Surpass comparatives in Sinitic and beyond: typology and grammaticalization

Mandarin transitive comparatives and the grammar of measurement

“…As stated in the introduction, transitive comparatives are not unique to Mandarin but are found as well in other varieties of Chinese (Ansaldo 1999) as well as in at least one language group genetically unrelated to Chinese (albeit spoken primarily in southern China), namely the Kam-Sui group of Tai-Kadai (Morev 1998). However, as we stated in note 5, in some varieties of Chinese, the transitive comparative is grammatical without an overt differential expression and even with predicates for which no conventional measurement system is defined, as in the following example from Chaozhou, repeated from above:…”

“…Zhangsan one dot smart Intended: 'Zhangsan is a bit smart.' Chinese varieties (Standard Mandarin, Shaighainese, Hong Kong Cantonese, Taiwanese, Chaozhou, Fuzhou and Hakka), Ansaldo (1999) finds that all seven varieties have the transitive comparative construction. 5 Morev (1998) reports as well on an analogous construction found in languages of the Kam-Sui group of Tai-Kadai (data is cited from Mulao, Maonan, and Kam), spoken primarily in southern China but genetically unrelated to Chinese.…”

“…5 couples our syntactic analysis with a compositional semantics for measurement structures and extends our proposals to measure phrases in non-comparative predicates. 5 Ansaldo (1999) and Xu (2007) also show that in some Chinese varieties, the measure phrase is not obligatory in the transitive comparative. For example, the following examples come from Chaozhou, spoken in south-eastern China:…”

“…The same construction is called the ''obligatory measuring comparative'' byMok (1998); the ''absent marking construction'' byAnsaldo (1999), who explores the construction in Sinitic languages in general; the ''bare comparative'' byXiang (2005); and the ''X A (Y) D comparative'' byLiu (2007).…”

Contact-induced grammaticalization

“…areal typology, where it has become clear that similar instances of grammaticalization show strong geographical clustering, implicating mutual influence as a factor in the process (Ansaldo 1999;Bisang 1998;Dahl 2001;Enfield 2003;Heine and Kuteva 2005); b. creoles and other contact languages, where it has been observed that apparent cases of grammaticalization could result from substrate influence: "what at first sight looks like internal grammaticalization may well be due to influence from other languages as well" (Arends and Bruyn 1994: 120).…”