Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese

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Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese 2.3 Introduction Chapter 2 Literature Review This chapter reviews the literature on the syntactic analysis of CC in both MC and English. In Section 2.2, we review the early literature of CC on the compositional analysis in the first part. To proceed, the following parts are the studies on the structural analyses on BCC, which can be divided into three main types, the coordination analysis, the adjunction analysis, and the complementation analysis. In Section 2.3, I review the two main literatures in English CC to see if there are any similarities or differences on CC in these languages. 2.4 Previous Studies in Mandarin Chinese Previous studies on CCs in Mandarin usually focus on the Superlative CCs with the comparative marker bi. In addition to the prelimilary Compositional Analysis (Li and Thompson 1981, Tsao1989), there are three main types of analyses- the Adjunction Analysis, the Conjunction Analysis (Hsing 2003), and the Complementation Analysis (Chao 2005). The Adjunction Analysis suggests that the bi-phrase is adjoined to the main clause (Fu 1978, Liu 1998, Hsing2003, Chao 2005). And, the Conjunction Analysis claims that bi is the coordinator of the two compared items (Tsao 1989, Hong 1991). Mandarin adjectives can have the function of degree word that takes two internal arguments, the comparative datum and the comparative predicates. Besides, whether there is movement or deletion is another crucial issue to the syntactic structure of CC. 8 中正大學 e-Thesys (94 學年度)
Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese 2.2.1 Compositional Analyses Early works on CC make a clear compositional analysis. In this section we will discuss studies by Li and Thompson’s (1981) generalization on CC, Tsao’s (1989) topic-comment analysis. 2.2.1.1 The Formula of CC (Li and Thompson 1981) Li and Thompson (1981) have generalized a formula for CC in MC as (11), in which there are two compared items to be linked by a comparison word and then followed by the predicate that expresses the dimension along which two items are compared. In this formula, X must be the subject or the topic of the verb phrase that expresses the dimension, and Y must be understood as the standard of comparison. These predicates should be capable of being quantified or measured so as to express the different degree of the compared dimension. (11) X comparison word 5 Y (adverb) dimension (Li and Thompson 1981) This generalization gives some characteristics of CC in MC. First, what is being compared in MC must be stated grammatically in terms of the subject or the topic, not the direct object. For example, to express sentences like ‘I like dogs better than cats’ in MC, comparison of the direct objects in (12) would be unacceptable. 5 According to different degree of the topic X in contrast to that of the comparing target, the comparison word can be bi, mei(you)/buru, or gen in (1). The comparison marker of the superlative comparative sentence is bi, which is later termed as the comparative marker of BCC and abbreviated as COM. 9 中正大學 e-Thesys (94 學年度)
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Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese

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