We show that the interpretation of sentences like John is not very Adj depends on whether Adj is vague. We argue that this follows from a constraint on the interaction between vagueness and conversational implicature, a domain that has not been studied extensively. The constraint states that implicatures are not drawn if they lead to “borderline contradictions” (see Ripley 2011; Alxatib & Pelletier 2011; a.o.), a natural extension of the idea that implicatures should not contradict assertions (Hackl 2006; Fox 2007; a.o.). Experiment 1 establishes that not very Adj gives rise to the implicature Adj for the non-vague absolute adjective late, but not for the vague relative adjective tall (in the terminology of Kennedy & McNally 2005a). Experiment 2 generalizes this result to three relative adjectives in the positive form (tall, hot, fast), against those same adjectives in their (non-vague) comparative forms (taller/hotter/faster than the average X). We also constructed quantitative meaning representations for complex predicates of the form Adj ∧¬very Adj, using fuzzy logic to model the contribution of Boolean connectives and our experimental data to represent the meanings of adjectives. The results of these analyses suggest that strengthening not very Adj with Adj leads to a more contradictory interpretation when Adj is vague than when it is not, as expected on our theory. While our results apply directly to only a specific set of lexical items, we hypothesize that they reflect a more general pattern among gradable predicates. This motivates more systematic investigation into the role that vagueness can play in the derivation of conversational implicatures.

中文翻译：

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隐含的模糊性：修饰形容词的情况

我们表明，对像约翰这样的句子的理解不是非常好，取决于能否理解模糊。我们认为，这是由于对模糊性和会话含意性之间相互作用的限制所致，该领域尚未得到广泛研究。约束条件指出，如果隐含导致“边界矛盾”（请参见Ripley 2011； Alxatib＆Pelletier 2011; ao），则不构成隐含含义，即隐含的含义不应与主张相矛盾（Hackl 2006; Fox 2007; ao） 。实验1证实，对于非模糊的绝对形容词后期，不是非常多的Adj会引起隐含的Adj，而对于模糊的相对形容词的身高则不是这样（根据Kennedy＆McNally 2005a的术语）。实验2将此结果归纳为三个相对的形容词（正，高，快，快），与那些（非模糊的）比较形容词相同的形容词（比平均X更快或更热）。我们还使用模糊逻辑对布尔连接词的贡献进行建模，并使用实验数据来表示形容词的含义，从而构造了Adj ververy Adj形式的复杂谓词的定量含义表示。这些分析的结果表明，如我们的理论所预期的那样，当Adj模糊时，用Adj强化不是很强，导致的解释更加矛盾。尽管我们的结果仅直接适用于一组特定的词法项目，但我们假设它们反映了可分级谓词中更一般的模式。这促使人们更加系统地研究模糊性在推导会话含意中的作用。