Distributional Modification: The Case of Frequency Adjectives

Abstract

We argue that DISTRIBUTIONAL MODIFICATION is one strategy that language affords for composing propositions about the quantity of entities that participate in a given situation. Distributional modifiers apply to kind descriptions, contributing the entailment that the kind is instantiated by a SET of tokens with a particular distribution. As a case study, we analyze frequency adjectives (FAs, e.g. occasional). We show that previous work, including our own, has suffered for focusing on the paraphrases of FAs rather than on their morphosyntax. We argue for two subclasses of FAs: those that are intersective modifiers sortally restricted to events, and those that are not. The study reinforces two novel theoretical claims in Gehrke & McNally 2011: sometimes kinds are realized by sets of tokens, rather than individual tokens; and some clauses constitute descriptions of EVENT KINDS, rather than EVENT TOKENS.