The Syntax of V-V Resultatives in Mandarin Chinese

The Syntax of V-V Resultatives in Mandarin Chinese PDF Author: Jianxun Liu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789813368477
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This book addresses the three fundamental properties of V-V resultative constructions in Mandarin Chinese: their generation, their syntactic structure, and their alternations. This book is original and new in the following aspects. First, adopting the 'inner vs. outer domain' theory, it provides new analysis and evidence that these compounds are generated in syntax, not in lexicon. Second, this book argues that the two subclasses of V-V resultative constructions, object-oriented vs. subject-oriented V-V resultatives, actually have different structures. Their syntactic contrasts have not been observed in the literature before. Third, this book is new in determining the syntactic structure of the V-V resultative constructions through their adverbial modification properties. It demonstrates that the previous isomorphism analysis of the syntactic structure of Chinese V-V resultatives does not hold. Finally, this book provides a new analysis of the issue of the alternations of V-V resultatives. In contrast to previous analyses, which generally view the causative alternation as the idiosyncratic property of particular V-V compounds, this book provides a principled analysis. This book makes a substantial improvement of the current understanding of the issues in the syntax of Mandarin Chinese and gives new support to certain theories of the generative grammar from the perspective of Mandarin Chinese.

The Syntax of V-V Resultatives in Mandarin Chinese

The Syntax of V-V Resultatives in Mandarin Chinese PDF Author: Jianxun Liu
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9813368462
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
This book addresses the three fundamental properties of V-V resultative constructions in Mandarin Chinese: their generation, their syntactic structure, and their alternations. This book is original and new in the following aspects. First, adopting the ‘inner vs. outer domain’ theory, it provides new analysis and evidence that these compounds are generated in syntax, not in lexicon. Second, this book argues that the two subclasses of V-V resultative constructions, object-oriented vs. subject-oriented V-V resultatives, actually have different structures. Their syntactic contrasts have not been observed in the literature before. Third, this book is new in determining the syntactic structure of the V-V resultative constructions through their adverbial modification properties. It demonstrates that the previous isomorphism analysis of the syntactic structure of Chinese V-V resultatives does not hold. Finally, this book provides a new analysis of the issue of the alternations of V-V resultatives. In contrast to previous analyses, which generally view the causative alternation as the idiosyncratic property of particular V-V compounds, this book provides a principled analysis. This book makes a substantial improvement of the current understanding of the issues in the syntax of Mandarin Chinese and gives new support to certain theories of the generative grammar from the perspective of Mandarin Chinese.

The Syntax-Semantics Interface of Resultative Constructions in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese

The Syntax-Semantics Interface of Resultative Constructions in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese PDF Author: Pui-Lun Chow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781361315897
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
This dissertation, "The Syntax-semantics Interface of Resultative Constructions in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese" by Pui-lun, Chow, 周佩倫, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract:  This thesis focuses on a special type of construction in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese long discussed in the literature, namely resultative constructions. The interest of the study lies in the fact that resultative constructions involve an interesting mismatch phenomenon of the mapping of grammatical functions and semantic roles. Since grammatical functions and semantic roles are the building blocks of syntax and semantics, the mapping between grammatical functions and semantic roles is considered a manifestation of the syntactic and semantic interface and it is believed that the study of the mapping between them will shed light on the form and meaning association found inhuman language. However, while an adequate mapping theory can reflect how human experience or meaning is expressed in language, the mapping between grammatical functions and semantic roles is neither linear nor mutually correspondent on a one-to-one basis, rendering the nature of its mechanism obscure. In this thesis, the interface between the semantic and syntactic realizations of resultative constructions in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese will be investigated. The goal is to seek an optimal approach which can provide a more satisfactory account in handling mapping of Mandarin and Cantonese resultatives and explaining the special properties of the V-V structures involved in Mandarin and Cantonese resultative constructions. Drawing from the insights of previous accounts and the properties of resultative constructions, a working definition for resultatives is proposed. Through reviewing some current mapping accounts and revealing their inadequacies and limitations in handling grammatical functions and semantic roles mapping in resultative constructions in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, I am going to argue that Jackendoff's (1990) conceptual semantics approach provides an optimal structure for the representation of resultative compounds in particular and the resultative constructions in general in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese. I also want to argue that the investigation of the resultative constructions in Mandarin and Cantonese not only sheds light on the prospect of applying Jackendoff's (1990) conceptual semantics approach to understanding other types of constructions and special phenomena in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, but also indicates a new direction of study in the possible multiple sense involved in Mandarin and Cantonese compounds. DOI: 10.5353/th_b5043448 Subjects: Grammar, Comparative and general - Resultative constructions Mandarin dialects Cantonese dialects

Mandarin Resultative Verb Compounds

Mandarin Resultative Verb Compounds PDF Author: Chao Li
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783895860676
Category : Chinese language
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description


The Mandarin VP

The Mandarin VP PDF Author: Rint Sybesma
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9789048151325
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
The Mandarin VP deals with a number of constructions in Mandarin Chinese which involve the main verb and the material following it, like the object NPs, resultative phrases, durative expressions and other elements. The basis claim defended in this book is that all elements that follow the main verb in a Mandarin sentence form one single constituent which functions as the complement of the verb. The Mandarin VP offers new and original analyses of such hot issues as resultative constructions, the ba-construction and verb-le. In addition, the conclusions drawn from the research into Mandarin syntax are discussed in more general theoretic terms, which leads to original proposals regarding the internal make-up of accomplishments and the status of Theta Theory. The research reported on in this book was concluded within the bounds of mainstream generative theorizing. The Mandarin VP is of interest to all syntacticians, especially those interested in Chinese.

Syntax and Semantics of the Perfect in Mandarin Chinese

Syntax and Semantics of the Perfect in Mandarin Chinese PDF Author: John Snowden Rohsenow
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chinese language
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description


The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics PDF Author: William S.-Y. Wang
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199856338
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 793

Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics offers a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field from a multi-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are contributed by leading scholars in their respective areas. This Handbook contains eight sections: history, languages and dialects, language contact, morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology, socio-cultural aspects and neuro-psychological aspects. It provides not only a diachronic view of how languages evolve, but also a synchronic view of how languages in contact enrich each other by borrowing new words, calquing loan translation and even developing new syntactic structures. It also accompanies traditional linguistic studies of grammar and phonology with empirical evidence from psychology and neurocognitive sciences. In addition to research on the Chinese language and its major dialect groups, this handbook covers studies on sign languages and non-Chinese languages, such as the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan.

The Establishment of Modern Chinese Grammar

The Establishment of Modern Chinese Grammar PDF Author: Yuzhi Shi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027230621
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
This book investigates historical motivations for the emergence of the resultative construction in Chinese from the following four aspects: (a) disyllabification, (b)adjacent context, (c) semantic integrity, and (d) frequency of co-occurence of a pair of verb and resultative. The author also addresses a series of grammatical changes and innovations caused by the formation of this resultative construction, such as the development of aspect, mood, verb reduplication, the new predicate structure, the disposal construction, the passive construction, the verb copying construction, and the new topicalization construction, all of which together shape the grammatical system of Modern Chinese. The present analysis raises and discusses a number of theoretical issues that are meaningful to various linguistic disciplines like pragmatics, discourse analysis, grammaticalization, and general historical linguistics.

The Syntax of Resultative and Causative Compounds in Chinese

The Syntax of Resultative and Causative Compounds in Chinese PDF Author: Yang Gu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Book Description


Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Yen-hui Audrey Li
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199945675
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 461

Book Description
Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective collects twelve new papers that explore the syntax of Chinese in comparison with other languages.