The Truth-Conditional Treatment of Ambiguity and Chinese Serial Verb Constructions

According to Li & Thompson (1981), Chinese serial verb constructions consisting of two verb phrases denoting two separate events can be classified into those having alternating, consecutive, purpose or circumstance relations. These classifications may overlap and a serial verb construction may be ambiguous between different interpretations. It has been argued in a recent study (Chan 1996) that there exists an entailment relation between the different interpretations of an ambiguous serial verb construction. In the present study, it is argued that because of the entailment relations between the different interpretations, the truth conditional definition of ambiguity has to be modified if it is to be applied to Chinese serial verb constructions which are ambiguous. In truth-conditional semantics, it is suggested that an ambiguous sentence is true for one interpretation but false for another relative to a certain state of affairs. This definition of ambiguity is not adequate for an ambiguous Chinese serial verb construction because of the entailment relation between the different interpretations. It has to be modified to allow a state of affairs where the sentence is true for both interpretations. According to Li & Thompson (1981), Chinese serial verb constructions consisting of two verb phrases denoting two separate events can be classified into those having alternating, consecutive, purpose or circumstance relations. These classifications may overlap and a serial verb construction can have more than one interpretation. For example, sentence (1) below is ambiguous between the consecutive and purpose interpretations, sentence (2) between the consecutive and alternating interpretations, and sentence (3) between the purpose and circumstance interpretations.