Intersective modifier
In linguistics, an intersective modifier is an expression which modifies another via set intersection. One example is the English adjective "blue", whose intersectivity can be seen in the fact that being a "blue pig" entails being both blue and a pig. By contrast, the English adjective "former" is non-intersective since a "former president" is neither former nor a president.[1]
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In set-theoretic terms, this means <math>[\![ blue pig <math>]\!] = [\![ blue ]\!] \cap [\![ pig <math>]\!]<math>.
There are different kinds of intersectives:[2]
- subsective:[3] beautiful skater; the person can be beautiful and a skater, or the person can skate beautifully; in the latter case, the adjective qualifies the kind of skater the person is (rather than add non-intersective information); this is known as a subsective adjective; in this case 'beautiful' can be either subsective or pure intersective depending on interpretation (semantic ambiguity)
- relative subsective: big toddler or small elephant; such adjectives are gradable—the baby can be big for a toddler, or the elephant can be small for an elephant -->
See also
References
- ^ Morzycki, Marcin (2016). Modification (PDF). Cambridge University Press. pp. 14–16.
- ^ "Adjectives" (PDF).
- ^ Ellie Pavlick; Chris Callison-Burch. "So-Called Non-Subsective Adjectives" (PDF).
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