Abstract
The TSM u N construction adopts the possessive morphosyntactic strategy of gradable predication to construct a gradable predicate headed by the possessive verb u ‘have’. The possessive verb u ‘have’ inside, in addition to retaining its possessive meaning, introduces a functional projection (i.e., MeasP) headed by Meas, which denotes a measure function measuring the denotation of the N component along the dimension of cardinality or quantity. Depending on whether the N component is an abstract noun or a non-abstract noun, the measure scale associated with the gradable u N predicate can be an interval one or a ratio one. This study has the following implications. First, many languages might use the possessive or existential verb to construct a gradable possessive verbal predicate; however, they might differ from each other in the semantic function the possessive or existential verb plays. Second, a TSM PC nominal does not denote a scale resulting from the total preorder ≤. Third, a TSM gradable adjective is lexically specified with a scale.
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Notes
Abbreviations used in this paper include: CL: classifier, E: marker for modifying phrases, MC: Mandarin Chinese, PRT: particle, SFP: sentence final particle and TSM: Taiwanese Southern Min. Also, nasalization of TSM vowels is signaled by –nn, and will be left unspecified if it is predictable.
The ideas of Li (2017) are all incorporated into her (2019) book chapter. So, in Sect. 5, I will remark on Li (2019) instead. Besides, Liu (2020), which focuses on the TSM u V construction, presents his ideas about the TSM u N construction in an appendix-like section, and the ideas there are mainly based on Liu (2019). So, it is Liu (2019) that is remarked.
The predicate modification relation here is subject to the principle of predicate modification revised from Heim and Kratzer (1998: 65), as (i) shows.
(i)
Predicate Modification
If α is a branching node, {β, ∃γ} is the set of α’s daughters, and ⟦β⟧ and ⟦γ⟧ are
both in D<e, t>, then ⟦α⟧ = λx ∈ De.⟦β⟧(x) = ⟦γ⟧(x) =1.
Assuming that the covert Pro is the syntactic object of the transitive verb tsia ‘eat’, in (22b), Predicate Modification works in a way, as (iia–c) illustrate.
(ii)
a.
λx.∃y[tsia(x, y)]
b.
λx.pa(x)
c.
λx.∃y[tsia(x, y) & pa(x)]
One anonymous reviewer asks whether examples like (23a–b) count as serial verb constructions. According to Li and Thompson (1981: 594), a Mandarin Chinese serial verb construction has the “[…] (NP) V (NP) (NP) V (NP)” form and always “refers to events or states of affairs which are understood to be related as parts of one overall event or state”. As Paul (2008: 369–370) further argues, a Mandarin Chinese serial verb construction always “contains two or more verb phrases or clauses juxtaposed without any marker indicating what their relationship is between them”. So, examples like (23a–b) can be considered a type of serial verb construction, and it is the predicate modification relation that connects the verb phrases or clauses involved. Since the verb phrases (or clauses) involved might form a coordinated structure together, it is hard to clearly identify which verb phrase or clause is the main one. So, I do not have any intention of saying that, in (23a–b), the ‘u N’ part of the TSM u N construction is the main predicate; therefore, the English translation I provide for (23a) is the intended meaning which does not reflect its syntactic structure.
The occurrence of the covert object Pro behind the verb be ‘sell’ in (23a) implies that be ‘sell’ is a transitive verb.
Given this, I will use the TSM u N construction to represent the TSM u N construction and the TSM bo N construction in the rest of this study. The term ‘the TSM bo N construction’ will not be used unless it is necessary.
Wellwood (2015: 75) uses Hilbert’s є operator to represent the silent indefinite determiner which combines with pear.
One anonymous reviewer wonders whether there is any further motivation for the assumption that the TSM morpheme u has as part of its inherent meaning a measure function. Indeed, Taiwanese Southern Min per se provides one further motivation for this assumption. In the TSM u V construction, the morpheme u, which forms a gradable predicate with a non-gradable verb like tshing ‘wear’, has lost the meaning of ‘have’.
(i)
Tsit-khuan
sann
tsin
u-tshing.
This-CL
clothing
very
have-wear
‘For anyone to wear it, this kind of clothing is very durable/lasts quite long.’
