Semantic Analyses and the Teaching of Chinese Adjectival and Nominal Predicates

Abstract

This article discusses adjectival and nominal predicates in Chinese, focusing on the semantics of adjectives, the completeness effect of adjectival predicates, the principles regulating when a‘measure phrase + adjective’can function as the main predicate or a noun modifier as well as the parallelism between adjectival and nominal predicates. In addition to introducing the contemporary semantic analyses of adjectives within the framework of degree semantics, this article suggests some useful principles in the teaching of adjectival and nominal predicates. The first principle is that the use of an adjective as a predicate is licensed only when it is anchored with respect to the quantity or quality on the measure scale of the adjective. Second, whether a‘measure phrase + adjective’can function as the main predicate or noun modifier is correlated with the monotonicity of the measurement or the direct/indirect beginning point of the measure. Finally, the use of a nominal and an adjectival predicate can both be licensed by contrast or focus, indicating that the two kinds of predicates should be unified under non-verbal predicates, pending for a deeper analysis for such a unification.