Nominal property concepts and substance possession in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

This paper investigates two puzzles regarding property concept (PC) lexemes (Dixon in Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in semantics and syntax. Mouton, The Hague, 1982) in Mandarin: why degree modifiers such as hen ‘very’ are compatible with gradable adjectives such as gao ‘tall’ as well as PC nominals such as zhihui ‘wisdom’, but not with concrete mass nouns such as shui ‘water’ in simple declarative clauses, and why degree modifiers are obligatory to block comparative interpretation in sentences with gradable adjectives and possessive PC nominal phrases. I demonstrate the data of PC nominals in possessive constructions with positive and comparative interpretations. Following Francez and Koontz-Garboden (Semantics and morphosyntactic variation: qualities and the grammar of property concepts. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017), I argue that PC nominals and other mass nouns in Mandarin are semantically distinct in such a way that the latter lack inherent measures. Furthermore, I argue that gradable adjectives and possessive PC nominal phrases are model-theoretically equivalent. Moreover, I propose that degree modifiers such as hen are compulsory to block comparative interpretations in PC sentences because possessive PC phrases are Adjective Phrases and require an overt degree modifier or a covert comparative operator to satisfy the T[+ V] constraint in Mandarin proposed by Grano (Nat Lang Linguist Theory 30:513–565, 2012).