Syntactic And Semantic Study On Three Types Of Chinese Comparative Constructions

As one of the sentence types that are widely used in languages, comparativeconstructions have attracted much attention in linguistic researches. Our focus hereis on Chinese comparative constructions (CCs). They generally follow the basicpattern like this: X comparison marker Y (adverb) dimension. To be more specific,our study aims to shed some light on the following three kinds of comparativeconstructions, notably superiority, inferiority, and equality comparatives.Previous examinations in this field mainly focus on bi-comparatives, especiallyon the syntactic status of bi. However, the outcome of these researches is still indispute. On the other hand, relatively little work has been done on the other twotypes. In order to get a deeper and more systematic understanding of the syntacticand semantic structure and derivation on Chinese CCs, we try to raise and tackle thefollowing questions:(1) Are Mandarin comparatives explicit comparison or implicitcomparison?(2) What is the syntactic category of a comparative marker?(3) AreChinese “phrasal” comparatives truly phrasal, or underlyingly clausal?(4) Can wegive unified syntactic and semantic explanations for all these CCs through theanalysis of their generalities?As for the first question, we will prove that all comparatives concerned here areexplicit comparison, drawing on evidence form three diagnoses raised by Kennedy(2007).In regard to the second question, based on four tests of verbalhood, we hold thatcomparative markers in Chinese CCs are actually stative verbs with verbalmeanings.Through the analyses of the reflexive pronoun ziji "self" and temporal or spatialadverbs in Chinese comparatives, we offer an answer to the third question: the targetand the standard are base-generated as two clauses.Based on all the above results, we finally propose that there is a phonologicallynull comparative morpheme compunder the node v in the syntactic tree. It is justthis compthat attracts the CM to move forward to its node. Through the movementof CM out of VP and the deletions inside two clauses, we yield the observed surfaceword order. Semantically, in support of Heim (2000)’s degree analysis, we hold thatlike English comparatives, Chinese CCs also explicitly encode an ordering orrelation of degrees. Thus, our own proposal on the truth condition and semantic constituency for each type of Chinese CCs takes shape and different types ofChinese CCs obtain a relatively reasonable and uniform account for their syntacticand semantic structures and derivations.