Argument Structure in Mandarin Chinese

340 Pages·2014·1.51 MB·English

by  Sheng-yang Fan

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Instituto Universitario de Investigación Ortega y Gasset

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Departamento de Lingüística General, Lenguas Modernas, Lógica
y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Teoría de Literatura y Literatura
Comparada
Programa de Doctorado en Lingüística Teórica y sus Aplicaciones

Argument Structure in Mandarin Chinese:
a Lexical-syntactic Perspective

Sheng-yang Fan

PhD thesis
Supervisor: Dr. Jaume Mateu i Fontanals
Tutor: Dr. Olga Fernández Soriano

December 2013

Table of Contents

Table of Contents ..............................................................................................................i
Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................iii
Abstract............................................................................................................................iv
Resumen...........................................................................................................................v
List of Abbreviations.......................................................................................................vi

Chapter 1: Argument Structure: the Theoretical Framework..................................1

1.1 Overview: The Lexicon-Syntax Interface..............................................................6
1.1.1 Structural Meaning and Idiosyncratic Meaning..............................................9
1.1.2 Cross-linguistic Variation..............................................................................13
1.2 The Theoretic Framework: The Lexical-syntactic Perspective............................17
1.2.1 Overview.......................................................................................................18
1.2.2 Hale and Keyser (1993, ff.)...........................................................................19
1.2.3 Mateu (2002).................................................................................................25
1.2.4 Incorporation and Conflation........................................................................29
1.2.5 The Framework Adopted for this Dissertation..............................................39
1.3 Other Approaches to the Lexicon-Syntax Interface.............................................43
1.3.1 Projectionist Approaches...............................................................................44
1.3.2 Neo-constructionist Approaches ...................................................................51
1.4 Case Studies: the Data..........................................................................................56
1.4.1 Motion Events...............................................................................................57
1.4.2 The Aspectual Particle le...............................................................................59
1.4.3 The Resultative Construction........................................................................62
1.5 Conclusions..........................................................................................................64

Chapter 2: Motion Events............................................................................................67

2.1 Verb-framed Languages and Satellite-framed Languages...................................71
2.1.1 Talmy’s Lexicalization Patterns....................................................................71
2.1.2 Talmy’s Lexicalization Patterns from the Lexical-syntactic Perspective.....77
2.1.3 Challenges to the Verb-framed and Satellite-framed Typology....................81
2.2 Motion Events in Mandarin..................................................................................87
2.2.1 Motion Events: Unaccusative Structure........................................................88
2.2.2 Motion Events: Causative Structure..............................................................96
2.3 Compounds or Serial Verb Constructions..........................................................110
2.4 Mandarin as a Satellite-framed Language..........................................................115
2.4.1 Challenges to Mandarin as a Satellite-framed Language............................116
2.4.2 Mandarin as a Satellite-framed Language...................................................119
2.5 Possible Explanations to Cross-linguistic Variation..........................................125
2.5.1 Macro-parametric Approaches....................................................................125
i
2.5.2 Micro-parametric Approaches.....................................................................132
2.5.3 Conciliation.................................................................................................135
2.6 Conclusions........................................................................................................140

Chapter 3: The Aspectual Particle le........................................................................143

3.1 Situation Aspects and Viewpoint Aspects..........................................................145
3.2 Situation Aspects and Viewpoint Aspects in Mandarin.....................................152
3.3 The Relationship between the Aspectual Particle le and Argument Structure...161
3.4 The Aspectual Particle le: the Data....................................................................165
3.4.1 Semantic Interpretations..............................................................................165
3.4.2 Syntactic Distribution..................................................................................168
3.5 The Aspectual Particle le: a Lexical-syntactic Account.....................................172
3.5.1 The Aspectual Particle le as a Resultative Predicate...................................174
3.5.2 The Aspectual Particle le as an Inchoative Marker.....................................181
3.5.3 The Aspectual Particle le as the Perfective Viewpoint Aspect...................188
3.6 The Particle le: From the Diachronic Point of View..........................................190
3.7 Resultative Predicate Analysis: Sybesma (1997, 1999).....................................197
3.8 Functional Head Analysis: Wu (2000)...............................................................205
3.9 Concluding Remarks..........................................................................................211

