The Classification Of Chinese Adjectives Based On Measurement Theory

This thesis addresses the systematic classification of Chinese adjectives based on the measurement theory. After the independent lexical category is determined, the detailed classifications of Chinese adjectives are carried out by introducing the four scales of measurement as a criterion. According to the scales of measurement, Chinese adjectives are categorized into four subclasses, namely nominal adjectives, ordinal adjectives, interval adjectives and ratio adjectives from lowest level to highest level. All the behaviors are taken into consideration when adjectives are modified by degree adverbs, when they are in comparative constructions and when they are combining with measure phrases.The characteristics of the four scales are decisive factors concerning adjectives’ syntactic capacities. As the lowest level of the scale, nominal adjectives have the only privilege of identification(=). With their nominal characteristics, these adjectives cannot be modified by any degree adverbs, and they cannot appear in comparative constructions and modify measure phrases. Ordinal adjectives can not only identify items but also rank them(<, >). Due to their signification of comparison, they can appear in comparative constructions. However, they cannot be modified by degree adverbs, and they will not arise in measure phrases, either. Interval adjectives belong to a relatively higher level scale. In addition to the features of ordinal adjectives, operations such as subtraction and addition(+,-) are meaningful to interval adjectives. Because of the lack of true zero point, they cannot construct ratio relations between the properties and the unit names. Thus, interval adjectives cannot form expressions with measure phrases. Despite of lack of ratio relations, they can express comparative relations and can be modified by degree adverbs. The highest level is ratio scale of adjectives. All operations(+,-, ×, ÷) can be achieved in this scale and all the syntactic rules of adjectives can be applied here.The ratio scale is the highest level in the scales of measurement, while the nominal scale is the lowest. All the characteristics of the lower level scales can be possessed by the higher level ones, while the opposite cannot make sense. Therefore, all the syntactic rules of adjectives can be successfully found in ratio adjectives, which own the strongest syntactic capacities. However, nominal adjectives are restricted within minority syntactic constructions. There are transformations among adjectives in these four scales. What have been found are the bottom-up transformations. For instance, nonbasic colour words are nominal adjectives while the basic colour words have turned into interval ones.This classification of adjectives can be applied to other languages, like English. Actually, the sparkling points of this scientific classification are its systematicness and objectivity, which ensure the wholeness and no overlapping. Most previous studies describe Chinese adjectives through analyzing some specific phenomena. On the contrary, this thesis determines which category the adjectives belong to and analyzes their possible syntactic constructions according to their characteristics.