A morpheme introducing degrees and its impact on argument structure: The Taiwanese Southern Min <i>u-</i>

Abstract

In the Taiwanese Southern Min u-V construction, the u-V sequence is an intransitive compound verb denoting a stative scalar property, and the V of the sequence can be a non-gradable lexical verb or an aspectual verb. The morpheme u ‘uVD’ (A) morphosyntactically induces a change in the valency of the lexical V, (B) compositionally changes the denotation of V into a set of events (or time containment relations), and (C) semantically introduces degrees by contributing a structure-preserving map from events, states or time containment relations to their measures along various dimensions (Wellwood 2015). This study has two implications. First, contra Wellwood (2015), the TSM u-V construction provides empirical evidence in support of the degree-theoretic approach for degree structures. Second, Taiwanese Southern Min also adopts the possessive morphosyntactic strategy for predicating gradable properties, but the nominal involved is not necessary to be an abstract property concept nominal (Francez & Koontz-Garboden 2017).