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Resultative Verb Compounds
Abstract
Demonstrates that structure and interpretation of Resultative Verb Compound (RVC) in the field of Chinese linguistics is neither indiosyncratic nor pragmatically determined as suggested in an earlier study. Rather, RCV formation and interpretation is determined by semantic features of verbs, and these features determine the well-formedness and range of meaning of RVCs in simple and predictable ways. (22 references) (JL)
... Assuming a thematic structure in a GB framework, Chang (1989), Ross (1990), and Cheng & Huang (1994) investigate the theta-roles of RVCs by considering the first verb as the head ofRVCs. But they differ from one another in that Chang sticks to the Theta Criterion (Chomsky 1981) and proposes "argument percolation rules" by which the preferential donor of theta-roles ofRVCs is the first verb. ...
... (see next page) For many of Chang's examples, her argwnent would have been entirely convincing if we only considered sentences of transitive RVCs with both subject and object. One problem of Chang's approach, swiftly rebutted by Ross (1990), lies in that she considers the first verb ofRVCs as a preferential thematic role donator. Ross presumes that Chang's argument structures take Jackendoffs (1972) definitions (Ross 1990: 70), and argues that there does not exist a favored thematic role provider as Chang assumed. ...
... That the thematic relation in an RVC is not a pile-up of all identifiable thematic roles can also be evidenced in my review of two relevant studies: Ross (1990) andLi (1995), both of whom are motivated from the insufficiency ofpercolation approaches, adopt Jackendoff s multiple-tier thematic structures (see Section 4.1.1 for details). ...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2002. Mode of access: World Wide Web. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-208). Electronic reproduction. Also available by subscription via World Wide Web x, 238 leaves, bound 29 cm This dissertation presents the results of an extensive and in-depth investigation of Mandarin Resultative Verbal Compounds (RVCs) carried out to uncover the semantic complexity hidden under their syntactic simplicity. A fresh perspective is adopted to achieve a new and more reasonable account of RVCs, especially with respect to their event aspects and thematic roles. The implications of these theoretic findings for teaching and learning RVCs are also discussed. In Chapter 1 it is argued that a cognitive approach can shed much fresh light on the study of RVCs. Although several previous works have studied RVCs from both formal and functional perspectives, they tend to be flawed by excessive formalism or functionalism. This study examines RVCs by using Compositional Cognitive Grammar (CCG) to achieve a desired balance between rigid formalism and loose functionalism. Chapter 2 gives a comprehensive picture of CCG with particular detail given to the level of Semantic Structure representations, which mediates the cognitive content and abstract form of a sentence. Based on this framework, the following two chapters study RVCs from two perspectives: RVCs as the composition of simple events, and RVCs as hosting the thematic roles for all event participants. Chapter 3 explores Mandarin aspectual types, focusing on those in an RVC. An RVC is analyzed as a composition of two general-verbs (g-verbs), representing two causally and temporally connected events. I categorize six event types and further classify 1505 Chinese g-verbs based on these six types. By employing Aspectual Composition, which captures the lively moment of interaction between two event aspects, an explicit computational method is formulated which rigorously derives the aspect of a complex event from the aspects of its composing simple events. No ad hoc adjustment rules intervene in obtaining the predicted correct results. Chapter 4 applies similar rigorous and precise computational rules to the thematic roles in the composing simple events to obtain the thematic roles in the complex event in an RVCs. The final chapter, chapter 5, discusses the pedagogical implications of these theoretic findings concerning RVCs. PhD
... Compared to VOCs, RVCs are subject to a higher degree of regularity in terms of the separability of their parts. RVCs are essentially V-V complex verbs in which V 2 , or the postverb expresses a certain result of the action or process designated by V 1 (Packard 2000;Ross 1990). Four major types of result can be expressed by an RVC: cause (e.g. ...
... In general, RVCs do not allow intervening constituents such as aspect markers or measure words between V 1 and V 2 , a property suggesting that RVCs grammatically function more like a single verb than VOCs (Thompson 1973). Nonetheless, the parts of some directional RVCs can be split (Li and Thompson 1981;Ross 1990;Shi 2002). To illustrate, the two morphemes in ná-lái 拿来 bringcome 'to bring' can be separated by an aspect marker and the direct object of the RVC, as in ná-le-shuǐ-lái 拿了水来 bring-ASP-water-come 'brought water'; in this case, the verbs ná 拿 and lái 来 would be segmented as separate words with their own POS tags in LCMC. ...
Building on the success of the VU Amsterdam Metaphor Corpus, which comprises English texts annotated with metaphor following the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrjie Universiteit (MIPVU; Steen et al. in Cogn Linguist 21(4):765–796, 2010a; Steen et al. in A method for linguistic metaphor identification: from MIP to MIPVU. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2010b), this study has three aims: (1) to adapt and evaluate the transferability and reliability of MIPVU for Mandarin Chinese; (2) to construct a corpus of Chinese texts annotated for metaphor using the adapted procedure; and (3) to examine the distribution of metaphor-related words across Chinese texts in three different written registers: academic discourse, fiction, and news. The results of our inter-annotator reliability test show that MIPVU can be reliably applied to linguistic metaphor identification in Chinese texts. Our metaphor-annotated corpus consists of texts randomly sampled from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese, totaling 30,012 words (about 10,000 for each register). Data analysis reveals that approximately one out of every nine lexical units in our Chinese corpus is related to metaphor, that there is considerable variation in metaphor density across different registers and lexical categories, and that metaphor density is significantly lower in Chinese than in English texts. Our assessment of the replicability of MIPVU for Mandarin Chinese adds to the groundbreaking methodological contribution that Steen et al. (2010a, b) has made to metaphor research. The metaphor-annotated corpus of Mandarin Chinese contributes a valuable language resource for Chinese metaphor researchers, and our analysis of the distribution of metaphor-related words in the corpus offers useful new insights into the extent and use of metaphor in Chinese discourse.
