Liao, S-Y and Meskin, A (2017) Aesthetic Adjectives: Experimental Semantics and Context-Sensitivity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94 (2). pp. 371-398. ISSN 0031-8205
Abstract
One aim of this essay is to contribute to understanding aesthetic communication—the process by which agents aim to convey thoughts and transmit knowledge about aesthetic matters to others. Our focus will be on the use of aesthetic adjectives in aesthetic communication. Although theorists working on the semantics of adjectives have developed sophisticated theories about gradable adjectives, they have tended to avoid studying aesthetic adjectives—the class of adjectives that play a central role in expressing aesthetic evaluations (e.g., ‘beautiful’, ‘ugly’, ‘elegant’). And despite the wealth of attention paid to aesthetic adjectives by philosophical aestheticians, they have paid little attention to contemporary linguistic theories of adjectives. We take our work to be a first step in remedying these lacunae. In this paper, we present four experiments that examine one aspect of how aesthetic adjectives ordinarily function: the context‐sensitivity of their application standards. Our results present a prima facie empirical challenge to a common distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives because aesthetic adjectives are found to behave differently from both. Our results thus also constitute a prima facie vindication of some philosophical aestheticians’ contention that aesthetic adjectives constitute a particularly interesting segment of natural language, even if the boundaries of this segment might turn out to be different from what they had in mind.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: 'Liao, S-Y and Meskin, A (2017) Aesthetic Adjectives: Experimental Semantics and Context-Sensitivity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 94 (2). pp. 371-398,' which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12217. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. |
Keywords: | aesthetics, adjectives, context-sensitivity, experimental philosophy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EU - European Union 328977 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 08 Jul 2015 13:00 |
Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2020 15:40 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12217 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/phpr.12217 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:87804 |