Form and Meaning: Chinese Adjectives and Comparative Constructions

The area of study in this thesis is the adjectival domain in Chinese. Working within the generative paradigm and incorporating the feature theory in the minimalist program (Chomsky 1995) into the study, this thesis addresses the following issues of adjectives: the categorial status, the attributive and predicative uses, the phrase structure, and the internal structure and derivation of comparative constructions.;The thesis mainly consists of two parts. In the first part (Chapter 2 – Chapter 5), a structure based criterion for lexical categorization proposed by Baker (2003) is justified and adopted. Chinese adjectives are argued to form an independent category, different structurally from verbs in the attributive and predicative uses but parallel to nouns and verbs in the phrase structure. Following den Dikken, Gu and Guo (2010), a formal uninterpretable feature [CPR] (for ‘comparative’) associated with adjectives is motivated to capture the interpretational differences of adjectives in different contexts, and the Deg head with a matching feature projects DegP to provide the feature checking domain for the structure to converge. Adopting Borer’s (2005a) theory of lexical decomposition, it is argued that nongradable and gradable adjectives are distinguished in the structure. A functional head Grd (for ‘gradability’) is posited to merge with the adjective phrase projecting GrdP to express the gradability of adjectives in a similar way as the projection of ClP expressing ‘divisibility’ of nouns. Adjectives are thus proposed to be embedded into two layers of the functional projections of GrdP and DegP: [_DegP Deg [_GrdP Grd [A]]].;The second part (Chapter 6 – Chapter 7) is concerned with the internal structure and derivation of comparative constructions. It is argued that the compared elements are nominals of which the gradable adjectives predicate and Chinese comparatives are parameterized into individual comparison in the sense of Kennedy (2009). Proceeding along the line of den Dikken, Gu and Guo (2010), it is further argued that the comparative operator COMP adjoined to DegP is responsible for the comparative semantics of adjectives in comparative constructions and it has repercussions for the choice of the Deg head. In its presence, the Deg head expresses a triadic relation, provoking a DegP shell structure: the Deg head combines with the adjective first, then with a differential phrase and finally with a standard phrase. Two instantiations of the Deg head are proposed: CHU (‘exceed’) and yiyang (‘same’), the former giving rise to comparatives of superiority and the latter to comparatives of equality. In its absence, the Deg head is instantiated by a semantically bleached degree adverb hen, yielding the positive reading of the adjectives and positive constructions. As a result, the three instantiations of the Deg head unify comparative constructions as well as positive constructions into one structure. Meanwhile, the three instantiations of the Deg head split the interpretations of adjectives into two semantic zones: a positive zone and a comparative zone, which have further implications on the classification and distributions of degree adverbs.