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Change of state verbs and result state adjectives in Mandarin Chinese1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2013

SHIAO WEI THAM
SHIAO WEI THAM*
Affiliation:
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Wellesley College
*
Author's address: Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02482-0283, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

This paper investigates the derivational relationship between adjectives and verbs in Mandarin Chinese describing related state, change of state (COS) and caused COS meanings. Such paradigms have been observed in various languages to fall into two categories: One in which a word naming a property concept state constitutes the derivational base for the related COS verbs, and another in which a COS verb forms the basis from which the stative word – a ‘result state’ predicate – is derived. I show that in Mandarin, the distinction between morphological paradigms based on property-concept words versus eventive verbs is also found, but the actual derivational relations between verbs and adjectives are influenced by language-particular morphological properties of Mandarin. Specifically, I argue that a gradable property concept adjective systematically alternates to a related COS verb. This alternation, which can be tapped by degree modification and negation contexts, distinguishes adjectives from stative verbs, which do not have consistent COS counterparts, and from underived intransitive COS verbs, which do not have systematic stative counterparts. That is, I show that COS verbs do not lend themselves to the systematic derivation of result state adjectives. Rather, I argue that result state adjectives in Mandarin arise from conceptual-pragmatic factors: The nominal modified by such a result state adjective should be understood as describing a culturally or contextually salient class of entities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , November 2013 , pp. 647 - 701
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

[1]

I would like to thank the Journal of Linguistics editor and three anonymous referees for valuable comments and guidance. Special thanks to Beth Levin for very helpful comments on several drafts, and suggestions on organization and references. At different stages, this work has also benefited from comments from, and discussion with, David Beaver, John Beavers, Thomas Ernst, Chris Kennedy, Paul Kiparsky, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Susan Rothstein, Hooi Ling Soh, and Steve Wechsler. Parts of this work were presented at the 12th International Symposium of Chinese Languages and Linguistics (Taipei, June 2010), and at a Linguistics Colloquium at the University of Texas at Austin (November 2010). I am grateful to members of both audiences for helpful questions and discussion. Any remaining errors and misinterpretations are my responsibility.

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