「多い／少ない」の段階形容詞としての特徴について：段階形容詞「高い」との比較から

Abstract

In this paper, we deal with two Japanese adjectives, ooi and sukunai, which roughly mean 'many' and 'few', respectively. ooi and sukunai show some peculiarities in their use. In most cases these two adjectives cannot be used attributively. And these two adjectives disallow unmodified kind-denoting noun as subjects. This paper develops an analysis of ooi and sukunai are like gradable adjectives map their arguments onto a scale. But ooi and sukunai cannot specify their scales . And according to Kennedy & McNally (2005) , scales have three crucial parameters : a set of degrees, which represent measurement values; a dimension, which indicates the kind of measurement; and an ordering relation. But in terms of properties of the set of degrees and the dimensional parameter ooi and sukunai cannot specify the scales. ooi and sukunai encode quantity or amount as a dimension. takai share the sales that share the same dimension with nagai . Both of them involve orderings along a dimension a dimension of linear extent (Kennedy & McNally 2005). Thus, takai also cannot specify their scale in terms of dimension in some cases. We proposed that the dimension need to specify the domain to which it is applied. We found that ooi and sukunai are like gradable adjective takai need to specify the domain by the form like “Yga” in the“X+wa+Y+ga+gradable adjectives”.