Scalarity and the Cantonese post-verbal particle can1

Semantics and Linguistic Theory

This paper presents new data on the semantic interaction between gradablepredicates and the Thai particle khuen. When the particle composes with rÓ:n (hot)and nǎ:w (cold), it describes temperature increases and decreases, respectively, inmuch the same way as English get hotter and get colder. However, when it composeswith so-called mid-scale predicates like Pùn (warm), it can describe increases ordecreases, as long as the change is toward temperatures described as Pùn (warm).We first consider two types of analyses where (i) Pùn has an inherent central orien-tation much like English mild or (ii) khuen describes changes oriented toward thethreshold of the gradable predicate it combines with. We argue against analyses oftype (i) and (ii) and show that they predict unattested interpretations.We offer a semantic account for khuen in which the particle essentially picks analternative gradable predicate to the one it composes with, and describes changeswhose degree ends up lower than where...

Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 2007

In this paper, I propose a relevance-theoretic account of the particles le, guo and zhe in Mandarin Chinese. Though conventionally regarded as aspect markers, on closer inspection they seem to contribute to a range of interpretations that cannot be subsumed under a semantic category or a specific temporal representation. The explanatory model presented in this paper builds upon relevancetheoretic ideas on encoded procedural meaning and Reichenbach’s (1947, Elements of symbolic logic. London: Macmillan) temporal schemas for the tenses and the aspects. I propose a procedure—a set of interpretational instructions (as described in, among others, Wilson and Sperber (1993b, Lingua, 90, 1–25), Blakemore (1987, Semantic constraints on relevance. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, Journal of Linguistics, 36(3), 463–486) and Carston (2002, Thought and utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.))—and a concept activated by the procedure for each of the particles. I show that these particles can contribute to a range of explicatures and implicatures and that their exact contribution to an utterance is highly context dependent.

Language and Linguistics

This study re-examines the widely studied V-qilai 'rise-come' construction in Mandarin Chinese. It first distinguishes V-qilai + predicate construction from the lexical verb qilai and -qilai as a lexical inchoative morpheme, which do not require an additional complement. In addition, three variations of the V-qilai + predicate pattern are identified according to the complement functions: namely (i) a descriptive complement, (ii) an object-oriented descriptive predicate, and (iii) a proposition clause (raising construction). These three variants are subsumed under and accounted for by the proposed uniformed secondary predication structure, while vary with their respective complement structures. In addition, the occurrences of V-qilai were drawn from Academia Sinica Corpus. Based on the above classification, it is shown that there is a far greater preponderance of canonical qilai usages over the V-qilai + complement ones, indicating that the latter patterns are still emerging ...

IsCLL-11, Taiwan, 2008

Proceedings of SALT32, 2022

There have been ongoing debates about the semantics of Mandarin particle dōu, which, among its various readings, has a distributive reading and a scalar reading. In the paper, we make a novel observation that dōu, on both readings, is sensitive to a standard on a scale associated with a contextually supplied gradable property, and take this to be new evidence in favor of a unified, scalar analysis of dōu. To uniformly capture its two readings and its standard-sensitivity, we propose to integrate insights from two proposals mooted respectively by Liu (2017) and Greenberg (2018a). Specifically, on the one hand, we follow Liu (2017) in arguing that (a) dōu is uniformly a scalar particle, (b) it operates on distinct types of alternatives on distinct readings and (c) a trivialization operation occurs on the distributive reading; on the other hand, we, deviating from Liu (2017), adopt two components adapted from the gradability-based semantics originally suggested for English even by Greenberg (2018a), i.e. (a) an evaluative presupposition and (b) a contextually determined scale, instead of one based on unlikelihood. Our revised proposal can successfully account for the two readings in a unified manner but circumvents the issue regarding the dimension of the scale faced by Liu (2017) in the meanwhile.