Namely, in (i), the TSM morpheme u, which cannot take a morpheme with the meaning of ‘have’ in other languages as its translational equivalent, simply functions to introduce a measure function with which the event denoted by the verb tshing ‘wear’ is measured. So, I suggest that the inherent core meaning of the TSM morpheme u is ‘the measure function’, and the meaning of ‘have’, depending on whether it occurs in the TSM u N construction or the TSM u V construction, might be optional. Given this, it does not matter to my assumption whether the morpheme with the meaning of ‘have’ in other languages has ‘the measure function’ as part of its inherent meaning. Relevantly here, my teasing the ‘measure function’ meaning apart from the ‘have’ meaning of the morpheme u of the TSM u N construction has a bonus; that is, my analysis of the morpheme u of the TSM u N construction can accommodate the morpheme u of the TSM u V construction.
Although I assume that a TSM PC nominal is not lexically specified with a scale resulting by the preorder ≤, this does not exclude the possibility of assigning a TSM PC nominal the type of <p, t> because PC nominals do not denote entities as non-PC nominals do. As I have pointed out, the TSM possessive verb u ‘have’ can form a gradable possessive predicate with a PC nominal or a non-PC nominal. Thus, instead of assuming that the argument P in (41) can be of type <e, t> or <p, t>, for ease of exposition, I will use <e, t> to represent the semantic type of TSM PC nominals, especially those occurring in the TSM u N construction, because doing so does not have any significant impact on my analysis. Hence, I leave it open whether a TSM PC nominal is of type <p, t> or <e, t>. Please see Sect. 5.1 for further discussion.
For reader-friendliness, I use English as the metalanguage to represent the Taiwanese Southern Min words in (43b).
As one anonymous reviewer reminds me, in Taiwanese Southern Min, there are two potential ways in which non-abstract nouns can be modified by degree modifiers like kha ‘more’ and tsin ‘very’, namely in combination with tse ‘many’ or u ‘have’, as illustrated by (ia-b), respectively.
(i)
a.
Yi
kin
ni
u
kha
tse
hasing.
s/he
this
year
have
more
many
student
‘This year, s/he has more students.’
b.
Yi
kin
ni
kha
u
hasing.
s/he
this
year
more
have
student
‘This year, s/he has more students.’
As s/he further points out to me, relevant to (ia–b) are the following two questions. First, what are the properties of tse ‘many’? For example, as it is translated as many, does it also introduce a measure function as the English quantity adjective many/much does? Second, how does tse ‘many’ interact with u ‘have’?
For the first question, along the line of Wellwood (2015) and Solt (2015), I suggest that, in (ia), the TSM morpheme tse ‘many’ is a quantity adjective and functions to introduce a measure function that measures the denotation of the noun modified by it along some dimension. Given this, I further assume that, in (ia), the morpheme u is the ‘pure’ possessive verb ‘have’ that cannot form a gradable predicate with the predicate right after it (i.e., u kha tse hasing ‘have more many student’), as the ungrammaticality of (ii) attests.
(ii)
*Yi
kin
ni
kha
u
kha
tse
hasing.
s/he
this
year
more
have
more
many
student
As for the question of how tse ‘many’ interacts with the TSM morpheme u ‘have’, as I have argued, in the TSM u N construction (e.g., (ib)), the morpheme u, in addition to retaining the meaning of ‘have’, functions to introduce a functional phrase (i.e., MeasP) headed by Meas that denotes a measure function. The ungrammaticality of (ii) further leads me to assume that two measure function introducers cannot share the same ‘modifyee’. This assumption is verified by the grammaticality of (iii) because (iii) differs from (ii) in that, in (iii), the measure function introducer tse ‘many’ ‘modifies’ the noun sann ‘clothing’ but the measure function introducer u ‘modifies’ the verb tshing ‘wear’ (Liu 2020).
(iii)
Tsimma,
tsin
tse
sann
long
tsiok
u
tshing
e.
Nowadays
very
many
clothing
all
very
have
wear
SFP
‘Nowadays, many kinds of clothing are all very durable/last quite long.’
Furthermore, the presence of tse ‘many’ in between u ‘have’ and the non-abstract noun, as (ia) shows, does not imply that tse ‘many’ is the spell-out of the head Meas in (iva) because (ivb) is ungrammatical.
(iv)
a.
Yi
[kha [VP
[V u]
[MeasP Meas [NP hasing]]]].
s/he
more
have
student
‘S/He has more students.’
b.
*Yi
kha
u
tse
hasing.
s/he
more
have
many
student
Here (49a–f) are not used in a context with the contrastive focus.
