A Label Semantics Approach to Linguistic Hedges

TL;DR

This paper presents a semantic model for linguistic hedges like 'very' and 'quite' using label semantics, integrating prototype and conceptual spaces theories to provide a clear, compositional framework.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, semantically grounded model for linguistic hedges within label semantics, extending their compositional capabilities.

Findings

The model naturally derives from the representational framework.

Hedge models can be generalized and composed with themselves and other functions.

Analysis of the behavior of hedge compositions in the limit.

Abstract

We introduce a model for the linguistic hedges `very' and `quite' within the label semantics framework, and combined with the prototype and conceptual spaces theories of concepts. The proposed model emerges naturally from the representational framework we use and as such, has a clear semantic grounding. We give generalisations of these hedge models and show that they can be composed with themselves and with other functions, going on to examine their behaviour in the limit of composition.