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Candice Chi-Hang Cheung

Parts of
Speech in
Mandarin
The State of the Art
Parts of Speech in Mandarin
Candice Chi-Hang Cheung

Parts of Speech in Mandarin

The State of the Art

123
Candice Chi-Hang Cheung
Department of Chinese and Bilingual
Studies
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon
Hong Kong

ISBN 978-981-10-0396-7 ISBN 978-981-10-0398-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0398-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935572

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016

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This book is dedicated to my parents
Acknowledgments

This book grew out of my book chapter titled “Chinese: Parts of Speech,” which
has been published in The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language. While
most of the chapters in this book stem from that work, they have been substantially
revised. I am grateful to Sin-Wai Chan, editor of The Routledge Encyclopedia of the
Chinese Language, for inviting me to contribute to his volume.
Thanks are due to many scholars working on Chinese linguistics for their helpful
discussions with me while I was working on this book, notably Miao-Ling Hsieh,
Jim Huang, Richard Larson, Paul Law, Audrey Li, Jo-Wang Lin, Dingxu Shi,
Shu-Ing Shyu, Andrew Simpson, Sze-Wing Tang, Dylan Tsai, Ting-Chi Wei,
Yaqing Wu, Barry Yang, and Niina Zhang. I am deeply indebted to Paul Law and
Sze-Wing Tang for reading an earlier version of the manuscript and providing
useful comments and suggestions. I would like to pay special tribute to the late
Jean-Roger Vergnaud, whose wide spectrum of scholarly expertise and whose
interest in Universal Grammar have inspired me to pursue a comparative approach
to the study of Chinese syntax.
I also thank my former research assistants and graduate students who have
contributed to this book. It has been my great pleasure to work with these young
talents. Among my former research assistants, I thank Zheng Wei and Jiahui Yang
for editorial assistance and for consolidating the Mandarin data. Among my former
graduate students, I thank Jackie Lai, Hoi-ki Jess Law, and Haoze Li for providing
helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript. Further
contributions have come from Elizabeth Judd, Xiaolan Liu, and Anne Mark in the
form of editorial assistance.
My special thanks go to my mentor Audrey Li, who has nurtured my interest in
formal syntax and Chinese linguistics. I am deeply grateful to her for her inspira-
tion, encouragement, and continuous support over the years.
More generally, I thank my family and extended family for their unlimited
support and unconditional love. My deepest gratitude goes to my parents to whom
this book is dedicated.

vii
viii Acknowledgments

Finally, I am grateful to Helen Aristar-Dry, Rebecca Zhu, and the editorial team
at Springer for supporting the project and bringing it to fruition. I am fortunate to
have enjoyed the support of different funding sources. The research leading to this
book was partially supported by CUHK Direct Grant for Research (#4051007) and
Research Fund for Comparative Syntax (#6903134). As usual, any remaining errors
and shortcomings are my own responsibility.
Contents

1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Outline of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 The Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Part I Categories Found in Mandarin and the Indo-European

Languages
2 Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Classification of Nouns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.1 Common Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.2 Proper Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 Properties of Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2.1 Syntactic Properties of Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.2 Morphological Properties of Verbs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3 Classification of Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.3.1 Action Verbs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.3.2 Verbs of Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3.3 Verbs of Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3.4 Psychological Verbs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.5 Shì 是 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

ix
x Contents

4 Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . 45
4.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . 45
4.2 Classification of Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . 45
4.2.1 Simplex Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . 46
4.2.2 Complex Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . 51
4.3 Common Properties of Adjectives and Stative Verbs . . . . . . . . . 53
4.4 Distinguishing Adjectives from Stative Verbs ..... . . . . . . . . . 55
4.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . 60
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . 60
5 Prepositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.2 Basic Properties of Prepositions and Categorization . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.3 The Verbal Nature of Prepositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.3.1 Compatibility with Aspect Markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.3.2 Prepositions Functioning as Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
6 Adverbs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.2 Basic Properties of Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.3 Classification of Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6.3.1 Sentence-level Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6.3.2 VP-level Adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
7 Conjunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
7.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
7.2 Phrasal Conjunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
7.2.1 Conjunctions Conjoining Nouns or Noun Phrases . . . . . . 94
7.2.2 Conjunctions Conjoining Adjectives or Adjectival
Expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7.2.3 Conjunctions Conjoining Verbs or Verb Phrases . . . . . . . 95
7.3 Clausal Conjunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
7.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Part II Categories Uniquely Available in Mandarin

