A Novel Approach to the Syntax of Chinese Adjectival Predicates

In Mandarin Chinese, bare adjectives can only function as predicates when they co-occur with some other elements in certain contexts, most typically the degree adverb hen ‘very’. This phenomenon cannot be found in other languages like English. To explain this crosslinguistic variation, researchers have developed different theories, among them the most developed theory regards hen ‘very’ as an overt positive morpheme. Previous studies have all focused on just one Mandarin variety, namely Standard Mandarin (STM). However, the present theory cannot apply to other Mandarin varieties like Sichuanese Mandarin which, as this paper demonstrates, does not have an overt positive morpheme. This paper provides new data from Sichuanese Mandarin and proposes that register grammar should be taken into consideration. A novel, hybrid approach to explain this crossdialectal variation is given in this paper

Adverb · Grammar · Linguistics · Mandarin Chinese · Morpheme · Natural language processing · Noun · Phenomenon · Physics · Syntax · Computer Science · Gender Studies in Language · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence