Cover not available
Article published In:
Concentric
Vol. 45:1 (2019) ► pp.24–43

On maximality in Mandarin possessives

 | Chung Yuan Christian University
The possessive construction in Mandarin is similar to English prenominal possessives except that maximality is presupposed only for cases involving inherently relational nouns. In this paper, I adopt the hypothesized split of argument and modifier genitives proposed by Partee & Borschev (2001, 2003) and argue that modifier-genitives can occur NP-internally in Mandarin possessives, whose appearance is restricted to cases with non-relational nouns. The discrepancy of the maximality presupposition observed in Mandarin can thus be captured since non-relational nouns can have a split of interpretations between argument and modifier genitives, resulting in a non-maximality reading.
Keywords: maximality, possessives, relational nouns, Mandarin Chinese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and problems
  • 3.The assumptions
  • 4.The semantic analysis
    • 4.1The semantics of high-possessor possessives
    • 4.2Prenominal relative clauses
    • 4.3Predicate possessives
    • 4.4Comparison with English
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • List of abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 31 May 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/consl.00002.wan
References (21)
References
Abbott, Barbara. 2004. Definiteness and indefiniteness. Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Laurence R. Horn and Gregory Ward, 122–149. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Barker, Chris. 1995. Possessive Descriptions. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
. 1998. Partitives, double genitives, and anti-uniqueness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 16.4:679–717. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Possessives and relational nouns. Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, vol. 21, ed. by Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger and Paul Portner, 1109–1130. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shan, and Rint Sybesma. 1999. Bare and not-so-bare nouns and the structure of NP. Linguistic Inquiry 30.4:509–542. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen, and Rint Sybesma. 2009. De as an underspecified classifier: First explorations. Yŭyánxué Lùncóng 391:123–156.Google Scholar
Huang, Shi-Zhe. 2006. Property theory, adjectives, and modification in Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 15.4:343–369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jensen, Per Anker, and Carl Vikner. 1994. Lexical knowledge and the semantic analysis of Danish genitive constructions. Topics in Knowledge-based NLP Systems, ed. by S. L. Hansen and H. Wegener, 37–55. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partee, Barbara Hall. 1997. Genitives: A case study. Appendix to Theo M. V. Janssen, ‘Compositionality’. Handbook of Logic and Language, ed. by Johan van Benthem and Alice ter Meulen, 464–470. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
. 2006. A note on Mandarin possessives, demonstratives and definiteness. Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning: Neo-Gricean Studies in Pragmatics and Semantics in Honor of Laurence R. Horn, ed. by Berry J. Birner and Gregory Ward, 263–280. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partee, Barbara Hall, and Vladimir Borschev. 2001. Some puzzles of predicate possessives. Perspectives on Semantic, Pragmatic and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer, ed. by István Kenesei and Robert M. Harnish, 91–117. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. Genitives, relational nouns, and argument-modifier ambiguity. Modifying Adjuncts, ed. by Ewald Lang, Claudia Maienborn and Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen, 67–112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rooth, Mats. 1985. Association with Focus. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst.
Simpson, Andrew. 2002. On the status of “modifying” DE and the structure of the Chinese DP. On the Formal Way to Chinese Languages, ed. by Sze-Wing Tang and Chen-Sheng Luther Liu, 74–101. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Sproat, Richard, and Chinlin Shih. 1988. Prenominal adjectival ordering in English and Mandarin. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, ed. by James Blevins and Juli Carter, 465–489. Amherst, MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Stockwell, Robert P., Paul Schachter, and Barbara Hall Partee. 1973. The Major Syntactic Structures of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Tang, Chih-Chen Jane. 1990. A note on the DP analysis of the Chinese noun phrase. Linguistics 28.2:337–354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vikner, Carl, and Per Anker Jensen. 2002. A semantic analysis of the English genitive. Interaction of lexical and formal semantics. Studia Linguistica 56.2:191–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Woisetschlaeger, Erich. 1983. On the question of definiteness in “An Old Man’s Book”. Linguistic Inquiry 14.1:137–154.Google Scholar
Zamparelli, Roberto. 2005. The structure of (in)definiteness. Lingua 115.6:915–936. DOI logoGoogle Scholar