Chinese \textit{gèng}, English implicit comparison, and vagueness sharpening

Florence Y.K. Zhang, Linmin Zhang

Keywords: Semantics, Pragmatics, Comparative, Dynamic Semantics, Incremental, Vagueness

TL;DR: We propose that Chinese gèng works in a way similar to English implicit comparison, manipulating the context in such a way that the positive form of a gradable adjective is true of the target under comparison and false of alternatives to the target.

Abstract: We propose that Chinese \textit{gèng} works in a way similar to English implicit comparison, manipulating the context in such a way that the positive form of a gradable adjective is true of the target under comparison and false of alternatives to the target. We provide a dynamic analysis of sentences containing \textit{gèng} and demonstrate that the analysis correctly makes a series of predictions about \textit{gèng}'s distribution.

Submission Number: 200