Journal of Linguistics, 2005

Cantonese exhibits a pattern of variation among verbs that has often been interpreted as distinguishing a category of adjectives or a subcategory of adjectival verbs. However, neither of these approaches takes into account the complex patterns of overlap among the purported categories or subcategories. To account for these patterns, we propose a multi-dimensional, feature-based analysis, whereby morphological, phonological, syntactic, and semantic features interact to determine the distribution of each verb. While all verbs bear the same syntactic category feature, there are other features that affect the distribution of verbs independently of syntactic category. For example, constructions that resemble adjectival constructions in other languages license the semantic classes of verbs that are permanent, gradable, and/or non-dynamic, while constructions that resemble verbal constructions in other languages license the semantic classes of verbs that are dynamic, non-gradable, and/or non-permanent. Typological implications of this analysis are also considered.

Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 2014

Through comparative study of English whole and Chinese zheng, I argue that in English, when the part-related reading is obtained, whole actually modifies a silent functional projection, which can be identified with the classifier projection in Chinese. Such an analysis provides a clue to the puzzling behavior of English whole, which does not modify plural nouns under the part-related reading (e.g. *The whole apples are large). Theoretically, I argue for a unified analysis of whole/zheng that combines the semantic analysis in Moltmann (1997 et seq.), which suggests that the part-related reading of whole is related to situated mass interpretation, and the syntactic proposals in Kayne (2005 et seq.) and Borer , which argue for the uniform classifier projection at syntax in both classifier and non-classifier languages. The analysis not only sheds light on the cross-linguistic syntax of nominal expressions, but it also provides empirical support for the Uniformity Principle in Universal Grammar. 1 As pointed out by an anonymous JEAL reviewer, English allows certain "classifiers" in the so-called pseudo-partitive constructions, such as a bottle of wine, a kind of dog , where bottle and kind correspond to measure-classifiers and kind-classifiers in Chinese. It seems plausible to treat these elements on a par with classifiers in Chinese. However, they do show syntactic differences from Chinese classifiers. For example, bottle and kind in English behave more like substantive nouns, which can be pluralized, as in two bottles of wine and two kinds of dogs. On the other hand, classifiers in Chinese are more like (semi-)functional elements in their morpho-syntax (cf. Riemsdijk 1998). While it is interesting to investigate this issue, it is beyond the scope of this paper. I shall leave it for future research. others, for issues related to the DP analysis in classifier languages.

2013

Journal of Pragmatics, 2004

It is claimed in the literature that the perfective marker-guo has the following semantic properties: discontinuity, repeatability/reversibility, and partiality, which contrast with the continuation and totality properties of the perfective marker-le. Previous analyses adopt a purely semantic approach to account for the above properties of-guo and-le, and the role played by pragmatics is not recognized. In this paper, we argue that the purely semantic approach is not adequate, and show that both semantics and pragmatics play a role in the interpretation of-guo and-le, which motivates us to propose a semantic-pragmatic account to explain the properties of guo-and le-sentences in Chinese. Following previous analyses like Smith's (1997), we treat the basic semantics of both-guo and-le as presenting a perfective viewpoint. However, unlike previous studies, we claim that the so-called semantic properties demonstrated by the two markers are all pragmatic implicatures. After revisiting the three properties discussed in previous studies, we suggest replacing discontinuity and repeatability/ reversibility with the new property ''change-out-of-state'' while keeping the totality/partiality property. We propose to determine the selection of-guo and-le by a pragmatic condition when semantics imposes no restriction on their co-occurrence with the predicate in question:

The Mandarin functional morpheme dou appears to have been interpreted, among other things, as a distributor, focus marker even, or already. This paper aims at providing a unified semantic account for these different uses. I argue that the semantic core of these different usages is the same: dou is simply a maximality operator. It gives rise to different meanings by applying maximality to a contextually determined plural set. This could be a set of covers, a set of focus-induced alternatives, or a set of degrees ordered on a scale. This analysis also connects dou in these contexts with dou in environments that license polarity items, as discussed in Giannakidou and Cheng (J Semant 23: 135-183, 2006).

