Keywords

1 Introduction

This study provides a semantic account for the adjectival zhen ‘real’ and jia ‘fake’ in Mandarin Chinese. In general, the intersection rule is applicable to most of the [A+NP] constructions, as shown in (1). However, zhen and jia in (2) seem to be counterexamples to this rule.

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In addition, based on their original logical meanings that denote truth-values, zhen and jia have been treated as non-gradable adjectives in many analyses ([1, 2], a. o.); while some other works [3, 4] have pointed out that zhen and jia can actually give rise to the gradable readings. The examples are provided in (3). So far, there has been no consensus regarding whether the adjectival zhen and jia are gradable or not.

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In this paper, we present a novel solution to the semantic puzzles of the adjectival zhen and jia in Mandarin. The goals of the study are twofold. First, we report some fresh observations to demonstrate that the gradable uses of zhen and jia, differing from their logical uses, can pass the tests of faultless disagreement and judge dependence, and thus show the subjectivity. To our knowledge, this (non-)subjective patterns of zhen and jia have received little attention in the theoretical literature. Second, we develop a multidimensional analysis of zhen and jia. Unlike the traditional truth-conditional semantics, the multidimensional semantics assumes that meanings operate on both the at-issue dimension and the CI (conventional implicature) dimension. In line with this approach, zhen and jia are analyzed as mixed items to capture both of their logical and subjective meanings.

2 Previous Analyses

As mentioned above, the lexical semantics of zhen and jia has been a long debated issue in the literate (cf. [1,2,3,4,5,6], a. o.). Roughly speaking, the existing accounts can be divided into two frameworks, i.e., descriptive linguistics and degree semantics. The former was argued by [1, 3, 5, 6]; whereas the latter was proposed by [2, 4]. In this section, we provide a brief review of these accounts.

In the descriptive approach, the gradability of certain items is diagnosed by their co-occurrences with degree modifiers. [1, 5, 6] claim that zhen and jia cannot be further modified by any intensifiers or degree adverbs, and therefore should be treated as non-gradable adjectives. However, [3] has adopted a corpus survey, which clearly confirms that zhen and jia can co-occur with some typical degree modifiers in Mandarin, like hen ‘very’ and geng ‘more’. The examples are shown above in (3). In short, this descriptive approach fails to clarify the gradability of zhen and jia, as it largely depends on the degree modifiers as the only diagnosis, whereas the empirical distribution is actually complicated.

Unlike the descriptive account, the works based on degree semantics, following [7], assume that gradable adjectives, which denote sets of ordered degrees on particular property dimensions, can usually appear in comparatives. Under this framework, [2] identifies zhen and jia as non-gradable adjectives, although [2] has noticed that zhen/jia is felicitous in Mandarin comparatives, as illustrated in (4) and (3b).

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To explain these counter-examples, [2] proposes that zhen and jia are used in their non-literal senses. Their gradable uses do not represent their primary meanings, so they can still be categorized as non-gradable adjectives. This analysis, however, is not convincing enough, as [2] has not provided persuasive arguments to explain why the gradable uses of zhen and jia are not idiosyncratic but productive.

Contrary to [2, 4], on the grounds that zhen and jia are found in the environments where typical gradable adjectives occur, concludes that they are essentially gradable adjectives. [4] further claims that they are associated with an upper-closed and a bottom-closed scale respectively, Although [4] adopts a formal treatment of zhen and jia, he has not paid enough attention to their subjective uses.

To summarize, it remains to be explored whether the two adjectives are gradable or not. Moreover, the semantics of zhen and jia have not yet received formal analyses except [4], and the combination of [A+NP] also requires explanation. In the following sections, we will present some fresh empirical generalizations and then propose our novel solution.

3 Some Empirical Observations

In this section, we argue that zhen and jia in gradable uses have some additional subjective flavor, while this flavor is gone in their logical uses. The subjectivity can be tested by two methods, namely, Faultless Disagreement and Judge Dependence.

3.1 Faultless Disagreement

One of the usual tests to identify subjective adjectives is faultless disagreement ([8, 9], a. o.), as illustrated below:

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In (5a), the statements of both speaker A and speaker B can be true at the same time. In line with this effect, the gradable uses of zhen and jia show the faultless, i.e., subjective disagreement:

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By contrast, the logical uses of zhen and jia are factual only, as shown in (7), which means either speaker A or speaker B is right in a certain possible world, i.e., their statements cannot be true at the same time. Hence, the logical uses are factual only, parallel to the typical case (5b).

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3.2 Judge Dependence

Another widely accepted diagnosis of subjectivity is whether the implicated judge can be introduced by a PP (cf. [8, 10], a. o.). The predicates of personal taste allow an overt opinion-holder, i.e., the ‘judge-PP’; while the non-subjective ones cannot. See the contrast below:

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The gradable uses of zhen and jia, once again, in line with the subjective predicates (8a), allow the implicated judge, as illustrated in (9). By contrast, the logical uses resist the judge-PPs as (10), showing that they are not subjective.

