A Dynamic Account of Chinese QAP Construction and Its Association Effect

Quantity adjectives in Chinese (henceforth QAP construction), such as duo/shao, can function as predicates to illustrate the quantity category of subjects. Meanwhile, a QAP construction can generate association effect, that is, the interpretation of the subject should be associated with the topic, as in Shuodao jiaoguo de xuesheng, Zhangsan hen duo/shao. Within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (Kempson et al. 2001; Cann et al. 2005), this paper argues that the association effect is an interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics:(i) the internalized lexical information of quantity adjectives requires that their descriptive objects should have the set property; (ii) in the process of parsing, the computational actions will match the operator between quantity adjectives and their descriptive objects, which will then determine the validity of sentences; (iii) within incrementality and context, the ambiguity caused by QAP construction can be effectively parsed.