Linguistic access to uncertain quantitative knowledge about physical properties is provided by d i m e n s i o n a l adjectives, . long-short in the spatial and temporal senses, near-far, fast-slow, etc. Semantic analyses of the dimensional adjectives differ on whether the meaning of the differential comparative (6 cm shorter than) and the equative with factor term (three times as long as) is a compositional function of the meanings the difference and factor terms (6 cm and three times) and the meanings of the simple comparative and equative, respectively. The compositional treatment comes at the price.