2010

Under some conditions, gradable adjectives in Mandarin must co-occur with overt degree morphology (most neutrally, hen 'very') for positive interpretation; otherwise, a comparative interpretation results. This paper argues that this phenomenon is the consequence of two interacting factors: (1) Universally, whereas comparative semantics is provided by a (possibly covert) morpheme in syntax, positive semantics is provided by a type-shifting rule that does not project in syntax, and (2) The T[+V] constraint: in Mandarin, the direct complement to T(ense) must either be (an extended projection of) a verb or a functional morpheme that can in principle combine with (an extended projection of) a verb. Consequently, a superficially bare adjectival complement to T may project a null comparative morpheme in order to satisfy T[+V], but positive semantics is ruled out because it does not affect the AP categorial status of the predicate and hence does not satisfy T[+V]. The semantically bleached degree adverb hen can be used instead to approximate positive semantics in a way that satisfies T [+V]. This proposal makes the right predictions about the conditions under which bare adjectives do receive a positive interpretation, namely, when other functional elements intervene between T and AP, and when T is not projected. An important consequence of the proposal is that despite surface appearances, Mandarin does not counterexemplify the universal generalization that comparatives are the marked member of the positive/comparative opposition; on the contrary, its proper analysis actually depends on the idea that comparative-form adjectives involve extra structure.

Lingua, 2010

Background This paper examines the semantics of Cantonese sentence-final particle (SFP) tim 'add' which is argued to be a scalar particle like ''even'' or an additive particle like ''also'' or ''too' in the literature. Unlike previous analyses, we will show that the semantics of tim can be treated as neither English ''even'' nor an enriched ''even'' under Giannakidou's (2007) landscape account, and it cannot be analyzed as an additive particle like ''also'' or ''too'', either. Despite the fact that all of them perform the basic function ''addition'' and can be considered as falling under the same family, they are distinct from one another, making their independent existence necessary. The ''even''-items and additive particles like ''also'' and ''too'' are more restricted in terms of scale selection and/or the relative position on the scale: ''also'' and ''too'' require the quantity scale, while all the ''even''-items, except for Greek esto, rely on the likelihood scale and have their associated item occupying the extreme end of the scale. Cantonese tim is found to be distinct from the aforementioned additive particles in both aspects despite its natural and frequent occurrence with their counterparts in Cantonese. It does not impose any restriction on the scale it selects and can appear at any position on the scale as long as its associated item occupies a higher position than the presupposed one. The

2005

Additive particles convey the meaning that the element they associate with (which we will call, following Krifka 1998, their associate) is to be understood as added to a preexisting non-empty set of alternatives: in this sense, they introduce the presupposition of the existence of at least one alternative to their associate. Scalar additive particles are said to be a subset of additive particles (König 1991), in that they have in common the same existential presupposition as part of their semantic meaning but they differ in the way the set of alternatives is construed and, consequently, recovered by speakers: while bare additive particles do not give constraints on the structure of the presupposed set, scalar additive particles are assumed to impose an ordering on the set, facilitating accommodation by inference also out of context (Fauconnier 1976). Anyway, as König (1991) pointed out in a comparative perspective, in many languages additive scalar particles are not always independe...

2008

Mandarin adverb hai allows for two main interpretations when associated with gradable properties. Descriptive work usually discriminate between ‘temporal’ and ‘comparative’ readings of hai, while the semantic core of the adverb has been defined in terms of scalarity. In this paper, our purpose is to give an understanding of the topic by providing the basis for an analysis of the adverb at the syntax-semantics interface. While subscribing to the generalization that hai is restricted to ordered domains, we will propose to characterize the adverb as a repetitive operator, that is, an additive operator the event domain; we will show that the possibility for hai to associate to gradable properties in comparative constructions can be explained on the bases of its repetitive use.