earticle

영어

Much in English is identified to be a mass quantifier in that it has a mass structure. In a recent study in nominal domains (Borer (2005), a functional head, namely Div(ided), has been proposed; Div head takes a noun in its complement, and makes the noun a countable object. For example, in English, Div is realized as plural morpheme -s: without -s a noun cannot be counted as in *three cat (cf. three cat-s). Quantifier much is mass as it is not compatible with a plural marker -s that realizes Div head (e.g., *much cat-s or *much water-s). Rather, it can appear with a noun in a non-countable context where a plural maker -s is absent, as in much cat or much water. In Chinese, there is a quantifier dian that appears to be similar to much in English in its distribution. This paper examines the distribution of dian, and proposes a potential structure of the quantifier similar to that of much in English: Like much, dian does not have a functional projection of DivP, and has a NP complement that denotes mass meaning. This paper also compares dian to another quantifier, xie, in the language, known to have a similar meaning to dian. As this paper shows, dian cannot be treated in the same way as xie, as it lacks DivP.