Chinese gèng, Japanese motto, and English implicit comparison (joint work with Florence Zhang-Yukun)

Abstract

(joint work with Florence Zhang-Yukun)

Chinese and Japanese are among those languages that lack a comparative morpheme like English "-er/more". Thus in Chinese and Japanese, the positive and comparative use of a gradable adjective share the same form. For example, while English distinguishes morphologically between "Lucy is tall" and "Lucy is taller," such a distinction does not exist in Chinese or Japanese. However, Chinese "gèng" and Japanese "motto" can be optionally added to a sentence that expresses comparison. What role do they play? In the existing literature, "gèng"- and "motto"-sentences are considered equivalent to English sentences like "Lucy is even taller than Mary" (i.e., explicit comparison plus the use of "even"). We argue against this existing view and propose that "gèng"- and "motto"-sentences are distinct from explicit comparison, but encoding implicit comparison, more akin to English sentences like "Compared to Mary, Lucy's height reaches a new level". We propose that semantically, "gèng" and "motto" introduce a new, local threshold of tallness between the comparison standard and comparison target. Pragmatically, we adopt the framework of Rational Speech Act to account for the implicatures triggered by "gèng"/"motto": the comparison standard already exceeds the regular positive threshold.

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