TY - JOUR AU - Luo, Qiongpeng AU - Xie, Zhiguo PY - 2019/05/17 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Degrees as nominalized properties: Evidence from differential verbal comparatives in Mandarin Chinese JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 22 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.18148/sub/2018.v22i2.72 UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/72 SP - 89-106 AB - Whether degrees should be modeled as simple semantic primitives or ontologically complex entities has been an issue in recent formal semantic research. This article aims to make a contribution to this scholarly enterprise by investigating the Differential Verbal Comparative (DVC) construction in Chinese. DVCs exhibit peculiar properties : (i) obligatory differentials, and (ii) DPs as differentials(e.g., liang ben xiaoshuo ‘two CL novel’). We propose that a degree is the entity correlate of a property that is formed on the basis of a measure, akin to Chierchia-style kind. This new kind of degree, coupled with a difference function-based semantics for comparatives, correctly predicts the behaviors of DVCs which would otherwise remain formally inscrutable. This article’s contributions are twofold: (i) it provides direct support for the degree-as-kind analysis by extending its empirical scope; and (ii) by combining degrees as kinds with a difference function-based semantics, it represents an improvement over the previous degree-as-kind analysis based on linear ordering. ER -