Open AccessReferentiality and incompletive reading in Mandarin
Author(s) -
Anqi Zhang
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
proceedings of the linguistic society of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2473-8689
DOI - 10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4338
Subject(s) - noun , linguistics , mandarin chinese , thematic map , reading (process) , relation (database) , theme (computing) , computer science , hindi , mathematics , philosophy , cartography , geography , database , operating system
As an exception to Krifka’s (1989) famous generalization that a quantized incremental theme always induces an event-homomorphic completive reading, Singh (1991, 1998) observes that in Hindi only the quantized mass noun phrases as the incremental theme entails a completive reading, but unexpectedly quantized count nouns phrases can have an incompletive reading. She proposes that count nouns can introduce a partial thematic relation, whereas mass nouns introduce a total thematic relation. With new data in Mandarin, instead of the mass/count distinction, I argue that referentiality is the crucial factor because the non-culmination readings are only felicitous with the referential objects for consumption verbs in Mandarin.