Aesthetic adjectives lack uniform behavior

Liao, Shen-yi; McNally, Louise, 1965-; Meskin, Aaron

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2016.1208927

Aesthetic adjectives lack uniform behavior

Citation

Liao S, McNally L, Meskin A. Aesthetic adjectives lack uniform behavior. Inquiry. 2016; 59(6):618-31. DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2016.1208927

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.