The Interfaces of Chinese Syntax with Semantics and Pragmatics

231 Pages·2017·3.679 MB·English

by  Yicheng Wu

The Interfaces of Chinese Syntax
with Semantics and Pragmatics
The Interfaces of Chinese Syntax with Semantics and Pragmatics provides an
in-depth exploration of a variety of interface phenomena in Chinese, a non-
inflectional language, where to a large extent word order constrains its inter-
pretation and defines its grammatical functions.
Under the Dynamic Syntax approach, which takes the incremental left-to-
right processing of linguistic forms to be a fundamental part of character-
izing the relation between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation, a
straightforward explanation is provided. The study features detailed analysis
of a range of key grammatical constructions such as topic, passive, copular
and cleft, where previous analyses were sought in pure syntactic, semantic or
pragmatic terms.
Clear and straightforward throughout, The Interfaces of Chinese Syntax with
Semantics and Pragmatics will be of interest to graduate students and scholars
of Chinese, linguistics and cognitive science.
Yicheng Wu is Professor of Linguistics at the Centre for the Study of Lan-
guage and Cognition, and Department of Linguistics and Translation, Zhejiang
University, P. R. China.
Routledge Studies in Chinese Linguistics
Series editor: Hongming Zhang
Titles in the series:
Modern Chinese Grammar: A Clause-Pivot Theoretical Approach
Fuyi Xing, translated by Yong Wang and Fangfeng Dong
Cognition-based Studies on Chinese Grammar (forthcoming)
Yulin Yuan, translated by Guoxiang Wu
Dimensions of Variation in Written Chinese (forthcoming)
Zheng-Sheng Zhang
Lexical Ontological Semantics (forthcoming)
Yulin Yuan, translated by Guoxiang Wu
Mandarin Chinese Words and Parts of Speech: Corpus-based
Foundational Studies (forthcoming)
Huang Chu-Ren, Keh-Jiann Chen and Shu-Kai Hsieh
Partition and Quantity: Numeral Classifiers, Measurement, and
Partitive Constructions in Mandarin Chinese (forthcoming)
Jing Jin
Syntax-Phonology Interface: Argumentation from Tone Sandhi in
Chinese Dialects
Hongming Zhang
The Interfaces of Chinese
Syntax with Semantics
and Pragmatics
Yicheng Wu
First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Yicheng Wu to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-24132-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-28065-3 (ebk)
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction ix
1 Chinese syntax: A general description 1
1 Introduction 1
2 Word-order flexibility 1
3 Semantics in syntax 4
4 Pragmatics in syntax 6
5 Overview of the book 8
2 The dynamics of language processing 11
1 A preliminary introduction 11
1.1 Compositionality and context-dependency 11
1.2 Interpretation and representation 13
1.3 Underspecification and resolution 14
2 The tools of dynamic syntax 16
2.1 Tree-logic and treenode decorations 16
2.2 Requirements and tree growth 19
3 The dynamics of the parsing process 20
3.1 Computational rules 20
3.2 Lexical actions 28
3.3 A basic example 29
3.4 Pragmatic actions 33
4 Simple-clause structure in Chinese 36
5 Summary 40
3 The dynamics of verbal underspecification in Chinese 42
1 Introduction 42
2 Previous analyses 46
3 A dynamic analysis 51
4 Summary 59
vi Contents
4 Topic constructions 62
1 Introduction 62
2 Previous analyses 65
2.1 The variable analysis 65
2.2 The pragmatic analysis 68
2.3 The structural analysis 71
3 A preliminary analysis 73
3.1 Single-topic structure 74
3.2 Multiple-topic structure 76
4 A dynamic analysis 78
4.1 English-style topic construction 79
4.2 Chinese-style topic construction 85
5 Summary 90
5 Passive constructions 92
1 Introduction 92
2 Previous analyses 94
2.1 The preposition hypothesis 94
2.2 The dual-function hypothesis 96
2.3 The verb hypothesis 99
3 A preliminary analysis 102
3.1 Pragmatic voice 102
3.2 Left dislocation 104
3.3 The characterization of the canonical patterns 107
4 Problematic patterns 111
4.1 Bei construction with a retained object (BCRO) 111
4.2 Bei construction with an embedded ba construction
(BCBC) 119
4.3 Bei construction with a locative patient (BCLP) 127
5 Summary 130
6 Copular constructions 136
1 Introduction 136
2 Previous analyses 137
3 A preliminary analysis 142
4 A dynamic analysis 145
