The property concepts and the possessive verb Ū ‘Have’ in Taiwan Southern Min
This paper delineates an alternative analysis of the property concepts of
ū ‘have’ in Taiwan Southern Min, claiming that the complements serve syntactically as the nominal gradabilities through three syntactic (constituency) tests, and supported by a crosslinguistic perspective. Additionally, in the vein of Distributed Morphology, the gradability functions as an
nP (also as a nominalization), in contrast with NP/DP. From a typological perspective, it is not peculiar for
ū to select a nominalization of property concept to signal a reading of property-denoting. Moreover, I illustrate the semantics of a possessive property concept construction in Taiwan Southern Min, according to Francez and Koontz-Garboden (
2015,
2017). I further propose a modal aspectual semantics to interpret the various temporal readings of
ū. Finally, I draw a conclusion to my alternative analyses.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Whether the gradable complement is an adjective?
- 3.The analysis of nominalization
- 3.1Three syntactic tests
- 3.1.1Kind classifier test
- 3.1.2Topicalization
- 3.1.3Coordination test
- 3.2More robust observations
- 3.3The analysis of Distributed Morphology
- 3.4A typological perspective
- 3.5Puzzles
- 4.The semantics of possessive property concepts
- 5.The analysis of temporal modal
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References
References (79)
References
Adger, D. (2003). Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach. Oxford University Press.
Aldridge, E. (2016). Nominalization of embedded clauses in late Archaic Chinese, presented at ISACG-9, Humboldt University, Berlin.
Badan, L. & del Gobbo, F. (2010). On the syntax of topic and focus in Chinese. In Benica & Munaro (eds.), Mapping the Left Periphery, 63–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bierwisch, M. (1990). Event nominalization: proposal and problem. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 40 (1/2), 19–84.
Bohnemeyer, J. & Swift, M. (2001). Default aspect: the semantic interaction of aspectual viewpoint and telicity. Proceedings of Perspectives on Aspect. Utrecht: Institute of Linguistics.
Bohnemeyer, J. & Swift, M. (2004). Event realization and default aspect. Linguistics and philosophy
27
(3), 263–296.
Booij, G. (2007). The Grammar of Words: An introduction to Linguistic Morphology. Oxford University Press.
Chang, C. (1998). The Notes on Taiwan Southern Min Language. Taipei: Wen-Shi-Zhe Press.
Chen, Q. & Wang, J. (2010). The analysis on the multiple functions of Southern Dialect HAVE. Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies
4
1, 47–55.
Chen, Y. (2010). Degree Modifications and Boundedness of Adjectives in Mandarin. MA Thesis. Taiwan: National Chung Cheng University.
Cheng, C. (2019). Gradability of possessive property concepts and its interaction with the degree words in Mandarin Chinese, presented at IACL-27, 2019, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Japan.
Cheng, R. (1979). Taiwanese u and Mandarin you. In Papers from the 1979 Asian and Pacific Conference on Lingusitics and Language Teaching, 141–180.
Cheng, R. (1980). Modality in Taiwanese. Taiwan: Taiwan Student Bookstore Press.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (1977). On wh-movement. In P. W. Culicover, T. Wasow and A. Akmajian (eds.), Formal syntax, 71–132. San Diego, CA: Academic Press
Crystal, D. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Ding, J. (2008). HAVE constructions in Xiangtan language. Journal of Xiang-Nan University
29
(6), 75–79.
Dixon, R. (1982). Where Have All the Adjectives Gone? And Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax. The Hague: Mouton.
Embick, D. & Noyer, R. (2006). Distributed Morphology and the Syntax-Morphology interface. In G. Ramchand and C. Reiss (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, 289–324. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Embick, D. & Marantz, A. (2008). Architecture and blocking. Linguistics Inquiry
38
(1), 1–53.
Fillmore, C. J. (1968). The case for case. In E. Bach and R. T. Harms (eds.), Universals in linguistic theory, 1–88. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Francez, I. & Koontz-Garboden, A. (2015). Semantic variation and the grammar of property concepts. Language
91
(3), 533–563.
Francez, I. & Koontz-Garboden, A. (2017). Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts. Oxford University Press.
Halle, M. (1990). An approach to Morphology. Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society
20
(11). Amherst: GLSA University of Massachusetts, 150–184.
Halle, M. & Marantz, A. (1993). Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds), the View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in honor of Sylvain Brombergerin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Halle, M. & Marantz, A. (1994). Some key features of Distributed Morphology. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics
21
1, 275–288.
Harley, H. & Noyer, R. (2003). State-of-the Article: Distributed Morphology. In L. Cheng and R. Sybesma (eds.), The Second Glot State-of-the-Article Book: The Latest in Linguistics, 463–495. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Harley, H. (2015). The Syntax/Morphology interface. In T. Kiss and A. Alexiadou (eds.), Syntax, Theory and Analysis: An International Handbook (vol. 21), 1128–1154. Boston, MA: Mouton de Gruyter.
Harley, H. (2019). 5 Semantics in Distributed Morphology. In K. Heusinger, P. Portner and C. Maienborn (eds.), Semantics-Interfaces, 143–168. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hu, Y. & Fan, X. (1994). The nominalizations of verbs and adjectives. Zhongguo Yuwen 21, 81–85.
Huang, J. (1988). Shuo Shi He You [On ‘Be’ and ‘Have’ in Chinese]. In Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology
59
1, 43–64. Taiwan: Academia Sinica Press.
Huang, J., Li, A. & Li, Y. (2009). The Syntax of Chinese. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Huang, C. (2000). The existential verbs in Qiang. Minority Languages of China 41, 13–22.
Hung, Y. (2012). Negation in Naturally Occurring Taiwan Sign Language. MA Thesis. Taiwan: National Chung Cheng University.
