Polarity sensitivity of minimal degree adverbs in modern Chinese

Abstract

Based on the semantic and pragmatic analysis of the typical Chinese minimal degree adverbs, as well as their relative frequency in corpora, this paper examines the polarity sensitivity of these adverbs. Evidence shows that shaowei (a little) and xiewei (a little bit) are positive polarity items (PPIs) while hao (a little) and sihao (a bit) are negative polarity items (NPIs). The research findings also indicate that the semantics is not the only factor that determines the polarity of minimal degree words, the pragmatics and frequency of the examined words must also be taken into account when deciding their polarity sensitivity.