Re-conceptualizing scale boundaries: The case of Dutch helemaal

Abstract

Maximizers – adverbs denoting a maximum degree of a property (e.g. completely) – are often re-conceptualized as boosters denoting a high degree (cf. very). As a result, these degree adverbs come to modify unbounded adjectives which are not compatible with the idea of a maximum value. Although this kind of meaning change proved cross-linguistically robust, the exact mechanisms of this process have never been investigated. The present paper aims to shed more light onto semantic and contextual factors facilitat-ing combinations of open-scale (unbounded) adjectives with closed-scale (bounded) adverbs by analyzing the distribution of the Dutch maximizer helemaal in the Corpus of Spoken Dutch. Following the boundedness hypothesis, we hypothesized that configura-tional harmony destroyed by combinations of the maximizer helemaal with unbounded adjectives can be restored by either imposing scale boundaries onto, by default, un-bounded adjectival scales, or by re-conceptualizing the degree adverb as an unbounded modifier. Both predictions were confirmed by the data in this study. The findings sug-gest that there is no one-to-one relationship between semantic classes of adjectives and scalar structures associated with them. Rather, scalar meanings are a matter of dynamic construal constrained by semantic properties of adjectives and degree modifiers, as well as by context and world knowledge.