A Unified Analysis to Surpass Comparative and Experiential Aspect

PACLIC 28 !368 A Unified Analysis to Surpass Comparative and Experiential Aspect Charles Lam Linguistics Program, Purdue University Beering Hall, Room 1289 West Lafayette, IN 47907 charleslam@purdue.edu Abstract This study compares two constructions in Cantonese which shares similar features in their syntax and semantics. Previous works observe that comparatives often appear after experiential aspect in the verbal domain his- torically. This study builds upon this obser- vation and argues that the similarities between two constructions, comparatives and experien- tials, are of formal nature and that the simi- larities originate from the semantics of these constructions. This formal account means that there is a deep connection between the two constructions and therefore explains the pat- tern observed by typologists (Stassen, 1985; Ansaldo, 2010). The homomorphic approach also means a simpler syntax-semantics that applies to both event-denoting (‘verbs’) and property-denoting (‘adjectives’) predicates. Keywords: Comparatives, experiential as- pect, cross-categorial behavior 1 Introduction English has both comparative construction (1-a) and experiential perfect (1-b) sentence, which are marked by different morphemes. (1) a. Mary is taller than Peter. (Comparative) b. Mary had been to England. (Experien- tial perfect) Cantonese has these two constructions too, only that it uses the same morpheme gwo3 to mark both. (2) Mary Mary gou1 tall gwo3 PASS Peter Peter ‘Mary is taller than Peter.’ (3) Mary Mary heoi3 go gwo3 EXP jing1gwok6 England ‘Mary has been to England.’ (lit: ‘Mary went to England.’) 1 As a lexical verb, gwo3 means ‘to cross’ or ‘to sur- pass’. In (2), gwo3 shows the standard of compar- ison (henceforth standard or std) in a comparative sentence. In (3), it shows that the event of ‘going to England’ has taken place at any point in the past. The correlation pattern between these two construc- tions, surpass-comparative (2) and experiential as- pect marking (3), is reported to be common in typol- ogy literature (Ansaldo, 2010; Stassen, 1985) and is therefore not mere coincidence. The aim of this study is to provide a formal account to this well- observed correlation. This study builds on the notion of scale structure (Kennedy & McNally, 2005) that is primarily ap- plied to adjectives and/or property-denoting predi- cates. Since scale structure is non-temporal by na- ture, this paper posits that verbal predicates can be conceptualized and formalized as scales measured by time, i.e. a ‘temporal scale’. Under this view, both comparative and experiential sentences can be treated on a par as scalar predicates specified with a degree along the scale. 1The transcription convention follows the Linguistics Soci- ety of Hong Kong JyutPing system. The numbers show the lexical tones. Abbreviations: CL: classifiers; EXP: experiential aspect; PASS: surpass comparative marker; SFP: sentence final particle Copyright 2014 by Charles Lam 28th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation pages 368–377 PACLIC 28 !369 In terms of broader implication, this study dif- fers from the typological works in that it makes no prediction on the diachronic development. I ar- gue that it avoids the assumption that one domain (e.g. adjectives) is more …

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