Abstract
This paper investigates the semantics of 全部 [quanbu] (all) in Mandarin Chinese. It is argued that in the adverbial, determiner and nominal positions quanbu takes different meanings. To be more specific, the adverb quanbu serves as a quantifier which can trigger a tripartite structure. Moreover, as a quantifier, quanbu is compatible with a sum operator with the collective property and incompatible with a sum operator taking the distributive property. The determiner quanbu is a sum operator with the collective property. The noun quanbu implies the sum of all the parts. Quanbu has some similarities and differences with 全 [quan] (all) and 都 [dou] (all). In the co-occurrence case of quanbu and dou, word order plays an important role to determine their division of labor.
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Zhang, L. (2015). Sum, Domain Restriction and Quantification–A Semantic Study of Quanbu in Mandarin. In: Lu, Q., Gao, H. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9332. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27194-1_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27194-1_14
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