Chapter 4: The Resultative Construction................................................................217

4.1 The Resultative Compounds: the Data...............................................................222
4.2 The Classification of the Resultative Construction............................................229
4.3 Intransitive Resultatives and the Direct Object Restriction................................234
4.3.1 The Intransitive Type with V1 Encoding Unergativity...............................238
4.3.2 The Intransitive Type with V1 Encoding Unaccusativity...........................244
4.4 Transitive Type of Resultatives..........................................................................254
4.4.1 The Object-oriented Transitive Type..........................................................256
4.4.2 The Subject-oriented Transitive Type.........................................................267
4.5 Causative Resultatives........................................................................................279
4.6 Advantages over Lexical/Lexical-semantic Accounts.......................................289
4.7 Advantages over Syntactic Accounts.................................................................298
4.8 Conclusions........................................................................................................303

Chapter 5: Conclusions..............................................................................................307

References....................................................................................................................313

ii
Acknowledgements

This statement of acknowledgements might be short; however, my gratitude to
all the people mentioned is immense. Without their support, I would not have been able
to finish this dissertation.
I am particularly grateful to my supervisor, Jaume Mateu, for believing in me
even when I did not think that I could continue, for teaching me not only linguistics but
also the attitude to the life, for making the sacrifice of meeting with me on the weekends,
and for being always available for any consultation. His enthusiasm and creativity are
admirable.
I would like to express my thanks to my tutor, Olga Fernández, for her guidance
and help during these years. I would also like to offer my special thanks to Manuel
Martí and José Borao, without whom I would have not studied linguistics. I also wish to
acknowledge the assistance of Isabel Pérez, who helped me with the revision of the
early drafts. Assistance provided by Kim Eddy is appreciated.
I would also like to thank my friends for always being there supporting me in
some way or another: Azucena Lin, Carmen Peña, Clara Alsina, Cristina Lu, Diego
Jiménez, Encarnación Vázquez, Fernando González, Isabel González, Isidro Gayoso,
Julia Chiang, Lorena de la Cruz, María Luisa Barnada, Miguel Rubio, Rosalio Puerta
(and her family), Teresa Puente, and Tung-Hui Lai.
Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to my family. I am indebted to them for
their unconditional love and for being my greatest support and source of strength.

