Towards a Grammar of Vagueness∗

This paper investigates the grammatical principles governing the interpretation of a class of vague predicates — gradable adjectives — focusing on the context dependence of the ‘standard of comparison’ with respect to which these predicates are judged to be true. I show that the range of variability in interpretation of the standard of comparison is broader than has generally been assumed, specifically that there are distinct types of standards with distinct effects on truth conditions, and I argue that an empirically adequate semantics for such predicates must be able to account for this variability. I then argue that the observed range of interpretations can be explained in terms of the interaction of the scalar properties of gradable predicates and general constraints on semantic economy and strength.