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Article published In: Degrees and Grammar: An East Asian Perspective:
Edited by Qiongpeng Luo, Zhiguo Xie and Xiao Li
[Language and Linguistics 24:1] 2023
► pp. 147–181

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Mandarin de-adjectival degree achievements as inchoative statives

 | Nanjing University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 12 December 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00128.zha
Abstract
Mandarin degree adjectives can give rise to a degree achievement reading with the perfective marker le. In this paper, I argue that de-adjectival degree achievements in Mandarin are inchoative statives, whose core meaning component is a reflexive comparative that compares the present state with a previous state in some property of the same individual. My new analysis better captures the facts that de-adjectival degree achievements show variable telicity, that they give rise to stative readings with duration phrases, and that they are compatible with time as a comparative standard. Because the comparison is between two states at different times, a degree-achievement reading can be inferred even though the predicate is stative in semantics.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphology of Mandarin degree achievements
  • 3.Scale structure and telicity
    • 3.1Scale structure and positive/comparative readings
    • 3.2For-phrase and in-phrase tests
    • 3.3Further evidence for inchoative statives
  • 4.Previous analyses
    • 4.1Lin (2004)
    • 4.2Kennedy & Levin (2008)
    • 4.3Marín & McNally (2011)
  • 5.Analysis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (41)
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Kennedy, Christopher
2025. 2798 Points of comparison. In Generative Perspectives on Degrees, ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo
Zhang, Anqi
2025. Transitivity and non-scalar change-of-states in Mandarin. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 34:4 ► pp. 593 ff. DOI logo

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