Configurations, construals and change: expressions of DEGREE

Abstract

This article challenges the widespread view thatdegreeis a grammatical phenomenon characteristic of certain types of word classes and, instead, argues thatdegreeis pervasive in language and may be associated with most meanings. The main aim of the article is to discuss the results of a number of corpus investigations and experiments ofdegreemeanings in general and of the modification ofdegreein particular, and to accommodate these results in a general and dynamic model of Lexical Meaning as Ontologies and Construals (LOC; Paradis 2005). The claims are that (i)degreeis aboundednessconfiguration in conceptual space; (ii)degreemodifiers operate on thedegreestructure of the meanings to which they apply through a construal of contextually motivated zone activationwithinconventionalized senses; (iii) nonconventionalizeddegreereadings of form–meaning pairings are invoked through implication by means of construals of metonymizationbetweensenses; and (iv) this process of metonymization is the mechanism through which change may or may not take place.

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