A Study On Semantic Features Of "yuè…yuè…" Comparative Structure

Comparison is one of the most universal cognitive ways for human beings toexpress the differences and changes among entities or events. Every language hassome ways to express comparison. Although many Chinese scholars try to classifyand interpret comparison and have already made great progress in some aspects, theirstudy is still at the descriptive level and lacks a unified standard of classification. Inthe study of Chinese comparison, the comparative marker “bǐ” is mostly studied.“yuè…yuè…” structure is one of the controversial types of comparison and is lessstudied.The current study makes the following claims. Firstly,“yuè…yuè…”comparative structure belongs to the pluractional comparison. Secondly,“yuè…yuè…” comparative structure has three semantic features, which arecumulative feature, temporal feature and conditional feature. The relationship amongthese three semantic features can be explained by formal expression of pluractionalcomparison in the spirit of Beck (2012). Thirdly, if “yuè…yuè…” comparativestructure has the temporal interpretation, the verb in this structure normally is adurative verb which expresses states, activities or accomplishments not achievements;the bare noun in this structure, which has two semantic types of e or <e, t> in Lin(2007), should be of type e; the adjective in this structure should be dynamicadjective of type <d,<s, t>>.The study of “yuè…yuè…” comparative structure enriches the comparisonstudy in Chinese theoretically.