Gradable adjectives, semantic scales, and lexical economy: a corpus-based formal semantic analysis of temperature adjectives in English

Abstract

This study examines why English encodes continuous temperature meaning through a small set of gradable adjectives and degree modifiers rather than a large enumerated vocabulary. Drawing on Kennedy’s (2007. Vagueness and grammar: The semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy 30(1). 1–45) scale-structure framework and a register-stratified corpus of 1,131 tokens, we show that two principles operate at different levels of explanation. Gradation is the primary structural mechanism: relative-standard adjectives (cold, cool, warm, hot) attract degree modifiers at rates of 38–49 %, while absolute-standard adjectives (freezing, scorching) remain below 5 %, an asymmetry confirmed by chi-square tests ( p  < 0.001) and logistic regression. Lexical economy is a secondary optimisation pressure: the combinatorial system yields economy ratios of 9–13:1 across domains. These findings support a unified account in which scale structure determines the architecture and economy shapes its size.