4.1 Predicative construction 146
4.2 Emphatic construction 148
5 Summary 155
Contents vii
7 The cleft construction 158
1 Introduction 158
2 Previous analyses 162
3 A dynamic analysis 168
4 Summary 173
8 Semantic underspecification: Cases of personal pronouns 176
1 Introduction 176
2 Previous analysis of expletive ta 179
3 A dynamic analysis 182
3.1 A dynamic analysis of the typical and non-typical
referential construal of ta 182
3.2 A dynamic analysis of the expletive construal of ta 186
3.3 Scope interpretation and expletive ta 191
3.4 Some implications 193
4 Summary 194
9 Conclusion 198
1 Contributions to Chinese linguistics 198
2 Reflections on linguistic theorizing 200
Bibliography 204
Index 215
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers would like to thank the following publishers for
granting permission to reproduce material in this work:
Elsevier for permission to reprint
Y. Wu “The interpretation of copular constructions in Chinese: Semantic underspecifi-
cation and pragmatic enrichment”, Lingua, 121:4 (2011), pp. 851–870.
Y. Wu and S. Matthews “How different are expletive and referential pronouns? A pars-
ing perspective”, Lingua, 120:7 (2010), pp. 1805–1820.
J. Chen, H. Huang and Y. Wu “Topic expression, information saliency and anaphora
resolution”, Journal of Pragmatics, 41:9 (2009), pp. 1103–1107.
Soochow University for permission to reprint
Y. Wu “Common verbs are uncommon: The dynamics of verbal underspecification in
Chinese”, Language and Semiotic Studies, 1:4 (2015), pp. 52–79.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission
to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from
any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rec-
tify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.
Introduction
The notion of ‘interface’ plays an increasingly central role in the development
of grammatical theory. Linguists of all theoretical persuasions generally agree
that a proper understanding of language-specific phenomena and the architec-
ture of the human mind all require reference to the interfaces between com-
ponents of the grammatical system of natural language, syntax, semantics,
pragmatics, phonetics, phonology, etc. Thus there is a need to shift the perspec-
tive of linguistic study from static (i.e., a characterization of a string of words
and its fixed structure) to dynamic (i.e., a characterization of the incremental
process of building up structures) so that the interfaces of syntax with seman-
tics and pragmatics (or other areas) can be studied in a unified way.
This book provides an in-depth exploration of a variety of interface phenom-
ena in Chinese, a non-inflectional language where to a large extent word order
constrains its interpretation and defines its grammatical functions. Under the
Dynamic Syntax approach, which takes the incremental left-to-right process-
ing of linguistic forms to be a fundamental part of characterizing the relation
between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation, and also makes prag-
matic inference a part of linguistic formalism, a parsimonious, straightforward
explanation is provided through detailed analysis for a range of key grammati-
cal constructions such as topic, passive, copular and cleft. Previous analyses of
these constructions are sought in pure syntactic, semantic or pragmatic terms.
In chapter 1, I present a general picture of Chinese syntax and a sketch
of how syntax interacts with semantics and pragmatics in the production and
interpretation of the Chinese language. Chapter 2 introduces the technical tools
used in the Dynamic Syntax model. In the following chapters, I provide an in-
depth exploration of prominent grammatical phenomena in Chinese, some of
its major grammatical constructions in particular, within the theoretical frame-
work of Dynamic Syntax. As a parsing-based model of grammar, Dynamic
Syntax takes the incremental left-to-right processing of linguistic forms to be
a fundamental part of characterizing the relation between syntactic structure
and semantic interpretation and makes pragmatic inference a central part of
linguistic formalism.
I devote chapter 3 to addressing a prominent grammatical phenomenon –
i.e., verbal underspecification in Chinese, which is manifested in the way verbs