Vagueness, context-sensitivity and scale structure of four types of adjectives with the suffix -ish

In English, the adjective-forming suffix -ish can be productively tacked onto relative
adjectives (e.g. tall-ish) and total absolute adjectives (e.g. dry-ish), but not to
most partial absolute adjectives (e.g. ?bent-ish) or inherently non-scalar adjectives
(e.g. ?pregnant-ish). By applying Burnett’s (2017) recent framework DelTCS situated
within Delineation Semantics, which she enriched using the notions Tolerant, Classical,
Strict, first formulated in Cobreros et al. (2012), I will show why suffixal -ish
is felicitous with the first two subtypes of adjectives, but not with the latter two.
After a brief comparison with a similar framework from Lasersohn (1999), it will
be shown that the scale structure in the DelTCS approach is derived from the adjective’s
context-sensitivity and vagueness patterns. Furthermore, the discussion
will point to a few instances that do not neatly fit into the mold of current semantic
analyses as well as some suggestions on how to obtain a clearer picture of the
actual attested data.