On the Zero-Change Construal of Causative Simple Verbs in Mandarin Chinese

International audience ; Mandarin Chinese allows so-called zero-change (failed-attempt) construals of causa- tive monomorphemic verbs when the subject refers to an agent. However, while for non- gradable causative simple verbs, this reading is generally available only when the verb is modi- fied by a cardinality adverbial (e.g., liaˇng c`ı ‘twice’), with gradable causative simple verbs, the zero-change reading is readily available even in the absence of a cardinality adverbial, though the presence of such an adverbial does indeed facilitate it. We account for this puzzle by argu- ing that the source of non-culmination differs for gradable vs. non-gradable causative simple verbs: it lies in the partitive semantics of perfective le for non-gradable causative verbs, and/or the degree argument tracking the degree of event realization for gradable causative verbs.