Cover not available
Part of
Word Classes: Nature, typology and representations
Edited by Raffaele Simone and Francesca Masini
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 332] 2014
► pp. 95–118

The Chinese adjective as a word class

| University of Milano-Bicocca
It has often been claimed that Chinese does not have an independent class of adjectives, which are seen by some authors as a subclass of verbs (cf. Li & Thompson 1981; Hengeveld 1992; Tang 1998, among others). In this paper, I shall first provide evidence for the status of adjectives as an independent word-class in Mandarin Chinese, both as the instantiation of a universal prototype (Croft 2000, 2001) and as a language-specific category, following Paul’s (2005, 2010) distributional analysis. Secondly, I shall show that the category of adjectives in Mandarin Chinese includes at least two subclasses, namely predicative adjectives (‘verb-like’ adjectives) and non-predicative adjectives (non-verb-like; cf. Lü & Rao 1981), i.e. those property-denoting words which can neither fill a nominal slot nor be stand-alone predicates but may act as modifiers of a noun, as liángxìng “positive, benign” (cf. Li 1996). I shall also discuss the category of ‘non-attributive’ or ‘predicative-only’ adjectives (Hu 1979; Deng, Wang & Li 1996), i.e. property-denoting words which can never be used as modifiers of a noun, but only as intransitive predicates, and I shall argue that they do not represent a separate (sub-)class in Mandarin Chinese.
Published online: 24 September 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332.06arc
References (48)
Anward, Jan, Edith Moravcsik & Leon Stassen. 1997. “Parts of Speech: A challenge for typology”. Linguistic Typology 1:2.167–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anward, Jan. 2001. “Parts of Speech”. Language Typology and Language Universals: An international handbook ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible, vol. 1, 726–735. Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Basciano, Bianca. 2010. Verbal Compounding and Causativity in Mandarin Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Verona.Google Scholar
Bhat, Shankara D.N. 1994. The Adjectival Category. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bisang, Walter. 2011. “Word Classes”. The Oxford Handbook of Language Typology ed. by Jae Jung Song, 280–302. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cabredo Hoffherr, Patricia. 2010. “Adjectives. An introduction”. Adjectives. Formal analyses in syntax and semantics ed. by Patricia Cabredo Hofherr & Ora Matushansky, 1–26. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro & Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1990. Meaning and Grammar: An introduction to semantics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
. 2000. “Parts of Speech as Language Universals and as Language-Particular Categories”. Approaches to the Typology of Word Classesed. by Petra M. Vogel & Bernard Comrie, 65–102. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. Typology and Universals. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Den Dikken, Marcel & Pornsiri Singhapreecha. 2004. “Complex Noun Phrases and Linkers”. Syntax7.1–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deng Xiaoyong, Qilong Wang & Jian Li. 1996. “A Statistical Study of Special Adjectives”. Pan-Asiatic Linguistics: Proceedings of the fourth international symposium on languages and linguistics , 232–241. Mahidol University at Salaya.
