---
title: "The semantics and probabilistic pragmatics of deadjectival"
description: "The paper asks why intensifying adverbs derived from adjectives (worryingly, terribly, disappointingly) differ in how strongly… 44 references."
authors: ["Rick Nouwen"]
year: 2024
venue: "Semantics and Pragmatics"
source: "https://semprag.org/index.php/sp/article/view/sp.17.2"
doi: "10.3765/sp.17.2"
licence: "CC BY 3.0"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/nouwen-2024-semantics-probabilistic-pragmatics-deadjectival-intensifiers/"
---
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# The semantics and probabilistic pragmatics of deadjectival intensifiers

**Authors:** Rick Nouwen · **Year:** 2024 · **Venue:** [Semantics and Pragmatics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/semantics-and-pragmatics/) ([Semantics and Pragmatics 2024](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/semantics-and-pragmatics/2024/)) · **Publisher:** [Linguistic Society of America](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/linguistic-society-of-america/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.17.2) · [PDF](https://semprag.org/index.php/sp/article/download/sp.17.2/3079) · [DOI 10.3765/sp.17.2](https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.17.2) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4391922227)

**Citations:** 3 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper asks why intensifying adverbs derived from adjectives (worryingly, terribly, disappointingly) differ in how strongly they boost the adjective they modify, and how that strength depends on the meaning of the adjectival base. Nouwen points to two patterns earlier work did not explain. First, adverbs built on negatively evaluative adjectives tend to signal high degree, while positively evaluative ones signal moderate degree. Second, negative modal adjectives can become intensifiers, but positive ones cannot.

He gives these adverbs a plain intersective semantics. The adverb's base is a second vague, evaluative positive form, and it applies to the degree to which the adjective holds. Semantics alone does not yield the degree effects. They emerge once the analysis is run inside Rational Speech Act (RSA) models of vague adjectives, extending Lassiter & Goodman (2017). In the final model, the adverb and the adjective update the listener's beliefs one after the other.

The work ties lexical evaluation to degree meaning. It also shows that probabilistic pragmatics can derive degree effects without stipulating them.

## Key points
- Degree modifiers fall into several classes:
  - maximisers like completely and approximators like almost target the top of a scale;
  - L-adverbs like a bit need a scale minimum;
  - intensifiers are indifferent to scale structure and divide into H-adverbs (extremely, terribly, very) and M-adverbs (pretty, fairly, rather).
- Scale-structure tests use frames such as "The rod is completely / almost / a bit straight / bent / wide".
- Intensifiers form an open class, because new adjectives automatically give new adverbs (fabulicious → fabuliciously).
- Bleached adverbs have lost their base meaning, while unbleached ones keep it:
  - terribly is bleached, disappointingly is not;
  - a "happy, because…" context exposes the evaluative clash;
  - very derives from an Old French adjective, verrai, meaning true.
- The RSA appendix has these components:
  - a literal listener;
  - utility defined as log-probability minus message cost;
  - a softmax speaker with rationality parameter λ;
  - a Bayesian pragmatic listener;
  - a discrete (not dense) QUD space;
  - a cost-free tautology as the alternative message;
  - marginalisation over vague thresholds θ.
- Dimensional adverbs (hugely expensive, but not hugely cheap) are left out of the main analysis. Nouwen suggests they intensify iconically, in line with Fuchs et al. (2019) on letter reduplication in written words like "loooong".

## Interesting ideas
- Treat an intensifier as a second vague predicate that applies to the degree itself, rather than as a fixed multiplier, so degree strength falls out of the evaluative meaning.
- Separate bleached from unbleached adverbs with a contradiction probe, such as pairing the adverb with an opposite emotion in a "because" clause.
- Interpret modifier and head as successive Bayesian updates, where the posterior from the adverb becomes the prior for the adjective, instead of a single conjoined update.
- Use a discrete, granularity-based question space and a cost-free tautology as the only competitor message, which keeps the RSA computation small and tractable.
- Use scale-structure diagnostics (completely / almost / a bit acceptability) to classify adjectives as open, closed or half-open.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (world): Store intensified adjectives as a measure with two thresholds, one for the adjective and one for the speaker's evaluation, so "worryingly tall" yields both a height state and a speaker attitude.
- **I2** (frames): Build a lexicon flag, tested by such probes, that decides whether an -ly adverb also contributes a speaker-evaluation frame or only a degree boost.
- **I3** (answer): When answering degree questions ("Was it very cold?"), apply modifiers in order over a discrete set of degree bins, so every step of the inference can be explained.
- **I4** (frames): A cheap implicature module could compare an utterance only against "saying nothing" over coarse bins to estimate what degree the speaker meant.
- **I5** (learn): Generate such probe frames as negative controls, checking that the learned scale types reject combinations like "completely wide".

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

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## Cite

Cite as: Rick Nouwen. 2024. The semantics and probabilistic pragmatics of deadjectival intensifiers. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{nouwen2024semantics,
  title = {{The semantics and probabilistic pragmatics of deadjectival intensifiers}},
  author = {Rick Nouwen},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.17.2},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.17.2}
}
```

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## References

44 references, 1 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 1 November 2026*