8 Classifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
8.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
8.2 Distinguishing Sortal Classifiers from Measure Words . . . . . . . . 105
Contents xi

8.3 Categorization: Sortal Classifiers versus Measure Words . . . . . . . 108

8.3.1 Sortal Classifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
8.3.2 Measure Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
8.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
9 Localizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
9.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
9.2 Morphological Properties of Localizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
9.3 Syntactic Properties of Localizers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
9.4 Categorial Status of Localizers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
9.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
10 Sentence-final Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
10.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
10.2 Sentence-final le 了 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
10.3 Sentence-final ne 呢 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
10.4 Sentence-final ma 嗎 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
10.5 Sentence-final ba 吧. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
10.6 Sentence-final ou 嘔. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
10.7 Sentence-final a/ya 啊/呀 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
10.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Abbreviations

Cl Classifier
Dur Durative aspect marker
Exp Experiential aspect marker
FM Focus marker
Perf Perfective aspect marker
Pl Plural
Poss Possessive marker
Prog Progressive aspect marker
Res Resultative marker
SFP Sentence-final particle

xiii
Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 Objectives

While there is a vast literature on Mandarin parts of speech (or categories),

including earlier general descriptions and reference grammars (Chao 1968; Li and
Thompson 1981; Zhu 1982; Xing and Ma 1992 inter alia), and while recent studies
in the generative grammar paradigm have shed new light on these categories
(McCawley 1992; Huang et al. 2009: Chap. 1), a book that brings together the
insights from earlier general descriptions and reference grammars and the recent
research findings is lacking. This book aims to offer a comprehensive survey of the
categories available in Mandarin by referring to the earlier general descriptions and
incorporating the recent research findings under the Principles-and-Parameters
approach.
Adopting the Principles-and-Parameters approach—which strives to capture the
common properties of human languages and account for language variation,
including identifying the sets of universal and language-specific categories—this
book also aims to investigate to what extent Mandarin possesses the same cate-
gories as the Indo-European languages and to offer new insights into the study of
categories in general. However, determining the extent to which Mandarin pos-
sesses the same categories as the Indo-European languages is not without diffi-
culties: although the distinction between nouns and verbs is uncontroversial in the
literature on Mandarin, scholars’ opinions differ on the rest of the categories (Chao
1968; Li and Thompson 1981; Zhu 1982; Xing and Ma 1992; Huang et al. 2009:
Chap. 1 inter alia). These differences in opinion are due partly to the scholars’
different theoretical backgrounds and partly to the use of different terminological
conventions. As a result, scholars use different criteria for classifying words and
different terminological conventions for labeling the categories available in
Mandarin. To address these issues, syntactic, semantic and morphological criteria
will be used to classify categories in Mandarin, and the labels for different cate-
gories will follow the terminological conventions of the Principles-and-Parameters

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 1

C.C.-H. Cheung, Parts of Speech in Mandarin,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0398-1_1
2 1 Introduction

paradigm. At the same time, the book will highlight the similarities and differences
between categories in Mandarin, leading to a better understanding both of their
characteristic features and of the factors that have led to controversies over par-
ticular categories. In particular, it will show that diachronic factors play a crucial
role in determining the categorial status of particular categories. It will also discuss
in what ways these categories are similar to and different from those in the
Indo-European languages. One obvious difference between Mandarin and the
Indo-European languages is that the former lacks inflectional morphology, making
it impossible to employ this feature to distinguish between categories.
While this book at times involves linguistic terminology and complex linguistic
arguments, the incorporation of earlier general descriptions and the use of a com-
parative approach make it broadly accessible to native and non-native speakers of
Mandarin with or without linguistic knowledge. This book can also serve as a
useful reference for students and scholars interested in the study of categories in
Mandarin.

