The syntax-semantics interface in the Chinese ba-construction

290 Pages·2016·2.14 MB·English

The syntax-semantics interface
in the Chinese ba-construction
Dissertation
zur Erlangung des Grades
eines Doktors der Philosophie
am Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften
der Freien Universität Berlin
vorgelegt von Janna Lipenkova
Berlin, April 2014

Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Stefan Müller
Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. WalterBisang
DatumderDisputation: 15. Januar2015

Acknowledgements
My deepest gratitudegoes to Stefan Müllerfor his support,motivationand patience in supervis-
ingthisthesisandforgettingmeinvolvedintothescienceoflinguisticsinthefirst place.
ThankstoWalterBisangforprovidinghissupport,judgementandafresh lookon theempir-
icaland theoretical challengestouchedupon inthistext.
Many thanks go to the members of the German Grammar Group at the Free University of
Berlin – Philippa Cook, Felix Bildhauer, Jakob Mache, Roland Schäfer and Masood Ghayoomi.
Theiradviceandfeedbackhelpedmeagreatdealindivingintoandadvancingmyunderstanding
of the topics relevant to the present work. I am also very indebted to Viola Auermann for her
supportin variousandoften trickymatterswhichdisruptedtheprocess hereand then.
Prof. Klaus von Heusinger offered me the possibility to spend one year at the SFB 732 of
the University of Stuttgart and to uncover new perspectives and lines of research which have
found their reflection in this thesis. Thanks also to my former colleagues from the University
of Stuttgart – Dolgor Guntsetseg, Sofiana Chiriacescu, Annika Deichsel, Jin Cui and Ljudmila
Geist– foran enjoyablestayin Stuttgartand numerousinterestingand inspiringdiscussions.
Finally,IwouldliketothankWangLuluandthecolleaguesfromtheDepartmentofChinese
Language and Literature at Beijing University, who were with me during some very produc-
tive periods of writing this thesis. They offered me precious help with respect to the empirical
parts and discussed my thoughts and ideas with the critical and involved minds that only native
speakers can have.
ii

Contents
1 The data: baˇ-construction and related structures 7
1.1 Basic propertiesofthebaˇ-construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1.1 Objectpreposingas thecanonical form . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1.2 Argumentdistributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.1.3 Syntacticflexibilityin thebaˇ-construction . . . . . . . . . 15
1.1.4 Grammaticalizationofthebaˇ-construction . . . . . . . . . 19
1.2 Related structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.2.1 Structuresthat (don’t)alternatewith thebaˇ-construction . 21
1.2.2 Complementstructures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2 Previousstudies ofthebaˇ-construction 37
2.1 Early studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.2 Thesyntacticstatusofbaˇ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.1 Baˇ as averb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.2 Baˇ as alightverb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.2.3 Baˇ as preposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.3 Themeaningofthebaˇ-construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.3.1 Preliminaryremarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.3.2 Semanticconstraintsontheuseofbaˇ . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.3 Thecontributionofthebaˇ-construction . . . . . . . . . . 67
iv
2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3 Argument structure and realization 77
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.2 Thefivestagesofargument selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
3.3 Thetraditionalapproach: semanticrolelists . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.4 Challengesforthesemanticroleapproach . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.4.1 Theoreticalchallenges forsemanticrolelists . . . . . . . 85
3.4.2 Empiricalchallenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.5 Decomposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.5.1 Feature decompositionofsemanticroles . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.5.2 Semanticrolesas entailmentclusters . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.5.3 Predicatedecomposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4 The semantic basisofargument realization 101
4.1 Descriptionoftherelevantcategories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.1.1 Aspectand situationtype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.1.2 Affectedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.1.3 Transitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.2 Previoustheoreticalwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.2.1 Tenny’sAspectual InterfaceHypothesis . . . . . . . . . . 112
4.2.2 Universalpropertiesofvariabletelicityverbs . . . . . . . 116
4.2.3 Integratingparticipantstructureviascales . . . . . . . . . 117
4.2.4 Scalar changeinstativepredicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5 The licensing ofpredicates inthe baˇ-construction 131
5.1 Thescalerequirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
v
5.1.1 Ontologicaland linguisticproperties ofscales . . . . . . . 133
5.1.2 Atypologyofscales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.1.3 Thelinguisticspecification ofscalesand degrees . . . . . 135
5.2 Thelicensingofbareverbsin thebaˇ-construction . . . . . . . . . 138
5.2.1 Discretescaletraversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.2.2 Spreadingscale traversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.3 Thelicensingfunctionofadditionalverbal dependents . . . . . . 150
5.3.1 Typesofadditionalverbal dependents . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.3.2 Additionalverbaldependenthypothesis . . . . . . . . . . 158
5.3.3 Verbsthat can belicensedviatheAVD hypothesis. . . . . 158
5.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
6 The HPSGframework 165
6.1 Basic notionsand theformat ofdescription. . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.1.1 Signature,formal languageand theory . . . . . . . . . . . 167
6.1.2 Basicsignstructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
6.2 Thelinguisticapproach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
6.2.1 Thelexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
6.2.2 Thegrammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
6.2.3 Complexpredicates and argumentcomposition . . . . . . 187
6.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
7 Prerequisites forthe analysis 193
7.1 Scalar semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.1.1 Integrationofscales intothetheory . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.2 Integrationofscalarrelationsintothelexicon . . . . . . . . . . . 199
7.3 Theanalysisofpostverbaldependents andtheirscalarsemantics . 201
7.3.1 De-complements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
vi
7.3.2 Goalcomplements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
7.3.3 Directionalcomplements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
7.4 Theanalysisofresultatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
7.4.1 Semanticsofresultatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
7.4.2 Lexicalrules forresultatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
7.4.3 Integrationofresultativesintothetypehierarchy . . . . . 218
7.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
8 Representation ofthe baˇ-construction inHPSG 221
8.1 General constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
8.1.1 Thecause(r)requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
8.1.2 Thegeneral subcategorizationstructureofbaˇ . . . . . . . 225
8.2 Intermediatesummary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
8.3 Argumentcompositionin thebaˇ-construction . . . . . . . . . . . 228
8.4 Summaryoftheanalysisanddiscussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Bibliography 249
vii