Abstract
In Mandarin Chinese, gradable predicates can be classified into two types based on their morphosyntactic features: one consisting of gradable lexemes like gradable adjectives (e.g., gao “tall”) and gradable verbs (e.g., xihuan “to like”), and the other consisting of verbal phrases made up of a possessive/existential morpheme, you, and a bare NP (“you + NP”; the Possessive Property Concept construction). The goal of this paper is to provide a formal account of the gradability of the “you + NP” construction. We show that the gradability of this construction is conditioned by the NP inside: when the NP inside denotes abstract substances (e.g., wisdom), “you + NP” is gradable; if NPs denote non-abstract substances (e.g., apples and water), “you + NP” is non-gradable. Abstract and non-abstract NPs differ in the types of measure scales they are associated with: abstract NPs are associated with a scale that lacks an absolute zero point (i.e., an ordinal or an interval scale), and non-abstract NPs are associated with a scale that contains such a point (i.e., a ratio scale). The semantics of the existential/possessive morpheme you is sensitive to this distinction and gives rise to variation in gradability.
My interest in this topic started more than ten years ago in Roger’s seminar on degrees and scales, for which I wrote a term paper on it. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to return to this topic and to dedicate this updated “term paper” to Roger. I am deeply indebted to him for his inspirations and guidance over the years. I thank the editors, Jessica Rett and Daniel Altshuler, for providing me with this opportunity. I thank Jessica Rett, an anonymous reviewer, and the audience of Chicago Linguistic Society 53 for questions and comments. All remaining mistakes are my own.
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Notes
- 1.
mei you zhihui ‘not have wisdom’ in (10a) is also gradable, as shown by the example below. The sentence means that Zhangsan’s wisdom falls far below the standard.
- 2.
Another common diagnostic for subjectivity is to test whether a predicate can be embedded under the subjective attitude verb find: evaluative adjectives and predicates of personal taste can, but dimensional adjectives cannot (Kennedy 2013). Unfortunately, I cannot find such an equivalent in Mandarin Chinese.
- 3.
Kennedy (2013) argues that the subjectivity of dimensional adjectives in the positive form is encoded in the null POS morpheme that contributes a positive meaning.
- 4.
The intended meaning of (16a) can be expressed as zheli de shui hen shen ‘the water here is very deep’, where adjective shen ‘deep’ is used.
- 5.
Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2015, 548) in footnote 19 observe: “We take portions to be a sort of individual, that is, a subtype of type e, the type of simple individuals”.
- 6.
Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2015, 454) observe that the preorder ≤ preserves the mereological part-of relation, so that given a substance P, and two portions p, q ∈ P: p ⊆ q → p ≤ q.
- 7.
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Li, X. (2019). Measurement Scales and Gradability: On the Semantics of the Possessive Property Concept Construction in Mandarin Chinese. In: Altshuler, D., Rett, J. (eds) The Semantics of Plurals, Focus, Degrees, and Times. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04438-1_12
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