Aesthetic adjectives lack uniform behavior

Abstract

The goal of this short paper is to show that esthetic adjectives—exemplified by “beautiful” and “elegant”—do not pattern stably on a range of linguistic diagnostics that have been used to taxonomize the gradability properties of adjectives. We argue that a plausible explanation for this puzzling data involves distinguishing two properties of gradable adjectives that have been frequently conflated: whether an adjective’s applicability is sensitive to a comparison class, and whether an adjective’s applicability is context-dependent.

Shen-yi Liao’s work was supported by a European Community FP7 Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship, grant PIIF-GA-2012-328977. Louise McNally’s work was supported by Spanish MINECO grant FFI2013-41301-P, AGAUR grant 2014SGR698, and an ICREA Academia award.