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The Chinese adjective as a word class

  • Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
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Word Classes
This chapter is in the book Word Classes

Abstract

It has often been claimed that Chinese does not have an independent class of adjectives, which are seen by some authors as a subclass of verbs (cf. Li & Thompson 1981; Hengeveld 1992; Tang 1998, among others). In this paper, I shall first provide evidence for the status of adjectives as an independent word-class in Mandarin Chinese, both as the instantiation of a universal prototype (Croft 2000, 2001) and as a language-specific category, following Paul’s (2005, 2010) distributional analysis. Secondly, I shall show that the category of adjectives in Mandarin Chinese includes at least two subclasses, namely predicative adjectives (‘verb-like’ adjectives) and non-predicative adjectives (non-verb-like; cf. Lü & Rao 1981), i.e. those property-denoting words which can neither fill a nominal slot nor be stand-alone predicates but may act as modifiers of a noun, as liángxìng “positive, benign” (cf. Li 1996). I shall also discuss the category of ‘non-attributive’ or ‘predicative-only’ adjectives (Hu 1979; Deng, Wang & Li 1996), i.e. property-denoting words which can never be used as modifiers of a noun, but only as intransitive predicates, and I shall argue that they do not represent a separate (sub-)class in Mandarin Chinese.

Abstract

It has often been claimed that Chinese does not have an independent class of adjectives, which are seen by some authors as a subclass of verbs (cf. Li & Thompson 1981; Hengeveld 1992; Tang 1998, among others). In this paper, I shall first provide evidence for the status of adjectives as an independent word-class in Mandarin Chinese, both as the instantiation of a universal prototype (Croft 2000, 2001) and as a language-specific category, following Paul’s (2005, 2010) distributional analysis. Secondly, I shall show that the category of adjectives in Mandarin Chinese includes at least two subclasses, namely predicative adjectives (‘verb-like’ adjectives) and non-predicative adjectives (non-verb-like; cf. Lü & Rao 1981), i.e. those property-denoting words which can neither fill a nominal slot nor be stand-alone predicates but may act as modifiers of a noun, as liángxìng “positive, benign” (cf. Li 1996). I shall also discuss the category of ‘non-attributive’ or ‘predicative-only’ adjectives (Hu 1979; Deng, Wang & Li 1996), i.e. property-denoting words which can never be used as modifiers of a noun, but only as intransitive predicates, and I shall argue that they do not represent a separate (sub-)class in Mandarin Chinese.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword and acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. PART I. Types of word classes
  6. Carving verb classes from corpora 17
  7. Classes of creation verbs 37
  8. On Light Nouns 51
  9. The ‘new adjectives’ of Tswana 75
  10. The Chinese adjective as a word class 95
  11. Qualifying modifier encoding and adjectival typology 119
  12. PART II. Minor and neglected word classes
  13. Hungarian is a classifier language 141
  14. Cardinal numerals 161
  15. On the borders of neglected word classes 181
  16. PART III. Across word classes
  17. Between adjective and noun 203
  18. On decategorization and its relevance in German 227
  19. PART IV. Radical views: Do we really need word classes?
  20. Word-class features and reduplicative meaning 245
  21. Half and other unique words 263
  22. Index of languages 283
  23. Index of names 285
  24. Index of subjects 289
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332.06arc

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword and acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. PART I. Types of word classes
  6. Carving verb classes from corpora 17
  7. Classes of creation verbs 37
  8. On Light Nouns 51
  9. The ‘new adjectives’ of Tswana 75
  10. The Chinese adjective as a word class 95
  11. Qualifying modifier encoding and adjectival typology 119
  12. PART II. Minor and neglected word classes
  13. Hungarian is a classifier language 141
  14. Cardinal numerals 161
  15. On the borders of neglected word classes 181
  16. PART III. Across word classes
  17. Between adjective and noun 203
  18. On decategorization and its relevance in German 227
  19. PART IV. Radical views: Do we really need word classes?
  20. Word-class features and reduplicative meaning 245
  21. Half and other unique words 263
  22. Index of languages 283
  23. Index of names 285
  24. Index of subjects 289
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