Elena Castroviejo

A Good Intensifier

We provide a semantic account of the Catalan ad-adjectival modifier ben ‘well’, which yields intensification by, we argue, positively evaluating a property ascription. Formally, this translates as applying the predicate good to the saying event available to any utterance. We treat the output of this modification as a Conventional Implicature (rather than at-issue content), which is responsible for its positive polarity behavior. Additionally, we exploit the semantic similarity between this intensifier use of well with other readings of well, including manner (well written) and degree (well acquainted), which we analyze as ‘manner-in-disguise’. In our proposal, they all predicate goodness of an event.

Cross-Linguistic Experimental Evidence Distinguishing the Role of Context in Disputes over Taste and Possibility

One might think that Sam’s utterance in (1) is a subjective one, essentially expressing that he personally finds the cake tasty, in which case one would not expect significant meaning differences between (1) and a similar utterance where the subjectivity is made explicit, such as (3).