Abstract

This paper contains a new semantic analysis for the verbal expression resemble. It is argued that resemble is best conceived as a degree predicate, very much in analogy to (transparent) gradable adjectives like close to (see Mador-Haim & Winter 2007). This move can explain why resemble happily combines with the traditional positive, comparative and superlative operators, degree intensifiers and the like, and it meets the philosophical tradition that resemblance is a 4-place comparative relation (Lewis 1986; Williamson 1988). Nevertheless, resemble is an intentional idiom (i.e., not transparent): it is well known that..