Evaluation, thresholds, and practical commitments: the grammar of adjectival mildness

Abstract

Mildly positive adjectives (henceforth, MPAs)—e.g., decent, acceptable, adequate—are typically used to express a moderately favorable evaluation of an object. In this manuscript, I present an investigation of the semantics and pragmatics of this class of expressions. I outline a proposal of MPAs as predicates whose positive form relies on particular type of functional standard which I refer to as a necessity standard: a threshold corresponding to the minimum value that an object must have in order to be pursued in compliance with the norms and requirements in place in the current world. The article provides two core contributions. On an empirical level, it enriches our understanding of the typology of gradable predicates, highlighting MPAs’ profile as strikingly overlapping with that of both relative and absolute predicates, two classes of gradable adjectives that are normally thought of as disjoint. Second, it affords a novel perspective on how gradability and modality, in conjunction with categories of human action such as value and practical commitments, are reflected in the grammatical behavior of these predicates and ultimately work together to enable us to express assessments in communication.