Gradability as a window into the semantics of semifactives
Nicholas Fleisher
August 2022
 

I present a short initial study of *realize*-comparatives, constructions in which a comparative *than*-clause contains a semifactive predicate such as *realize* (e.g. *Ava is taller than I realized*). Such examples present challenges for classical views of factivity. I argue that they support a new understanding of the lexical semantics of semifactives: these require not the truth of their complement but informational coherence and consistency between their complement and their base index of evaluation. The picture that emerges is broadly consistent with recent pragmatic approaches to factive presupposition generation and projection. The account turns on an underlying notion of graded awareness, a core property of knowledge that is reflected in the linguistic behavior of knowledge predicates.
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Reference: lingbuzz/006769
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keywords: gradability, comparatives, semifactives, factivity, presupposition, semantics
previous versions: v1 [August 2022]
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