Precious few and practically all: A Cognitive Grammar approach to the modification of quantifiers

In the literature, considerable attention has gone to the degree modification of adjectives, as in very pretty and almost full. This study deals with the hitherto neglected modification of quantifying expressions, as in very few and almost all. We argue that there is a conceptual analogy between degree,or quality, modification and quantity modification. This hinges on the fact that the notion of boundedness configures the semantic domains of both adjectives and quantifiers: the distinction between bounded and unbounded adjectives is conceptually similar to the distinction between relative and absolute quantifiers. This allows us to take the main classes of degree modification as the basis for setting up the categories of quantity modification. Adjectives designating unbounded qualities take scalar modifiers, which may upscale, e.g. very good, or downscale, e.g. fairly good the quality. Adjectives designating bounded properties take proportional modifiers, which divide into approximating, e.g. almost full, or totality modifiers, e.g. absolutely full. In addition, adjectives can take compromisers, focusers and emphasizers, which are not tied to the unbounded-bounded nature of the adjectives they modify. We show that, in similar fashion, absolute quantifiers take scalar modifiers, which modify the quantity in the direction inherent in the quantifier, increasing it as in very many, and reducing it as in very few. Relative quantifiers take proportional modifiers, which divide into approximating, e.g. almost all, and totality modifiers, e.g. absolutely all. Quantifiers can also take compromisers, focusers and emphasizers, which are not tied to the absolute-relative distinction. We apply the proposed model for quantity modification to corpus-based case studies of (a) few and all, to illustrate its classificatory power.status: publishe