Adjectives: A Uniform Semantic Approach

Abstract

Despite their simple syntactic form, adjective-noun combinations seem to have no straightforward semantic method that parallels the simplicity of the syntax. This has led to the conventional belief that adjectives belong to a (semantically motivated) hierarchy. This has the consequence that a uniform treatment of adjectives is unattainable—without resorting to notions such as possible worlds, which are difficult to map into competent computer programs. Moreover, because of their seemingly “undisciplined” semantic behaviour, adjective-noun combinations have been used by some authors (e.g. [5]) to further the argument of non-compositionality of natural-language expressions. Contrary to such views, we believe that adjectives are more systematic in their behaviour than originally thought. In support of this claim and based on typed sets, we propose a uniform approach to the semantics of adjective-noun combinations. It hypothesizes that adjective-noun combinations can semantically be thought of as a set intersection involving the adjective(s) and the head noun of the compound.