Example (i) pointed out to me by one anonymous reviewer cannot be a counterexample to my analysis here because the grammaticality of (i) is expected under my analysis.
(i)
John is 100 times richer than you.
Namely, one’s property, for example being worth one billion dollars, can be measured by a conventional objective measure scale but one’s self-cultivation cannot.
According to Francez and Kootz-Garboden (2015: 548), (62b) can be described as follows: with P being a variable over (abstract) substance and being a possessive relation, D, being a variable over sets of portions, provides a domain restriction for the existential quantifier such that the value of z is restricted to portions that count as ‘big enough’ in context.
This language-specific feature shown by the TSM u N construction is only about the TSM gradable u N possessive verbal predicate. So, it does not imply that concrete (mass) nouns cannot occur as complement of the possessive verb in other languages especially when the possessive verbal predicate is non-gradable, as (i–iii) illustrate.
(i)
Zhāngsān
yŏu
chē.
Zhangsan
have
car
‘Zhangsan
has
cars.’
(ii)
John has cars.
(iii)
Yi
(*kha)
u
tsit-tai
tshia.
s/he
more
have
one-CL
car
‘S/he (*more) has a car.’
For reader-friendliness, I use English as the metalanguage to represent the Taiwanese Southern Min words in (78b).
Liu (2019) uses HOLD to represent the possessive relation between the individual y and the property about self-cultivation.
The N component of a gradable hěn N predicate, in fact, can be a concrete noun, as (i) shows.
(i)
Zhè
jiāhuŏ
hěn
jīchē.
This
guy
very
motorcycle
‘Intended: This guy is a real pain in the butt.’
The following two empirical facts provide further evidence in support of this argument. First, although the TSM u N construction allows the N component to be a concrete noun, the meaning conveyed by the first half of a TSM sentence like (i), in which the N component of the u N predicate is the concrete noun tshitiunn ‘market’, differs from the (84a)-like meaning which the anonymous reviewer might want to attribute to it (i.e., the city is more popular for the market) by conveying that there are more markets in the city’.
(i)
Tootshi
kha
u
tshitiunn,
be
mihkiann
kha
hongpen.
city
more
have
market
buy
thing
more
convenient
‘There are more markets in the city; it is more convenient to buy things in the
city.’
Second, as the interpretation of (i) implies, if Mandarin Chinese allows the concrete noun shìchăng ‘market’ to occur as the N component of the gradable yŏu N construction, then example (ii) is expected to be acceptable, contrary to fact.
(ii)
*Dūshì
gèng
yŏu
shìchăng,
măi
dōngxī
gèng
fāngbiàn.
city
even-more
have
market
buy
thing
even-more
convenient
‘Intended: There are more markets in the city; it is more convenient to buy
things in the city.’
So, the meaning conveyed by the noun shìchăng in (88) provided by one anonymous reviewer should not be the concrete meaning of ‘market’.
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Acknowledgements
Various versions of this article have been presented at the 7th Symposium on Recent Advances in Chinese Syntax and Semantics held by Guangdong University of Foreign Studies on November 08–10, 2019 and the 13th Workshop on Formal Syntax and Semantics held by Academia Sinica (Taiwan) on October 16–17, 2020. I am grateful for the feedback from the audiences there, especially from Roger Wěi-Wén Liào, Jò-Wàng Lín, Hóngyŏng Liú, Hăihuá Pān, Dìngxǔ Shí, Sze-Wing Tang, Yù-Yún Wáng, Yáng Yáng and Qìngwén Zhāng. I would also like to express my immense gratitude to Yì-Hsūn Chén for his timely and stimulating comments as well as constructive suggestions on various parts/versions of this article. The keen and rigorous comments as well as constructive suggestions from the anonymous reviewers and editors, especially Jim Huang, also improved the content and presentation of this work considerably. Added to these, I am indebted to Chīn-Fā Lién, Chúng-Háo Kū and Tíng-Chì Wèi for crosschecking the data used in this study for grammaticality judgments. Needless to say, any errors or inconsistencies that have persisted are my responsibility. This study is partially funded by the research Grant MOST108-2410-H-009-004 from the Ministry of Science of Technology, Taiwan, to which I am very grateful.
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Liu, CS.L. The possessive morphosyntactic strategy of gradable predication in Taiwanese Southern Min and the measure function. J East Asian Linguist 31, 179–220 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-022-09238-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-022-09238-2