Shiao Wei Tham

Biographic Data

ID5858620
NAMEShiao Wei Tham
GIVEN NAMESShiao Wei
FAMILY NAMETham
SIGNATURETHAM S W
AFFILIATIONSWellesley College
ORCID0009-0000-5998-8904
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS7
TOTAL CITATIONS49
WORKS AS AUTHOR7
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2008
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX2

  • Multidimensionality and the scalar components of physical disturbance predicates

    Open AccessShiao Wei ThamARTICLEGlossa a journal of general…2025

    This paper investigates PHYSICAL DISTURBANCE predicates in English: change of state (CoS) verbs such as crack, scratch, dent etc., and their deverbal adjectives, that involve a “disturbance” in an affected object (the “host”) – an irregularity in the host that is part of the host, and which may be imagined to move around the host (Karmo 1977). I show these predicates are associated with a gradable scale that is closed on both ends, contrary to ea…

  • Internal location in Mandarin Chinese

    Open AccessShiao Wei ThamARTICLELinguistics2025References: 32

    This paper illustrates the crucial role of “internal locatives” (Maienborn, C. 2001. On the position and interpretation of locative modifiers. Natural Language Semantics 9(2). 191–240.) in the clause-internal distribution and interpretation of locative expressions headed by the stative locative morpheme zài ‘be at’ in Mandarin Chinese. Internal locatives describe spatial properties that are part of an event described by a verb, contrasting with e…

  • Possession as Non-Verbal Predication

    Open AccessShiao Wei ThamARTICLEProceedings of the Annual Meeting…2013

    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper argues that crosslinguistic variation in the forms of clausal possessive predication arises to a large extent from the NON-VERBAL nature of possessive predication. As evidence, I demonstrate that possessive predication across languages shows all the variation possible for non-verbal predication in general. I show the non-verbal approach not only accounts for previously observed major stra…

  • Change of state verbs and result state adjectives in Mandarin Chinese

    Open AccessShiao Wei ThamARTICLEJournal of Linguistics2013Cited by: 5References: 7

    This paper investigates the derivational relationship between adjectives and verbs in Mandarin Chinese describing related state, change of state (COS) and caused COS meanings. Such paradigms have been observed in various languages to fall into two categories: One in which a word naming a property concept state constitutes the derivational base for the related COS verbs, and another in which a COS verb forms the basis from which the stative word –…

  • When motion and location yield direction

    Open AccessShiao Wei ThamARTICLEProceedings of the Annual Meeting…2011

    Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (2013), pp. 344-358

  • The typology of motion expressions revisited

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLEJournal of Linguistics2009Cited by: 44References: 12

    This paper provides a new perspective on the options available to languages for encoding directed motion events. Talmy (2000) introduces an influential two-way typology, proposing that languages adopt either verb- or satellite-framed encoding of motion events. This typology is augmented by Slobin (2004b) and Zlatev & Yangklang (2004) with a third class of equipollently-framed languages. We propose that the observed options can instead be attribut…

  • The semantic category of the subject NP in Mandarin specificational copular sentences

    Open AccessShiao Wei ThamARTICLEJournal of East Asian Linguistics2008