A Study on the Semantics of the English Polar Opposition

This paper discusses the semantics of a certain set of English adjectives that come in pairs and often follow an intensifier such as 'quite'. Pairs of adjectives such as 'old/young' and 'good/bad' are examples of these adjectives which indicate two extremes of a quality being described on some scales. This set of adjectives is referred to as polarity in the literature. Previous studies have observed the fact that the primary meaning of this type of pairs of adjectives is that one member of these pairs has negative connotations and the other member positive. Recently, the adjectives have been extensively discussed in terms of the semantics of measuring phrases that modify the adjectives. Particularly, the discussions have focused on the conditions which the adjectives must satisfy when they are modified by measuring phrases. In light of this, the major goal of this paper is to argue that the semantic characteristics of polar adjectives in English can be best explained based on the assumption that part of the meaning of the English adjectives is to establish relations between objects and abstract degrees on a scale following McNally & Kennedy (2008), and that the meaning of sentences containing the adjectives is to specify orderings between degrees on a particular scale.