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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

Mandarin de-adjectival degree achievements as inchoative statives

| Nanjing University

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.

Keywords: degree achievements, inchoative statives, reflexive comparatives, scale-structure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphology of Mandarin degree achievements
  • 3.Scale structure and telicity
    • 3.1Scale structure and positive/comparative readings
    • 3.2 For-phrase and in-phrase tests
    • 3.3Further evidence for inchoative statives
  • 4.Previous analyses
    • 4.1 Lin (2004)
    • 4.2 Kennedy & Levin (2008)
    • 4.3 Marín & McNally (2011)
  • 5.Analysis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

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

Published online: 12 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00128.zha
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