Are Gaps Preferred to Gluts? A Closer Look at Borderline Contradictions

International audienceThis paper examines the acceptance of so-called borderline contradictions involving vague adjectives. A close look at the available data from previous studies points toward a preference for “gappy” descriptions of the form “x is neither P nor not P” over “glutty” descriptions of the form “x is P and not P”. We present the results of an experiment in which we tested for that difference systematically, using relative gradable adjectives. Our findings confirm that both kinds of descriptions are accepted, but indeed that “neither”-descriptions are to a large extent preferred to “and”-descriptions. We examine several possible explanations for that preference. Our account relies on the distinction proposed by Cobreros et al. (J Philos Logic, 1–39, 2012) between strict and tolerant meaning for vague adjectives, as well as on a specific implementation of the strongest meaning hypothesis endorsed by Cobreros et al. as well as Alxatib and Pelletier (Mind Lang 26(3): 287–326 2011a). Our approach, however, argues in favor of local pragmatic strengthening instead of global strengthening in order to derive that preference