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Color, Context, and Compositionality∗ (2008)
| Citations: | 2 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@MISC{Kennedy08color,context,,
author = {Christopher Kennedy and Louise Mcnally},
title = {Color, Context, and Compositionality∗},
year = {2008}
}
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Abstract
Abstract Color adjectives have played a central role in work on language typol-ogy and variation, but there has been relatively little investigation of their actual meanings by researchers in formal semantics. This is particularly surprising given the fact that color terms have been at the center of debates in the philosophy of language over foundational questions, in particular whether the idea of a compo-sitional, truth-conditional theory of natural language semantics is even coherent. The challenge presented by color terms is articulated in greatest detail in the work of Charles Travis. Travis argues that structurally isomorphic sentences containing color adjectives can shift truth value from context to context depending on how they are used and in the absence of effects of vagueness or ambiguity/polysemy, and concludes that a deterministic mapping from structures to truth conditions is impossible. The goal of this paper is to provide a linguistic perspective on this is-sue, which we believe defuses Travis ’ challenge. We provide empirical arguments that color adjectives are in fact ambiguous between gradable and nongradable interpretations, and that this simple ambiguity, together with independently moti-vated options concerning scalar dimension within the gradable reading accounts for the Travis facts in a simpler, more constrained, and thus ultimately more suc-cessful fashion than recent contextualist analyses such as those in Szabo ́ (2001) or Rothschild and Segal (forthcoming). 1 Green leaves The focus of this paper is the semantics of color adjectives and the implications of examples like (1) for the view, taken for granted by most work in linguistic ∗Thanks to Nat Hansen and Daniel Rothschild for helpful discussion, and to participants in the
Keyphrases
color adjective color term defuses travis challenge isomorphic sentence recent contextualist analysis nongradable interpretation travis fact central role language typol-ogy nat hansen little investigation gradable reading account helpful discussion daniel rothschild charles travis formal semantics truth-conditional theory ambiguity polysemy empirical argument deterministic mapping linguistic thanks scalar dimension suc-cessful fashion actual meaning natural language semantics linguistic perspective foundational question abstract color adjective simple ambiguity
