A Syntactic And Semantic Analysis Of Mandarin Transitive Comparatives

Comparison is acknowledged as a major means for human beings to recognize the world.The study of comparative constructions has been one of the focused topics in linguistics.The research about Chinese comparatives has obtained great achievements in the past decades,mainly focusing on the bi-comparatives,such as the description of their syntactic properties and the syntactic category of bi.Besides,there is another structure in Chinese,like Xiao Zhang gao Xiao Li san limi ?Xiao Zhang is three centimeters taller than Xiao Li‘ and gege da meimei san sui ?The brother is three years older than his sister ‘.It also expresses the meaning of comparison,generally termed as Mandarin transitive comparatives or bare comparatives.Compared with the extensive studies of the bi-comparatives,the studies of Mandarin transitive comparatives are relatively few.And their unique properties are worthwhile to probe into: the adjectives like piaoliang ?beautiful‘,congming ?clever‘ are not allowed and the measure phrases are obligatorily present in them.Thus,based on the previous research on Mandarin transitive comparatives,this thesis raises the following four research questions:I.What are the restrictions on the adjectives in Mandarin transitive comparatives?II.Why are the measure phrases in Mandarin transitive comparatives obligatorily present?III.What is the semantics of Mandarin transitive comparatives? Do they involve explicit comparison or implicit comparison?IV.What is the correlation between Mandarin transitive comparatives and other closely related comparative constructions?Having generalized the syntactic and semantic properties of Mandarin transitive comparatives,this thesis makes following analysis.Firstly,the adjectives allowed in Mandarin transitive comparatives are classified into positive-negative measuring adjectives.When we make a comparison between two things along a certain dimension,these two things can be projected on an axis denoting this dimension,in which the distance between the two comparing items can be measured,shown as measure phrases which can be replaced by some vague quantity items and times.Secondly,in terms of the boundedness of the adjectival predication,it is argued that Mandarin transitive comparatives are a kind of bounded construction with special form and meaning in adjectival predicate sentences.The obligator y p resence of measure phrases is to achieve the boundedness of adjectival predicate sentences,help Mandarin transitive comparatives to be well-formed and complete the comparing event.Next,in accordance with Kennedy‘s(2007a)three testing criteria for comparative sentences: crisp judgments,minimum standard gradable adjectives and differential measurements,it is proved that Mandarin transitive comparatives are related to explicit comparison.Finally,by comparison with the yu/chu/guo comparatives,it is found that though these comparatives are similar to Mandarin transitive comparatives structurally,their syntactic and semantic properties are not completely identical,especially in the requirement of the measure phrase.The study is of significance to provide new insights and additions for the controversial issues in the research of Mandarin transitive comparatives and deepen the understanding of them.