{"content":[{"text":"At all","bbox":{"left":0.176471,"top":0.097468,"width":0.03573100000000001,"height":0.015019000000000005}},{"text":"that refer to a vary small degree on a scale, but their use in negative or downward \n entailing (DE) environments leads to an expression that is particularly emphatic \n (Israel 2001). They include expressions like remotely, give a damn, and the least \n bit. While at all is attested in a wide range of DE environments, like the weak NPIs \n any and ever, its distribution also has substantial overlap with that of the minimizer \n remotely (Hoeksema 2012). \n If at all is indeed acting as a degree modiﬁer of gradable predicates, it should \n be degraded with non-gradable predicates unless they are coerced into a gradable \n meaning. Indeed, this seems to be the case. The following examples show that at all \n is odd with the non-gradable adjectives boiling and dead.","bbox":{"left":0.175825,"top":0.132649,"width":0.648044,"height":0.182347}},{"text":"(3)","bbox":{"left":0.176471,"top":0.32561,"width":0.02277699999999999,"height":0.01818900000000001}},{"text":"?I doubt that the water is at all boiling.","bbox":{"left":0.232457,"top":0.32561,"width":0.30422899999999997,"height":0.01818900000000001}},{"text":"(4)","bbox":{"left":0.176471,"top":0.354412,"width":0.02277699999999999,"height":0.01818900000000001}},{"text":"?I don’t think Emily is at all dead.","bbox":{"left":0.232457,"top":0.354412,"width":0.26881299999999997,"height":0.01818900000000001}},{"text":"So far, at all looks like a run-of-the-mill degree modiﬁer: acceptable when \n it modiﬁes gradable predicates and unacceptable when it modiﬁes non-gradable \n predicates. However, there is a puzzle. While at all is odd when it precedes a \n non-gradable predicate, it is perfectly acceptable when it follows a non-gradable \n predicate: \n (5) I doubt that the water is boiling at all.","bbox":{"left":0.176471,"top":0.383215,"width":0.647059,"height":0.11698300000000006}},{"text":"(6)","bbox":{"left":0.176471,"top":0.510811,"width":0.02277699999999999,"height":0.01818900000000001}},{"text":"I don’t think Emily is dead at all.","bbox":{"left":0.232457,"top":0.510811,"width":0.260119,"height":0.01818900000000001}},{"text":"The generalization, then, is that at all can either precede or follow gradable pred- \n icates, but it can only follow non-gradable predicates. To conﬁrm this distribution, \n I conducted a corpus study with COCA (Davies 2008). I ﬁrst generated a list of \n non-gradable adjectives: wooden, locked, hand-made, married, single, dead, alive, \n living, and vegetarian. These nine non-gradable adjectives were roughly matched \n for ngram frequency with a set of nine gradable adjectives: competent, determined, \n hesitant, consistent, frightened, tired, happy, concerned, and ambitious. For each \n adjective, I searched COCA for two search strings: one with at all preceding the \n adjective, and the other with at all following the adjective. For example, for the \n adjective married, I searched for the strings at all married and married at all. I then \n recorded the number of uses of each string. Sentences were included only if the \n gradable adjective was paired with the verb to be (is, was, isn’t, wasn’t, etc.) rather \n than another verb to control for possible interactions between at all and verbs, some \n of which might be gradable. \n For the non-gradable adjectives wooden, locked, hand-made, single, and vegetar- \n ian, there were no results for either search string (with at all preceding or following \n the adjective). Therefore, only the adjectives married, dead, alive, living, and preg- \n nant were included in the ﬁnal totals. There were also zero results for the gradable","bbox":{"left":0.176471,"top":0.539614,"width":0.650309,"height":0.328264}},{"text":"505","bbox":{"left":0.487791,"top":0.897468,"width":0.02441800000000005,"height":0.015158000000000005}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}