This paper examines the significance of the schematic domain of BOUNDEDNESS in adjectives. It is proposed that boundedness in adjectives is a fundamental characteristic associated with gradability. Cross-categorial correspondences are made to nouns and verbs, where boundedness is a feature of countability and aktionsart respectively. Two basic types of gradable adjectives are distinguished: those which are associated with a boundary and those which are not. It is also shown that it is possible to change the configuration of adjectives in terms of boundedness through contextual modulation. Finally, it is demonstrated that the configuration of adjectives in terms of boundaries may dominate their interpretation at the expense of the content proper, and the adjectives become more like function words than content words.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework of lexical meaning, broadly along the lines of Cognitive Semantics (Langacker 1987a). Within the proposed model, all aspects of meaning are to be explained in terms of properties of ontologies in conceptual space, i.e. properties of content ontologies and schematic ontologies and construals which are imposed on the conceptual structures on the occasion of use. It is through the operations of construals on ontological structures that different readings of lexical expressions arise. Lexical meanings are dynamic and sensitive to contextual demands, rather than fixed and stable. In a dynamic, usagebased model like this, polysemy and multiple readings emerge as a natural consequence of the human ability to think flexibly. Another more specific purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the usefulness of ontologies in linguistic research in general and semantic modelling in particular.

This article challenges the widespread view that DEGREE is a grammatical phenomenon characteristic of certain types of word classes and, instead, argues that DEGREE is 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 of DEGREE meanings in general and of the modification of DEGREE in 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) DEGREE is a BOUNDEDNESS configuration in conceptual space; (ii) DEGREE modifiers operate on the DEGREE structure of the meanings to which they apply through a construal of contextually motivated zone activation within conventionalized senses; (iii) nonconventionalized DEGREE readings of form-meaning pairings are invoked through implication by means of construals of metonymization between senses; and (iv) this process of metonymization is the mechanism through which change may or may not take place.

This paper investigates the interpretation of unbounded (scalar) adjective antonyms with and without negation such as (not) narrow -(not) wide and bounded adjective antonyms with and without negation such as (not) dead -(not) alive as well as their interpretations with approximating degree modifiers, fairly and almost, respectively. The investigation was designed to test the boundedness hypothesis, namely that the negator is sensitive to the configuration of the adjective in terms of BOUNDEDNESS. The data are Swedish and the results of the experiments show that negated unbounded adjectives do not evoke the interpretation of their antonyms, i.e. not wide does not equal 'narrow'. The results of the experiments with bounded adjectives with and without negation showed that some of the negated adjectives were interpreted as synonyms of their antonyms, i.e. not alive equals 'dead'. However, this pattern was not consistent across the bounded adjectives, since a number of them readily lent themselves to partial readings. Four types of bounded antonyms emerged from the participants' judgements. For both unbounded and bounded adjectives, the interpretations of the approximating degree modifiers and the adjectives were not significantly different from the negated adjectives. #

This article proposes a novel theoretical framework for examining trust-repair discourse. The model identifies two fundamental discourse strategies available to the trust-breaker when trust is at stake (i) to engage with and act upon the discourses that represent a potential source of distrust -neutralize the negative, (ii) to communicate a trustworthy discourse identity -emphasize the positive. These strategies are realized in discourse through the use of dialogic engagement and evaluative/a↵ective language, respectively. The ultimate communicative goal of the strategies is that of promoting the addressees' positive (re-)assessment of the speaker's ability, integrity and benevolence. The model is applied to the analysis of the CEO letter published by BP one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The analysis has the twofold purpose of demonstrating the viability of the model and determining the discourse strategies deployed by the CEO to repair trust in the company after the accident.