Investigating The Syntax-sem Antics Interface Of The Numeral-adjective-classifier-noun Construction In Chinese

This research investigates the whole and partitive interpretations of the numeralclassifier expressions modified by da ‘big’ and xiao ‘small’.It has been well known in the linguistic literature that yi-da-ping-kele ‘a big bottle of Coke’ has two readings: the size of the bottle is bigger than the standard size,and the quantity of Coke in a bottle is over half of the bottle’s full quantity.Similarly,yi-da-zhang-zhi ‘a big sheet of paper’ expresses either that the size of the sheet of paper is bigger than the standard size or more than half of the area of the full sheet.These two readings are named as whole interpretation and partitive interpretation.Based on investigating the various restrictions of the two readings on adjectives,classifiers,nouns as well as numerals,this research presents a syntacticsemantic interface study of the numeral-classifier expressions modified by adjectives in Chinese,aiming to reveal the intrinsic syntactic and semantic principles underlying the ambiguity at issue.This dissertation starts by investigating the relevant set of facts.The partitive reading of the Chinese numeral-adjective-classifier construction has received hardly any systematic attention though it has been discussed in the previous literature.Therefore,a wider range of related facts as well as grammatical tests(such as qizhongde ‘a part of something’,the context of incremental verbs,container-classifiers)to help sorting out such facts are provided in the dissertation on the basis of existing corpus.Besides,it also explores the various syntactic-semantic restrictions on adjectives,classifiers,nouns as well as numerals in the whole and partitive readings.A semantic study is based on proper syntactic analysis,so it is necessary to ascertain the syntactic structure of the Chinese numeral-adjective-classifier noun before we do the syntactic-semantic interface study.Three existing syntactic analyses of the construction are presented and critically evaluated,namely the left-branching approach,the right-branching approach,and the mixed-branching approach.Based on existing literature,we identify the disadvantages of the right-branching and mixed-branching analyses of the numeralclassifier noun construction.At the same time,the advantages of and positive evidence for left-branching are offered.On this basis,two more pieces of evidence are also presented to support left-branching for the structure of numeral-adjective-classifier noun,namely[[ numeral [adjective classifier]] noun ].Based on the left-branching structure,a precise formal definition is first formulated for each component of Chinese numeral-adjectiveclassifier noun construction so as to explain and predict the typical data and some more complicated phenomena concerning the whole and partitive interpretations.Core findings in this research are listed as follows.1.Whereas there are known to be only seven adjectives allowed to modify numeralclassifier expressions,all of them must be able to measure a particular spatial dimension of the natural unit defined by the given classifier.Take *yi-fei-tiao-yu ‘A fat strip of fish’for example.Tiao defines a unit bearing on the spatial dimension of length while fei ‘fat’says nothing about this dimension.Since fei does not provide any measurement on the dimension,merging the two words does not yield a coherent interpretation,which explains why the adjective is not permitted with tiao.Meanwhile,there are only two adjectives da ‘big’ and xiao ‘small’,which measure either some spatial dimension of a natural unit for a classifier or the volume dimension of the content unit.If da ‘big’ and xiao ‘small’ measure on the particular dimension of a natural unit,the whole reading results.But if da ‘big’ and xiao ‘small’ measure on the volume dimension of a content unit,they will describe the proportion of the actual content inside the unit(e.g.the bottle-container unit)to the full content of the unit(e.g.a full bottle).This produces the partitive reading.2.The whole reading is available in 129 classifiers,which must be able to denote natural units with spatial boundaries;while the partitive reading is available in 59 classifiers which must be able to denote content unit with volume dimension as a container.For instance,yi-da-ping-kele ‘a big bottle of Coke’ can have a whole or a partitive reading.It is argued that this ambiguity originates in the classifier ping ‘bottle’ being a container,which defines a natural unit or a content unit.With the former meaning,the spatial boundary of ping ‘bottle’ is subject to change in the size dimension.In this case,when da‘big’ directly modifies such a classifier,it says that the size of bottle is bigger than the standard size,which gains the whole interpretation.But if ping ‘bottle’ defines the content unit,which is variable in its capacity in the volume-dimension,da ‘big’ measures the content’s proportion to the whole quantity and expresses the quantity of Coke is over half of the bottle’s full quantity,which is the partitive interpretation.3.In its whole reading,the adjective modifies the classifier restricted by the noun.In*yi-da-ge-ren ‘A-big-Cl-person’,the natural unit concerning ren ‘person’ is not measured on the spatial dimension since the qualification for a human individual has nothing to do with his or her spatial dimension.So the classifier ge,in construction with ren ‘person’,cannot denote a natural unit relying on any spatial dimension,which in turn makes da ‘big’semantically a mismatch.But in the part reading,the noun has no influence on the container classifier since it only specifies the nature of the content.Thus,there is no restriction for the noun in this reading,for instance,yi-da-che-ren‘A-big-cart-of-person’ is grammatical.4.Using data from corpus,this dissertation shows that the choice of a numeral,be it yi ‘one’,er ‘two’ or san ‘three’,has no effect on the whole and partitive readings of this construction.In sum,the syntactic-semantic analysis of the Chinese numeral-adjective-classifiernoun construction expands the range of facts explained by the current linguistic theory.It provides detailed elucidations and in-depth accounts of the underlying reasons of the ambiguity in the whole and partitive interpretations and thereby furthers the research on the syntax-semantics interface of Chinese.