Argument structure in Mandarin Chinese: a lexical-syntactic perspective

• Autores: Fan Shen-Yang
• Directores de la Tesis: Jaume Mateu Fontanals (dir. tes.), Olga Fernández Soriano (tut. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ( España ) en 2014
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Violeta Demonte Barreto (presid.), Amaya Mendikoetxea (secret.), Isabel Oltra-Massuet (voc.), Rint Sybesma (voc.), Ángel J. Gallego Bartolomé (voc.)
• Materias:
  • Lingüística
    • Teoría lingüística
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: Biblos-e Archivo
• Resumen

  • 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.