Different ways of deriving majority judgements: An experimental study of Chinese dabufen

Abstract

This study experimentally investigates the interpretations of the Chinese majority expression dabufen, testing competing approaches to majority quantification. Majority expressions are typically analyzed as generalized quantifiers or superlative adjectives. However, our corpus-based investigation reveals that neither analysis can fully account for certain properties of dabufen, particularly its ability to associate with proportions below 50%. To address this gap, we propose a comparative approach, deriving majority judgements through comparison with a standard that can be contextually sensitive.

The findings from our experiment further validate the comparative approach while highlighting the inadequacy of the existing approaches. Specifically, our experiment reveals a population split among native speakers: the “Rigid Cluster”, which adheres to the above-50% interpretation, and the “Flexible Cluster”, which accepts below-50% uses across various contexts. Within the Flexible Cluster, we further identify subclusters that use dabufen to express superlativity relativized to the whole partition or to compare with a contextually salient proportion. The inter-cluster differences reflect the participants’ varying ways of determining the standard of comparison.

By uncovering the interpretational variability of dabufen, this research expands the understanding of majority quantification in natural language. It demonstrates that the conceptual category of ‘majority’ can be realized in diverse ways—both within a single language and across languages—and underscores the theoretical value of experimentally exploring majority expressions.