Jaggar, P. (2001). Hausa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kennedy, C. (2007). Vagueness and grammar: the Semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy
30
(1), 1–45.
Kho, K. T. (1998). An Introduction to Taiwanese. Taiwan: Qianwei Publishing Company Press.
Kho, K. T. (2000). Introduction to Taiwanese. Taiwan: Avanguard Publishing Company Press.
Kratzer, A. (1981). The notional category of modality. In H. Eikmeyer and H. Reiser (eds.), Words, Worlds and Context, 38–74. Berlin: Walter de Cruyter.
Kratzer, A. (1991). Modality. In A. von Stechow and D. Wunderlich (eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, 639–650. Berlin: Walter de Cruyter.
Li, A. (2012). de in Mandarin ↔ e in Taiwanese. Studies in Chinese Linguistics
33
(1), 17–40.
Li, C. & Thompson, S. (1976). Subject and topic: a new typology of languages. In C. Li (ed.), Subject and Topic, 459–489.
Li, C. & Thompson, S. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Li, R. (1986). Southern Min Ū ‘HAVE’ and BÔ ‘NOT’. Studies of Fu-Jian Normal University
2
1, 76–83.
Li, R. (1998). The Dictionary of Changsha Dialect. China: Jiangsu Educational Publishing.
Lien, C. (2009). Middles in Taiwanese Southern Min: The interface of lexical meaning and event structure. Lingua
120
1, 1273–1287.
Lin, J. (2003). Temporal reference in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics
12
1, 259–311.
Lin, J. & Tang, J. (1995). Modals as verbs in Chinese: a GB perspective. The Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 661: 53–105.
Lin, P. (2015). Taiwanese Grammar: A Concise Reference. Greenhorn Media.
Lu, J. (2013). The Research Course of Modern Chinese Grammar [Xiandai Hanyu Yufa Yanjiu Jiaocheng]. Peking University Press.
Lv, S. (2004 [1995]). About some problems of Chinese syntactic categories [Guanyu hanyu cilei de yixie yuanzexing wenti]. The collections of Lv Shu-Xian Vol 2 [Lvshuxiang wenji volume 2]. The Commercial Published.
Maienborn, C. (2019). Events and states. In R. Truswell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure, 24–65. Oxford University Press.
Moltmann, F. (2019). Nominals and event structure. In R. Truswell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure, 1–34. Oxford University Press.
Moltmann, F. (2020). Nominalizations: The case of nominalizations of modal predicates. In D. Gutzmann, L. Matthewson, C. Meier, H. Rullmann and T. E. Zimmerman (eds), The Companion to Semantics, 1–23. Wiley Publication.
Newman, P. (2000). The Hausa Language: An Encyclopedic reference grammar. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Osborne, T. (2018). Tests for constituents: What they really reveal about the nature of syntactic structure. Language Under Discussion 5(1), 1–41.
Radford, A. (1997). Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A Minimalist Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shen, J. (2015). The subjectivity of Chinese syntactic categories. Foreign Language Teaching and Research 47(5), 643–658.
Shi, D. (2000). Topic and topic-comment constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Language 76(2), 383–408.
Shyu, S. (2014). Topic and focus. In J. Huang, A. Li and A. Simpson (eds.), The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, 100–125. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Tsai, D. (2002).
You ‘have’ in Taiwan Mandarin and Dialects – On the social and historical aspects of grammatical theories. Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Studies
32
(2), 495–528.
Tsao, F. (1996). Minna de Zhuyuzhuti he Zhutichuan [Taiwanese subject, topic and topic chain]. In Z. Dong (ed.), The Notes of Taiwanese Teaching of ‘An Introduction of Taiwanese’. Taiwan: Taiwan Languages and Literature Society Press.
Tsao, F. (1998). On three aspect-related morpheme ‘U’, ‘∅’, ‘A’ in Taiwanese Minnan. Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Studies
28
(3), 299–334.
Tsao, F. & Cheng, Y. (1995). On Taiwan Southern Min HAVE and the related Issues. Studies in Chinese Linguistics
11
1, 155–167.
Wu, J. & Zheng, Z. (2018). Toward a unified semantics for Ū in Ū + situation in Taiwan Southern Min: A modal-aspectual account. In J. F. Hong, Q. Su and J. S. Wu (eds), Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, CLSW 2018, 408–422. Springer.
Wurmbrand, S. (1999). Modal verbs must be raising verbs. In S. Bird, A. Carnie, J. Haugen and P. Norquest (eds), WCCFL 18 Proceedings, 599–612.
Yang, X. (1991). Grammar on Taiwan Southern Min. Taipei: Da-An Publishing Company Press.
Zhang, N. (2006). On the configuration issue of coordination. Language and Linguistics 7 (1): 175–223.
Zhang, N. (2007). On the categorical issue of coordination. Lingua et Linguistica 1 (1): 7–46.
Zhang, N. (2010). Coordination in Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zhang, N. (2015). Functional head properties of the degree word Hen in Mandarin Chinese. Lingua
153
1, 14–41.
Zhang, N. (2016). Understanding s-selection. Studies in Chinese Linguistics
37
(1), 56–73.
Zheng, Z. (2014). Taiwan Southern Min Ū in adjectival predicate constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the IACL & the 26th NACCL, University of Maryland, USA.
Zheng, Z. (2015). Revisiting Taiwan Southern Min Ū ‘HAVE’ and its gradable complements. MA Thesis. Taiwan: National Chung Cheng University.
Zhu, D., Lu, J. & Ma, Z. (1961). The issue of the nominalization of verbs and adjectives. Journal of Peking University 41, 51–64.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Li, Fuqiang
2024.
词汇多义性和句法连续性.
Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.