Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Syntax Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Syntax

The Grammar Of Approximating Number Pairs (Anps) In Mandarin Chinese, Xuehuai He Jan 2025

The Grammar Of Approximating Number Pairs (Anps) In Mandarin Chinese, Xuehuai He

Pomona Senior Theses

"There are twenty or thirty people." What exactly does this mean? Is it exactly twenty or thirty, or is it an approximate range? What about "twenty or twenty-six people"?

Approximating number pairs (ANPs) are a kind of approximative expression that takes a number pair and expresses a quantity close to it. There are constraints on the structure and choice of numerals: many combinations would be ungrammatical or denote a precise disjunction rather than being approximative. Studies like Eriksson et al. (2010) statistically generalized the grammar of ANPs through corpus studies on select European languages. However, these surface-level generalizations fail to …


The Syntax Of Passives And Related Constructions In Mandarin Chinese, Shangyan Pan Jan 2022

The Syntax Of Passives And Related Constructions In Mandarin Chinese, Shangyan Pan

Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the Mandarin Chinese passive, a construction that differs in significant ways from its better known, European counterparts. While the passive is one of the most well-studied constructions in syntax, the passive in Chinese remains understudied and not as well understood. The thesis offers an analysis of multiple passive markers in Chinese, focusing on bei and gei. Superficially, the two markers both participate in passive and passive-like constructions. However, upon closer scrutiny, it is demonstrated that only bei qualifies as a true passive marker, while gei is shown to belong to a more general category of Non-Active …


A Discussion Of Delimitative In Mandarin Chinese, Qi Zhang Sep 2017

A Discussion Of Delimitative In Mandarin Chinese, Qi Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates how delimitative marking in Mandarin Chinese is better considered as an instance of verb-phrase modification instead of aspect marking. The study investigates data with verb reduplication cases caused by delimitative marking from both syntactic and semantic points of view. Through observations and analyses, it is found that delimitative marking does not have the same distribution as other aspect markers, but rather shows resemblance to temporal modifiers syntactically. Semantically, instead of providing a viewpoint as other aspect markers do, delimitative indicates the temporal length (shortness) of the event. In addition, it is found that delimitative marking has strict …