Abstrakt
Gradability has been reported as a substantial property of adjectives in various linguistic theories, including Cognitive Linguistics (CL; see e.g. Croft & Cruse, 2004).
Covering both gradation (by comparative and superlative markers) and intensification by measure adverbs (e.g., very), it has served as a criterion for delimitation of prototypical, i.e. gradable (thick, expensive, ugly) and non-gradable adjectives (cf. Kennedy & McNally, 2005; Paradis & Willners, 2006).
However, large-scale empirical investigations of the gradation in adjectives have s.hown, for instance, that even adjectives categorized as prototypical are not attested in graded forms with high frequency (see Czech data in Kováříková, 2010). On the other hand, the expected non-gradable adjectives are rather easy to find graded in naturally occurring data.