Dixon, R.M.W. 2004. “Adjective Classes in Typological Perspective”. Adjective Classes: A cross-linguistic typology ed. by R.M.W. Dixon & Alexandra Y Aikhenvald, 1–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dragunov, Alexandr A. 1960[1952]. Untersuchungen zur Grammatik der modernen chinesischen Sprache. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag(translated from Russian by W. Lippert).Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Toshiki Osada. 2005. “Mundari: The myth of a language without word classes”. Linguistic Typology 9.351–390.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Harris, Roy & Talbot J. Taylor. 1997. Landmarks in Linguistic Thought I. 2nd ed. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hengeveld, Kees. 1992. “Parts of Speech”. Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective ed. by Michael D. Fortescue, Peter Harder & Lars Kristoffersen, 29–56. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hockett, Charles. 1963. “The Problem of Universals in Language”. Universals of Language ed. by Joseph Greenberg, 1–29. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hu, Mingyang. 1979. 北京话初探 (A Preliminary Study of the Peking Dialect). Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1977. X-bar Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The Philosophy of Grammar. London: George Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Jiang, Shaoyu. 1989. 古汉语词汇纲要 ( An Outline of Classical Chinese Lexicon ). Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1990. “Towards Lexical Typology”. Studies in Typology and Diachrony. Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on his 75th birthday ed. by William A. Croft, Susanne Kemmer & Keith Denning, 161–186. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Charles N. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese. A functional reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Li, Yafei. 1990. “On V-V Compounds in Chinese”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8.177–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Yuming. 1996. 非谓形容词的词类地位 (“Lexical Category of Non-predicative Adjectives”). Zhongguo Yuwen 1.Google Scholar
Liu, Luther Chen-Sheng. 2010. “The Positive Morpheme in Chinese and the Adjectival Structure”. Lingua 120.1010–1056. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lü, Shuxiang & Changrong Rao. 1981. 试论非谓形容词 (“Tentative Remarks on Non-predicative Adjectives”). Zhongguo Yuwen 2.81–90.Google Scholar
Lü, Shuxiang. 1980. 现代汉语八百词 ( Eight Hundred Words in Contemporary Chinese). Beijing: Shanggwu Yinshuguan.Google Scholar
Matthews, Stephen & Virginia Yip. 2011. Cantonese. A comprehensive grammar. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. 1992. “Justifying part-of-speech assignment in Mandarin Chinese”. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 20, 211–245.Google Scholar
Paris, Marie-Claude. 1989. “Quelques aspects de la gradation en mandarin”. Linguistique générale et linguistique chinoise: quelques exemples d’argumentation ed. by Marie-Claude Paris, 99–119. Paris: UFR.Google Scholar
Paul, Waltraud. 2005. “Adjectival Modification in Mandarin Chinese and Related Issues”. Linguistics 43.757–793. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. “Adjectives in Mandarin Chinese: The rehabilitation of a much ostracized category”. Adjectives. Formal analyses in syntax and semantics ed. by Patricia Cabredo Hofherr & Ora Matushansky, 115–152. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, et al. 1985. A Comprehesive Grammar of the English Language. London & New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Rijkhoff, Jan. 2000. “When Can a Language Have Adjectives? An implicational universal”. Approaches to the Typology of Word Classes ed. by Petra M. Vogel & Bernard Comrie, 218–257. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ross, Claudia. 1984. “Grammatical Categories in Mandarin Chinese”. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers’ Association 19.1–22.Google Scholar
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1993. “Das Nomen – eine universale Kategorie?”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 46.187–221.Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard & Chilin Shih. 1988. “Prenominal Adjectival Ordering in English and Mandarin”. Proceedings of North East Linguistic Society 18 , vol. 2, 465–489. Amherst, Mass.: GLSA.Google Scholar
. 1991. “The Cross-linguistic Distribution of Adjective Ordering Restrictions”. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language. Essays in honor of S.-Y. Kuroda, ed. by Carol Georgopoulos, 565–592. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sybesma, Rint. 1992. Causatives and Accomplishments. The case of Chinese ba. Dordrecht: Holland Institute of General Linguistics.Google Scholar
Tang, Sze-Wing. 1998. Parametrization of Features in Syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Irvine.Google Scholar
Xu, Weiyuan. 1988. Capturing the Adjective in Chinese. Ms., Australian National University.Google Scholar
Yip, Po-Ching & Don Rimmington. 2004. Chinese: A comprehensive grammar. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zhang, Bojiang. 1994. 词类活用的功能解释 (“Functional Explanation for Multicategoriality”). Zhongguo Yuwen 5.340–346.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Wolpert, Max, Hui Zhang, Shari Baum & Karsten Steinhauer
2024. Native and non-native parsing of adjective placement – An ERP study of Mandarin and English sentence processing. Brain and Language 254 ► pp. 105427 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 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.