Embedded reciprocal equatives in Mandarin and semantic weakening

Abstract In this paper I present a novel observation on reciprocal equatives (henceforth, RE) in Mandarin: a reciprocal equative, when embedded under a necessity modal or a predicate of desire, gives rise to an unexpected, at-least-equal-to interpretation (henceforth, ≥-interpretation). I show that the meaning of a modal sentence or a desire report of this kind may be derived through the postulation of two covert operators: one is akin to at least and serves to weaken the meaning of the embedded RE; the other is the exhaustification operator, which gives rise to the inference of sufficiency. Along with Alonso-Ovalle and Hirsch’s (2022) analysis, the proposal draws a connection between the sufficiency modal construction (e.g., To get good cheese, you only have to go to the North Ends ) and examples of embedded reciprocal equatives investigated in this paper. To the extent that the proposal is on the right track, it provides further support for the postulation of a semantic weakening operator in natural language meaning composition and sheds light on the issue how this weakening operation may be constrained (e.g., Alonso-Ovalle & Hirsch, 2022 ; Crnič, 2011 ; Schwarz, 2005 ).