La gradabilité nominale en anglais et en français

• Main Authors: Pauline Haas, Anne Jugnet
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires du Midi 2018-11-01
• Series: Anglophonia
• Subjects: semantics of nouns; lexical gradability; stative and dynamic intensive nouns; evaluative nouns
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/anglophonia/1681

The aim of this paper is to describe the gradability of nouns in French and in English. After a description of different conceptions of nominal gradability in the literature, we provide our definition of lexical gradability. Three classes of nouns can be gradable : stative intensive nouns (cleverness / intelligence), evaluative nouns (idiot / idiot), and dynamic intensive nouns (modernization / modernisation). The comparison between French and English shows that, even though a few discrepancies can be highlighted, nominal gradability is mostly similar in both languages.