behavior of adjectives and adverbs in discourse is still a very new area of study which promises to contribute significantly to our understanding of how to model discourse and how language (and speakers) exploit discourse structure.