Giving Verbs More Arguments in Mandarin Chinese

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Yu, Jianrong
Contributor
Abstract

Mandarin Chinese has a way of adding arguments to transitive verbs using the morpheme corresponding to ‘give’. It can appear either affixed to the main verb or as a preposition-like element, resulting in what looks like a double-object prepositional-dative alternation. In this paper, I examine their syntactic and semantic properties, arguing they both encode low applicative possessor semantics but have different syntactic structures. I outline a compositional syntax-semantics for deriving the alternation, the key component being a switch in the order of application of the semantic rules of function application and event identification that explains their identical semantics but different syntactic structures.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2020-10-01
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection