Semantics Research Group Meeting, December 9, 2016

This talk brings to bear an idea from value theory to the natural language semantics of gradable adjectives. Delineationists about gradability claim that the meaning of comparatives is reducible to the meaning of embedded gradable adjectives (Kamp; Klein; van Benthem; van Rooij; Burnett). On the other hand, it has been argued that in so-called cases of parity, pairs of items may be comparable with respect to a covering value even if they determinately fail to instantiate the trichotomy of being either better, worse, or equal (Parfit; Griffin; Chang; Gert; Rabinowicz). I will argue that delineationism fails to supply sufficient means of accommodating cases of parity.