1.2 Outline of This Book

This book is divided into two parts comprising ten chapters. Part I (Chaps. 2–7)
focuses on the six major categories that are available both in Mandarin and in the
Indo-European languages: nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, adverbs and
conjunctions. Part II (Chaps. 8–10) investigates the three categories that are
available in Mandarin but not in the Indo-European languages: classifiers, localizers
and sentence-final particles.
Chapter 2 begins by showing that nouns in Mandarin can be broadly divided into
two types: common nouns and proper names. It further discusses the classification
of common nouns into count, mass, collective and abstract nouns. Through
examining the syntactic properties of common nouns and proper names, it
demonstrates that they share two important syntactic properties: (i) they cannot be
negated by bù 不 ‘not’, and (ii) they cannot be modified by the intensifier hěn 很
‘very’. The key difference between them is that common nouns, unlike proper
names, can be preceded by a [Numeral + Classifier] sequence. In terms of inter-
pretational properties, the chapter shows that common nouns can have a kind,
definite or indefinite reading, whereas proper names are always interpreted as
definite.
Chapter 3 starts by reviewing the properties of verbs in Mandarin, demonstrating
that verbs and nouns in this language exhibit different syntactic and morphological
properties. Hence, verbs should be treated as an independent category distinct from
nouns. The chapter then discusses the classification of verbs, showing that they can
be divided into four main classes: action verbs, verbs of perception, verbs of
1.2 Outline of This Book 3

cognition, and psychological verbs. The chapter further examines the versatile verb
shì 是 in Mandarin, demonstrating that it has a much wider range of meanings and
functions than the English copula be. The discussion highlights the similarities and
differences between Mandarin verbs and their English counterparts, revealing that
Mandarin verbs tend to have a more flexible argument structure than their English
counterparts.
Chapter 4 investigates one of the controversial categories in Mandarin, namely
adjectives. It begins by discussing the classification of adjectives, showing that
adjectives can be broadly divided into two classes: simplex adjectives and complex
adjectives. It further proposes that simplex adjectives can be divided into three
subclasses: classifying adjectives, gradable adjectives and non-gradable adjectives.
It then reviews the properties shared by adjectives and stative verbs, such as the
ability to function as predicates, to be modified by the intensifier hén 很, to appear
in the bǐ 比 comparative construction and to function as prenominal modifiers when
accompanied by de 的. These shared properties have led many scholars to consider
adjectives as a subclass of verbs. Despite these common properties, the chapter
argues that adjectives should be regarded as a category independent of stative verbs,
by showing that they exhibit different morphological and syntactic properties.
Chapter 5 investigates one of the most poorly defined categories in Mandarin,
namely prepositions. It starts by reviewing the basic properties of prepositions, such
as their ability to take a noun phrase as their object and their classification based on
their distributional patterns. It then turns to the debate over the categorial status of
prepositions in Mandarin, showing that the underlying reason for this debate is that
some prepositions have verbal properties; for example, they are compatible with
aspect markers like -zhe 着 and -le 了, and they can be used both as verbs and as
prepositions. These verbal properties of prepositions have led many scholars to
consider prepositions as a “mixed” category comprising prepositions and verbs.
Despite these facts, the chapter argues that prepositions should be analyzed as an
independent category distinct from verbs and that the verbal properties of a subset
of prepositions should be attributed to their historical development from verbs. On
this view, prepositions and their verbal counterparts should be treated as homonyms
that belong to distinct categories—the former are prepositions, whereas the latter
are verbs.
Chapter 6 explores the properties of adverbs in Mandarin, showing that they can
be broadly divided into two subclasses: sentence-level and VP-level adverbs. It
demonstrates that sentence-level adverbs can be further divided into time adverbs
and attitude adverbs, whereas VP-level adverbs can be further divided into manner
adverbs, VP-level temporal adverbs and degree adverbs. It shows that a key dif-
ference between sentence-level adverbs and VP-level adverbs is that the former can
immediately precede or follow the subject, whereas the latter can only appear after
the subject. It further examines the distributional patterns of these five subclasses of
adverbs with respect to auxiliaries, revealing that sentence-level temporal adverbs
and VP-level temporal adverbs are able to precede or follow auxiliaries, whereas
attitude adverbs must precede them, and manner adverbs and degree adverbs must
follow them. Through comparing the distributional patterns of Mandarin adverbs
4 1 Introduction

