We are delighted to announce that the paper “Scale-sensitivity of comparatives and measure phrase interpretations in Gitksan” by 5th-year student Yurika Aonuki has just been published in Semantics of Natural Languages. Congratulations, Yurika!
Here is the abstract:
This paper demonstrates that in Gitksan, measure phrases (MPs) occurring with relative gradable adjectives (GAs) like wii nakw tall receive differential interpretations even in the absence of an overt comparative operator or an overt standard phrase, a pattern which has been only reported in Japanese (e.g., Snyder et al. 1995) and Korean (Oda 2008; contra Sawada and Grano 2011). In contrast, MPs occurring with minimum-standard GAs like k?ak? open receive absolute interpretations, as in many languages including Japanese (Sawada and Grano 2011). However, Gitksan differs from Japanese in two crucial ways. First, the distinction between relative and minimum-standard GAs is observed even without MPs: relative GAs can easily receive comparative interpretations on their own, while minimum-standard GAs cannot. Second, Gitksan has a morphologically free, overt morpheme kaa, which can give rise to comparative readings with any GA and hence makes the possibility of a covert comparative operator less plausible. On a closer investigation, the comparative readings of relative GAs without kaa show mixed behaviours of what have traditionally been called explicit and implicit comparatives (Kennedy 2007). I propose that these comparative readings arise from inherently context-sensitive denotations of relative GAs, building on Odas (2008) analysis of Japanese. The latter half of the paper examines the semantics of kaa and analyzes it as a superlative morpheme, and highlights the role of consideration of alternatives to the subject in comparative readings observed without kaa.
The paper is open access: https://doi.org/10.16995/snl.29102