Semantics

Let us leave the syntax–semantics interface and turn to semantics and the lexicon. Two fundamental questions, extensively explored in the typologically oriented literature on adjectives (e.g. Wetzer 1996; Dixon and Aikhenvald 2004) are what distinguishes adjectives from nouns and verbs, and what kinds of properties adjectives (as opposed to nouns or verbs) prototypically express. Though these questions have not received much attention in the formal linguistics literature, this is beginning to change, in part due to the fresh perspective the study of gradability can bring to these questions.