Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of the syntactic constraints for the semantic interpretation of expressive adjectives (EAs). While it will be shown that EAs differ in many respects from ordinary adjectives, the most interesting property is what is called argument extension: EAs can semantically apply to a larger constituent. For instance, an EA in object position may express an attitude towards the entire proposition. It will be shown that a pure pragmatic approach, according to which EAs can freely pick their argument, is too liberal and that there are syntactic constraints on where an EA can be interpreted. These constraints can be accounted for by upwards agreement, if the place where is the adjective is interpreted carries an interpretable expressivity feature, while the EA itself comes with an uninterpretable one.
This article is a vastly appreviated version of a chapter on the same topic from my book The Grammar of Expressivity (Gutzmann 2019 [7]).
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Gutzmann, D. (2019). The Dog Ate the Damn Cake! The Syntax of Expressive Adjectives. In: Kojima, K., Sakamoto, M., Mineshima, K., Satoh, K. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11717. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31605-1_18
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