Séminaire SynSem avec Cécile Meier (Universität Frankfurt)

It has been observed that the willingness of informants to calculate scalar implicatures with logically dependent adjectives like smart and brilliant is rather low over all.  I will argue that the inference to the negation of the extreme adjective only arises if there is reason to think that both adjectives are evaluated with respect to the same standard of comparison.  (a) Weak adjectives like smart in the positive and extreme adjectives like brilliant have a basic universal meaning and are normally evaluated with respect to different standards of comparison. (b) I suggest that weak adjectives have a bleached existential meaning, in addition, that allows for an attenuated interpretation (in the "context“ of the extreme adjective) by simultaneously adjusting its standard to the one of the extreme adjective. (c) Suitable alternatives for calculating scalar implicatures might then be derived by a strategy called the Neo-Katzirian approach by Buccola et al. (2021): A pair of adjectives like smart and brilliant only counts as a SCALE for pragmatic reasoning if the weaker adjective is interpreted existentially and the stronger one universally and provided all other meaning components are identical. But force variability and restriction adjustment is costly and this costliness may then explain low rates for pragmatic enrichment.