From completely free to complete freedom. Spanish adjectives of completeness as maximizers of property concept nouns

Abstract

[eng] Maximizers (completely, fully) are degree modifiers sensitive to the scale struc- ture of the adjective they combine with. Spanish adjectives of completeness (completo ‘complete’, total ‘total’) show a distribution similar to that of their adverbial counterparts when modifying property concept [PC] nouns (liber­ tad ‘freedom’, sabiduría ‘wisdom’). This paper argues that adjectives of com- pleteness are degree modifiers in the nominal domain. It adopts a semantics of PC nouns according to which they denote substances, following Francez & Koontz-Garboden (2015). These substances can be bounded or unbounded, just like their related adjectives (libre ‘free’, etc.). By establishing a strict parallelism between adverbs and adjectives of completeness, this paper contributes to the understanding of completeness contributes to the understanding of scalarity across categories and the relation between degrees and measurements.