This work provides an analysis of the quantitative denotations of simple adjectives (base adjectival forms) in Mandarin Chinese following recent analyses of the ‘scale structure’ associated with English adjectives. Against a widely accepted assumption that simple adjectives unitarily denote an unbounded property, we assume that the property of boundedness in adjectives is situated in the notion of gradability, and identify a group of simple adjectives that are actually bounded. We further provide a finer-grained classification of Chinese simple adjectives based on the different scale structures associated with individual adjectives: non-scale adjectives, open-scale adjectives, lower-closed-scale adjectives, upper-closed-scale adjectives and totally-closed-scale adjectives. Each type is linguistically distinguishable in natural Chinese data. Our classification provides a unified account of the distinctive syntactic and semantic characteristics of individual adjectives that cannot be explained by previous studies. This study also demonstrates a cross-linguistic and cross-categorical application of the scale-structure-based analysis.
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