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3.3 Interim Summary

To recap, zhen and jia have some mixed properties. On the one hand, they pattern with non-subjective items in their logical uses, as shown in the examples above, where the predicates that they are involved resist the implicated judge argument; on the other, zhen and jia pattern with evaluative/subjective adjectives in their gradable uses, where the faultless disagreements are natural, and the overt judge-PP are well accepted. In the next section, we will develop a formal account for such mixed properties in a multidimensional semantics framework.

4 A Multidimensional Account

The mixed properties of zhen and jia are liable to two possible analyses: (a) to claim that they are homophonous, i.e., the different uses are attributed to the logical zhen1/jia1 vs. the gradable zhen2/jia2, and (b) to propose a unified account in a novel framework. The homophonous approach, however, fails to predict the various readings of [A+NP] combinations. As shown by the examples in (11), jia jiu ‘fake/counterfeit wine’ can either belong to the wine or not, whereas jia lingzi ‘extra collar’ is essentially a collar, and zhen qiang ‘real gun’ is a gun as well. The homophonous account cannot predict these readings correctly, since it assumes all zhen/jia are homophonous, and thus have two readings, i.e., the logical meaning and the gradable one, which is obviously not the case.

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In this section we provide a unified account in the framework of multidimensional semantics. While the idea that certain expressions specifically convey attitude, emotions and evaluations on the part of the speaker has been around for several decades, only in recent years expressive meanings have received a significant amount of attention in formal semantics ([11,12,13], a. o.). [11] provides the first attempt to formalize this class of meaning, outlining several properties that distinguish it from truth-conditional ones. Most recently, [14, 15] have shown how the subjective/expressive meanings of adverbs in Mandarin can receive a formal semantic treatment as well.

The most fundamental assumption of multidimensional semantics is that meanings operate on different dimensions. An utterance may express both an at-issue (truth-conditional) content in the descriptive dimension and a conventional implicature in the expressive dimension. Informally, the expressive meaning is like “double assertion”, or some side comment by the speaker. [11] introduces a new semantic type for CI (expressive content) in the semantic system. The semantic types organize the semantic lexicon, and they index the denotation domains. The semantic types in LCI are defined as below:

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The at-issue content is marked by the superscript “a”, and the expressive content by the superscript “c”. [11] proposes the following CI application rule for semantic composition when an expressive item (such as damn) combines with an item that only has descriptive meaning (such as Republicans), as illustrated below:

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(14) serves as the standard rule of functional application. It states that if α is a term of type <τ, σ>, and β is a term of type σ then α(β) is a term of type τ. The bullet “•” is a metalogical symbol to separate the at-issue content from the CI content. This provides a straightforward account of the distributional pattern of zhen and jia, especially their logical and subjective uses.

Following this line of thought, we assume that zhen and jia have bi-dimensional meanings as well. In the descriptive dimension, zhen and jia maintain their original logical functions, i.e., to judge the truth-value of propositions, and thus display non-gradable uses. In the expressive dimension, zhen and jia convey the speaker’s judge towards the degree of similarity/deviation between the facts and the subjective expectations. To formalize the subjective expectations, we incorporated [16] ’s prototype function into their lexical semantics. This has enabled us to capture the expressive content of zhen and jia, as the prototypes for each individual’s perspective can be variable. Hence, the semantic expressions are shown below:

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Unlike the exiting analyses, this account treats the subjective content as a part of zhen and jia’s lexical semantics. This semantics contains a degree component which measures the similarity/deviation between the individual x and the prototype of P, thus correctly predicting that zhen and jia are gradable. Moreover, the semantic puzzle of [zhen/jia+NP] is solved, since zhen junzi ‘real gentleman’ is more than gentleman, but also conveys the subjective attitude that the speaker evaluates this individual is very close to her/his certain standard of being a gentleman. Therefore, the meaning of zhen is not redundant according to this analysis. And this semantics works well for jia similarly, check the formulas:

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5 Conclusion

To conclude, in this paper we discussed the semantic behaviors of the adjectival zhen and jia in Mandarin Chinese. The two adjectives have been traditionally treated as non-gradable and cannot be modified by degree words (cf. [1, 2, 5, 6], a. o.). However, there are ample data showing that both zhen and jia can present in gradable context. Here we provided some fresh empirical evidence to suggest that the two adjectives display both gradable and non-gradable uses. The mixed properties of zhen and jia can be attributed to their bi-dimensional semantics, i.e., the judge of truth-value as the descriptive meaning, and the degree of similarity/deviation between the facts and the subjective expectations as the expressive meaning. Hence, it is the descriptive dimension that makes zhen and jia act as non-gradable adjectives in their pure logical uses; while the expressive dimension is responsible for their gradable distribution and semantic behaviors like judge-dependence and subjectivity.