{"id":18281,"date":"2026-10-05T06:01:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T10:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=18281"},"modified":"2026-10-05T09:48:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T13:48:25","slug":"aonuki-published-in-semantics-of-natural-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2026\/10\/05\/aonuki-published-in-semantics-of-natural-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Aonuki published in Semantics of Natural Languages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are delighted to announce that the paper &#8220;Scale-sensitivity of comparatives and measure phrase interpretations in Gitksan&#8221; by 5th-year student <a href=\"https:\/\/yurikaaonuki.github.io\/\">Y<span data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\">urika Aonuki<\/span><\/a> has just been published in <em>Semantics of Natural Languages.\u00a0<\/em>Congratulations, Yurika!<\/p>\n<p>Here is the abstract:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This paper demonstrates that in Gitksan, measure phrases (MPs) occurring with relative gradable adjectives (GAs) like \u0092<em>wii \u0092nakw<\/em> \u0091tall\u0092 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 <em>k?\u0092ak?<\/em> \u0091open\u0092 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<em> k\u0092aa<\/em>, 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 <em>k\u0092aa<\/em> show mixed behaviours of what have traditionally been called \u0091explicit\u0092 and \u0091implicit\u0092 comparatives (Kennedy 2007). I propose that these comparative readings arise from inherently context-sensitive denotations of relative GAs, building on Oda\u0092s (2008) analysis of Japanese. The latter half of the paper examines the semantics of <em>k\u0092aa<\/em> and analyzes it as a superlative morpheme, and highlights the role of consideration of alternatives to the subject in comparative readings observed without <em>k\u0092aa<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The paper is open access: <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.16995\/snl.29102\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.16995\/snl.29102<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are delighted to announce that the paper &#8220;Scale-sensitivity of comparatives and measure phrase interpretations in Gitksan&#8221; by 5th-year student Yurika Aonuki has just been published in Semantics of Natural Languages.\u00a0Congratulations, Yurika! Here is the abstract: This paper demonstrates that in Gitksan, measure phrases (MPs) occurring with relative gradable adjectives (GAs) like \u0092wii \u0092nakw \u0091tall\u0092 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18283,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18281\/revisions\/18283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}