with those of their English counterparts, it further shows that Mandarin adverbs
crucially differ from their English counterparts in that they can never appear in
sentence-final position.
Chapter 7 focuses on the properties of conjunctions, a category that has received
relatively little attention in previous studies of Mandarin categories. The chapter
shows that conjunctions can be broadly divided into two subclasses, namely phrasal
conjunctions and clausal conjunctions. It further demonstrates that Mandarin has a
much broader range of phrasal conjunctions than English and that the choice among
the phrasal conjunctions hinges on the types of phrasal elements being conjoined.
As for clausal conjunctions, those in Mandarin differ from their English counter-
parts in four important respects: (i) clausal conjunctions in Mandarin often appear in
pairs, whereas those in English usually consist of a single conjunction, (ii) some
clausal conjunctions in Mandarin have monosyllabic and disyllabic variants,
whereas those in English are often invariant in form, (iii) when clausal conjunctions
in Mandarin appear in pairs, the first conjunction can immediately precede or follow
the subject, whereas clausal conjunctions in English must immediately precede the
subject, and (iv) in Mandarin, the presence of clausal conjunctions is optional if it is
clear from the context what relations hold between the two clauses, whereas in
English, their presence is obligatory.
Chapter 8 examines the properties of numeral classifiers (or simply classifiers),
one of the salient features of Mandarin. Whether sortal classifiers should be dis-
tinguished from measure words remains a point of contention. In particular,
whereas one tradition argues that the two need not be distinguished, the other
tradition argues that they should be. Following the latter tradition, the chapter
shows that sortal classifiers and measure words differ in terms of syntactic
behaviors (e.g., the possibility of inserting de 的) and semantic functions. Under
this dichotomy, the chapter further demonstrates that sortal classifiers are encoded
with specific semantic information, such as shape and animacy. Measure words, in
contrast, are employed to denote the quantity or amount of the entity named by a
noun and can be further divided into four subclasses: standard collective, container
and generic measure words
Chapter 9 investigates one of the most controversial categories in Mandarin,
namely localizers. While scholars have entertained almost every possibility with
respect to the categorial status of localizers, one dominant view is to analyze them
as a subclass of nouns. The chapter starts by examining the morphological and
syntactic properties of localizers, showing that they can be divided into monosyl-
labic and polysyllabic ones: the former are suffixes and must be attached to a noun,
whereas the latter are free morphemes and may or may not be preceded by a noun.
The chapter further explores their grammatical functions, showing that both
monosyllabic and polysyllabic localizers preceded by a noun can serve as a subject,
an object or the object of a prepositional phrase. A key difference between the two
types of localizers is that the monosyllabic ones alone cannot serve as a subject, an
object or the object of a prepositional phrase owing to their morphological prop-
erties as suffixes, whereas polysyllabic ones can. In light of the facts that (i) lo-
calizers have the same grammatical functions as prototypical noun phrases in
1.2 Outline of This Book 5

Mandarin and (ii) they can follow de 的 in nominal modification structures like
prototypical noun phrases, the chapter suggests that localizers are best analyzed as a
subclass of nouns, which is in line with the dominant view.
Chapter 10 examines the properties of sentence-final particles, a distinctive
feature of Mandarin. As their name implies, they are used in sentence-final position,
serving various semantic and pragmatic functions. This chapter investigates the
semantic and pragmatic functions of six sentence-final particles—le 了, ne 呢, ma
嗎, ba 吧, ou 嘔 and a/ya 啊/呀—and shows that each can serve one or more
semantic and pragmatic functions.

1.3 The Language

The term “Mandarin” is ambiguous: it is understood either as an alternative name

for the variety of Chinese spoken in Beijing or as the name for the standard
language adopted as the official language in mainland China as well as in Taiwan.
This book is intended to describe the official language spoken in mainland China
and Taiwan, and it employs the traditional Chinese characters as well as the
standard romanization pīnyīn. For the examples in this book that involve tone
sandhi, we provide the tones that comply with the standard tone sandhi rules in
Mandarin rather than giving the citation tones.

References

Chao, Yuan-Ren. 1968. A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Huang, C.-T. James, Y.-H. Audrey Li, and Yafei Li. 2009. The syntax of Chinese. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Li, Charles N., and Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: a functional reference
grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.
McCawley, James. 1992. Justifying part-of-speech distinctions in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of
Chinese Linguistics 20: 211–246.
Xing, Gongwan, and Qingzhu Ma (eds.). 1992. Xiàndài Hànyǔ jiàochéng [A course in modern
Mandarin Chinese]. Tianjin: Nankai University Press.
Zhu, Dexi. 1982. Yǔfǎ jiǎngyì [Lecture notes on grammar]. Beijing: Commercial Press.
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