iii
Abstract

In this dissertation I put forth a lexical-syntactic theory of argument structure to account
for cases in Mandarin such as motion events, the aspectual particle le, and the resultative
construction. I suggest that the argument structure in Mandarin can be approached from the
perspective of the lexicon-syntax interface. Special attention is paid firstly to what the building
blocks of argument structure are and, secondly, to how these units interact to form argument
structure in Mandarin. Moreover, I argue for the homomorphism between syntax and (structural)
semantics. That is, a predicate can be decomposed in a configurational manner and the
(structural) semantics is read off the syntactic configuration.
In chapter one I deal firstly with the general view on the lexicon-syntax interface. I
examine in detail the approaches from projectionist and neo-constructionist perspectives, and
finally adopt Mateu’s (2002) revision of Hale and Keyser’s (1993f.) lexical-syntactic approach
as the framework for this dissertation. The essential idea of the modification is that argument
structures are governed by the head-complement and specifier-head relations and the
complement is required before the specifier can be introduced.
Chapter two accounts for motion events in Mandarin from the perspective of argument
structure and Talmy’s (1991, 2000) typology of lexicalization patterns, which is adopted into a
syntactic configuration. I argue that, unlike the verb-framed encoding pattern, which involves
the process of incorporation: copying the semantic features of the complement to its head,
motion events in Mandarin involve the satellite-framed encoding pattern, which results from the
process of conflation: merging of an unergative structure to the phonologically empty head of
an unaccusative/causative structure.
Chapter three covers the aspectual particle le. Based on the two-tier analysis of aspect in
Smith (1997), I distinguish between the VP-external and VP-internal uses of this particle and
claim that the two VP-internal uses of this particle are related to argument realization. One use
is related to the role of the resultative predicate because the particle occupies the same position
in the argument structure as a resultative predicate in a resultative construction; the other is
interpreted as an inchoative marker, which derives from the head of the unaccusative structure.
In chapter four I try to explain the resultative construction in Mandarin, focusing on
issues such as the Direct Object Restriction, the possible multiple interpretations, and
causativity. I claim that the Direct Object Restriction is to be retained, that the possible multiple
interpretations of the same sentence of the resultative construction in Mandarin arise from
different syntactic configurations, and that the causative interpretation results from the
interpretation of the features Voice and CAUSE bundled together.
Chapter five concludes this dissertation.
iv
Resumen
La presente tesis tiene como objeto presentar una teoría léxico-sintáctica de la estructura
argumental para explicar casos en mandarín como los eventos de desplazamiento, la partícula
aspectual le y la construcción resultativa. En nuestra opinión, la estructura argumental en
mandarín puede explicarse desde la interfaz léxico-sintaxis. Tal posición nos ha llevado a
prestar atención especial, primero, a las estructuras primitivas de la estructura argumental y,
segundo, cómo estas estructuras primitivas forman las estructuras argumentales en mandarín.
Estamos convencidos del homomorfismo entre la sintaxis y la estructura semántica. Un
predicado se puede descomponer configuracionalmente y de esta configuración sintáctica se
obtiene la interpretación semántica.
El capítulo uno traza un panorama general de la interfaz léxico-sintaxis. Examino en
detalle las distintas propuestas desde las perspectivas proyeccionista y neo-construccionista, y
adopto como marco teórico la revisión de Mateu (2002) de la propuesta léxico-sintáctica de
Hale y Keyser (1993f.). Su idea esencial consiste en que las estructuras argumentales son
legitimadas por las relaciones núcleo-complemento y especificador-núcleo, de mode que la
presencia del complemento es obligatoria antes de que se pueda introducir el especificador.
El capítulo dos explica los eventos de desplazamiento en mandarín desde el punto de
vista de estructura argumental y de la tipología de los patrones de lexicalización de Talmy (1991,
2000), la cual es adoptada en la configuración sintáctica. En vez de al patrón de marco verbal,
que recoge el proceso de incorporación y de copiado de los rasgos semánticos del complemento
a su núcleo, los eventos de desplazamiento en mandarín se ajustan al patrón de marco satélite.
El carco satélite implica el proceso de unificación ‘conflation’ y de fusión de una estructura
inergativa con el núcleo fonológicamente vacío de una estructura inacusativa/causativa.
El capítulo tres estudia la partícula aspectual le. A partir del análisis del aspecto de
Smith (1997), distingo los usos externos e internos en el sintagma verbal de esta partícula y
propongo que sean los dos usos internos en el sintagma verbal los que relacionan esta partícula
con la realización argumental. Uno está relacionado con el papel de los predicados resultativos,
porque esta partícula ocupa el mismo lugar en la estructura argumental que un predicado
resultativo en la construcción resultativa. En el otro la partícula es interpretada como un
marcador incoativo, que ocupa el núcleo de la estructura inacusativa.
En el capítulo cuatro, analizo la construcción resultativa del mandarín y hago hincapié
en cuestiones como la Restricción del Objeto Directo, las posibles interpretaciones múltiples y
la causatividad. Sugiero que la Restricción del Objeto Directo se debe mantener, que las
posibles interpretaciones múltiples de una misma oración de la construcción resultativa surgen
de configuraciones sintácticas distintas y que la interpretación causativa resulta de interpretar
conjuntamente los rasgos Voz y CAUSAR. El capítulo cinco concluye esta tesis con una síntesis
y unas reflexiones finales.
v
List of abbreviations

