This Is So NP!

The construction we are discussing is a recent American English construction (though it can be found in a number of other languages as well) with an individual-denoting noun phrase (NP) in the predicate position modified by a degree modifier that typically occurs with gradable adjectives, as in 'This is so Obama!' We attempt to look deeper into the structure and compositional semantics of this construction, and though we do not provide a complete analysis of it, we believe that the study of this construction can contribute to questions of gradable predicate semantics, multidimensionality, degree constructions and proper name semantics. References Dik, S. 1968. Coordination: Its Implications for the Theory of General Linguistics. NorthHolland, Amsterdam. Doetjes, J. 1997. Quantifiers and Selection. Ph.D. thesis, Leiden University. Gary-Prieur, M.-N. 1991. ‘La modalisation du nom propre’. Langue Francaise 92: 49–62. Gary-Prieur, M.-N. 1994. Grammaire du nom propre. Paris: Le Seuil. Gary-Prieur, M.-N. 2001. L’individu pluriel: Les noms propres et le nombre. Paris: CNRS Editions. Geurts, B. 1997. ‘Good news about the description theory of names’. Journal of Semantics 14: 319–348. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jos/14.4.319 Heim, I. 2000. ‘Degree Operators and Scope’. Proceedings of SALT 10: 40–64. Heim, I. & Kratzer, A. 1998. Semantics in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. J. Hay, C. Kennedy & Levin, B. 1999. ‘Scale structure underlies telicity in ‘degree achievements”. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 9: 127–44. Kagan, O. & Alexejenko, S. 2010. ‘The Adjectival Suffix -ovat as a Degree Modifier in Russian’. To appear in proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 15. Kamp, H. & Partee, B. 1995. ‘Prototype theory and compositionality’. Cognition 57:129–191. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(94)00659-9 Kennedy, C. 1999. Projecting the adjective: The syntax and semantics of gradability and comparison. New York: Garland. (1997 UCSC Ph.D thesis). Kennedy, C. 2007. ‘Vagueness and grammar: The semantics of relative and absolute gradable predicates’. Linguistics and Philosophy 30: 1–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10988-006-9008-0 Kennedy, C. & McNally, L. 2005. ‘Scale structure, degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicates’. Language 81.2: 345–381. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2005.0071 Maling, J. 1983. ‘Transitive adjective: a case of categorial reanalysis’. In F. Heny & B. Richards (eds.) ‘Linguistic Categories: Auxiliaries and Related Puzzles’, 253–289. Dordrecht: Reidel. Matushansky, O. 2002. ‘Tipping the scales: The syntax of scalarity in the complement