On parts of speech in Chinese: gen
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Marie-Claude Paris
Abstract
In preverbal position in Mandarin Chinese the morpheme gen sometimes presents strict distributional characteristics, sometimes not. In the first case, it can be either a preposition, equivalent to the comitative marker ‘with’ in English or a conjunction, equivalent to ‘and’. In the second case, it evidences a mixed distribution, partaking of both preposition and conjunctive features.
In this paper, gen is treated as an underspecified marker whose values can be predicted from its syntactic behavior and from the types of predicates it is in construction with. It is shown that when it presents mixed distributional characteristics, gen can only be in construction with collective predicates. The semantic features associated with such predicates, which are [+/–eventive], are [+symmetry], hence [–distributivity].
©Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Guest editor's note
- Deconstructing the shì … de construction
- Focus on identity – the dark side of zìjĭ
- The wh/q-polarity adverb daodi in Mandarin Chinese and the syntax of focus
- On parts of speech in Chinese: gen
- The serial verb construction in Chinese: A tenacious myth and a Gordian knot
- Shi … de focus clefts in Mandarin Chinese
- D is for Demonstrative – Investigating the position of the demonstrative in Chinese and Zhuang
- Object specificity in Chinese: A view from the vP periphery
- Publications received October 2007 – September 2008
- Language index
- Subject index
- Contents of volume 25
Articles in the same Issue
- Guest editor's note
- Deconstructing the shì … de construction
- Focus on identity – the dark side of zìjĭ
- The wh/q-polarity adverb daodi in Mandarin Chinese and the syntax of focus
- On parts of speech in Chinese: gen
- The serial verb construction in Chinese: A tenacious myth and a Gordian knot
- Shi … de focus clefts in Mandarin Chinese
- D is for Demonstrative – Investigating the position of the demonstrative in Chinese and Zhuang
- Object specificity in Chinese: A view from the vP periphery
- Publications received October 2007 – September 2008
- Language index
- Subject index
- Contents of volume 25