ACC accusative case
BA disposal particle ba
CL classifier, measure word
DE complementizer, possessive marker, extent particle, adjective marker
GEN genitive
HEN the positive degree marker hen
LE the particle le
NEG negation
NOM nominative case
PART particle
RVC resultative verb complements
ZAI the stationary marker zai, the progressive marker zai
ZHE gerund marker zhe
vi
Chapter 1: Argument Structure: the Theoretical Framework

In this dissertation I deal with the issues of argument structure in Mandarin
Chinese from the perspective of the lexicon-syntax interface; that is, from the different
general analyses available, I adopt the lexicon-syntax interface approach for application
to Mandarin Chinese.
The formation of argument structure is directly related to the formation of
linguistic representations. An important recognized property of language is the
computational process, which contributes to the unlimited number of linguistic
representations. In other words, to manage argument structure, we are dealing with the
formation of linguistic representations and, concretely, the computational process of this
formation. Pylkkänen (2002: 9) says that “[a] comprehensive theory of linguistic
representations must minimally (i) define the nature of the primitive building blocks
that enter into linguistic computation, (ii) characterize the manner in which the basic
units combine into complex representations and (iii) identify the ways in which
languages may differ with respect to their inventory of possible representations”. This
quotation captures what a theory of argument structure should relate.
These three issues constitute the important criteria for the theoretical
development of this dissertation and the linguistic model developed here needs to meet
these requirements by being able to answer the questions in (1).

(1) a. What are the building blocks of argument structure?
b. How do these units interact to form argument structure?
c. How can such interaction account for the cross-linguistic variation?

To approach these issues, I will draw on studies from the lexical-syntactic perspective,
such as Hale and Keyser (1993, 1998, 2000) and Mateu (2002, 2012), and from the
syntactic perspective, such as Haugen (2009) and Acedo Matellán and Mateu (2012).
The theory of argument structure developed in this chapter will be applied to
cases in Mandarin such as motion events, the aspectual particle le, and the resultative
construction, illustrated by the examples in (2). The purpose of this dissertation will be
1
to develop an adequate approach to argument structure and to apply this approach to the
types of examples in (2).

(2) a. Zhangsan xiang pao-jin fangjian. (Motion event)
Zhangsan want run-enter room
‘Zhangsan wants to run into the room.’
b. Lisi xiang mai-le ta-de zixingche. (The aspectual particle le)
Lisi want sell-LE he-GEN bicycle
‘Lisi wants to sell his bicycle.’
c. Wangwu xiang qiao-bian na-ge guanzi. (Resultative construction)
Wangwu want pound-flat that-CL can
‘Wangwu wants to pound that can flat.’

What these examples have in common is that they all deal with two components: a telic
predicate, in boldface, and the manner in which the result state is achieved, in italics.
Zhangsan in the example (2a) will end up in the room after carrying out the running
activity; Lisi in (2b) will dispose of his bicycle after selling it; na-ge guanzi ‘that can’ in
(2c) will become flattened after Wangwu pounds it. The examples of these types will be
briefly presented in section 1.4.

In this study, I will endeavor to account for the three aforementioned empirical
constructions with the well articulated theoretical approach which can answer the
questions laid out in (1). In order for the empirical problems to be accounted for, well
restricted theoretical criteria will be necessary. No matter how sound the explanations to
empirical problems might be, without restricted criteria they will neither be proved true
or false, and credibility will thus be lost. Therefore, for the theoretical task, the goal is
to satisfy the criteria of being well restricted.
In the literature, theories on how to approach the lexical-syntactic interface can
be argued to form a continuum according to the role that the lexicon and the syntax play
within these theories. According to Borer (2003, 2005), varying degrees of attention
paid to these two linguistic components reflect the different human linguistic capacities
between focusing on lexical items and on computational processes. At one end of this
continuum are approaches that rely on lexical items specified with morphological,
syntactic, and semantic properties, etc., to project and to determine the syntactic
2