Two Theories about Adjectives
Hans Kamp · 2013
This chapter discusses two theories about adjectives. The first theory dates from the late 1960s. It is stated in Montague (1970a) and Parsons (1968). According to this theory the meaning of an adjective is a function which maps the meanings of noun phrases onto other such meanings. The main virtue of this doctrine is that it enables us to treat, whithin a precise semantic theory for a natural languae - as e.g. that of Montague - adjectives in such a way that certain sentences which are, or might well be, false are not branded by the semantics as logically true. Vagueness is one of the various reasons why certain sentences may be without truth value. Their analysis requires more mathematical structure than has been built into the models here considered. The difference between the formal framework needed there and the one presented is essentially that between metric and arbitrary topological spaces. Keywords:Adjectives; sentences; two theories; vagueness