... The two elements and their relation show rich syntactic and semantic features. For this reason, RVCs constitute one of the particularities of the Chinese language and have been widely discussed (Chao, 1968;Li and Thompson, 1981;Lu, 1977;Packard and Jerome, 1998;Packard, 2000;Ross, 1990;Thompson, 1973). Below is a common categorization, based on what is conveyed by the RVCs (underlined) ( Table 1). ...
... They are not as highly grammaticalized as aspectual markers. RVCs also differ from grammatical markers in that they are large in number and form an open class (Packard, 2000;Ross, 1990), while aspectual markers are a small and closed set. Comparing with the highly grammaticalized markers such as --le and -zhe, one may reasonably say that the meaning and use of RVCs have not quite reached the status of grammatical markers yet. ...
This paper proposes three descriptive generalizations about temporal and aspectual references in Chinese. First, temporal and aspectual references in a clause display a positional distinction: temporal location is indicated before the main verb and aspect after the main verb. The distinction characterizes an important pattern of information distribution within the clause; it also provides a unified explanation for a number of word order phenomena discussed in previous synchronic and diachronic studies. Second, temporal and aspectual references are managed at different levels. The former is to a large extent a discourse phenomenon, while the latter is managed at the clause level. Third, in narrative discourse, major devices to indicate perfectivity, i.e., the perfective marker –le and “bounding expressions,” serve as mechanisms to facilitate narrative advancement. These proposals are supported by evidence from natural discourse.
... MMMCs have been treated as a (sub)type of the resultative verbal construction ("RVC") in previous studies (Li and Thompson 1981, Ross 1990, Shi 2002, Xiao and McEnery 2004, Xu 2006, Hsiao 2009, among many others). However, diverse combinations of M1-M2 as exemplified in (4-6) make us question whether all M1-M2 collocations in motion expressions are necessarily a subtype of RVC. ...
... Previous studies (Hashimoto 1757, Li and Thompson 1981, Ross 1990, Shi 2002, Xiao and McEnery 2004, among many others, cf. Lu 1977 often treat the MMMC as a (sub)type of the RVC: as pointed out in Li and Thompson (1981: 58), the M2 in an MMMC "signals the direction in which the subject moves as the result of the displacement [M1]. ...
This study analyzes semantic constraints affecting the order of motion morphemes in Mandarin Chinese multi-morpheme motion constructions (MMMCs, e.g.
zǒu-jìn fángjiān
‘walk into the room’ (lit.) ‘walk-enter room’ vs. *
jìn-zǒu
(lit.) ‘enter-walk’). We classify Chinese motion morphemes into four types based on recent study on “scale structure”. Then, we propose an implicational scalar hierarchy formed by the four types of morphemes that can be used to predict the order of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs. Our corpus studies demonstrate that the hierarchy can explain the morpheme order of MMMCs for a comprehensive range of existing natural Chinese data. We anticipate that our scalar hierarchy may be extensible to serial-verb motion constructions in other languages as well.
... With the above assumptions, the semantic representation of (1), repeated below a s (45a), can be represented as (45b) with -le having wide scope over changchang. In the representation we can see that -le, with a clausal scope, cannot bind anything, since both variables s and x are bound by the unselective binder changchang, and thus this representation violates the constraint o n v acuous binding (25). Note that in (45) changchang has only a cardinal reading, since it has one argument. ...
... We can use the so-called resultative v erb compound (RVC) to test if the situation type in question is an accomplishment or an activity, because RVCs can be used only with accomplishments and achievements, i.e., not activities (Thompson 1973, Lu 1977, Teng 1977, Ross 1990). 10 (51) a. Ni chi wan fan gan shenme? ...
this article I will investigate the relationship between adverbs of quantification and perfective aspect with special reference to Chinese. In English adverbial quantifiers like often can co-occur with perfectives. Although in Chinese adverbial quantifiers like zongshi `always' pattern with English adverbial quantifiers (they can co-occur with the perfective marker -le), adverbial quantifiers like changchang `often' are different; they usually cannot co-occur with the perfective marker -le, except under certain conditions. When-/if-clauses and adverbs like dou `all' are such conditions. In this article I will show that the interaction of the following constraints can explain the above contrasts, and thus there is no need to assume any additional principle or constraint: (a) Constraint on Perfective Aspect -le; (b) Constraint on Adverbs of Quantification; and (c) Prohibition against Vacuous Quantification
... With the above assumptions, the semantic representation of (1), repeated below a s (45a), can be represented as (45b) with -le having wide scope over changchang. In the representation we can see that -le, with a clausal scope, cannot bind anything, since both variables s and x are bound by the unselective binder changchang, and thus this representation violates the constraint o n v acuous binding (25). Note that in (45) changchang has only a cardinal reading, since it has one argument. ...
... We can use the so-called resultative v erb compound (RVC) to test if the situation type in question is an accomplishment or an activity, because RVCs can be used only with accomplishments and achievements, i.e., not activities (Thompson 1973, Lu 1977, Teng 1977, Ross 1990). 10 (51) a. Ni chi wan fan gan shenme? ...
this article I will investigate the relationship between adverbs of quantification and perfective aspect with special reference to Chinese. In English adverbial quantifiers like
... Li, 1990;Zou, 1994;Chang, 1997;etc.), resultative verb compounds (Thompson, 1973;Ross, 1990;C. Li, 2007C. ...
Based on an empirical investigation on data collected from four popular machine translation systems, this paper explores the current problems machine translation is confronted with in translating Chinese resultative constructions into English. The paper analyzes their syntactic and semantic differences in construction and in verbal pattern. The paper then further elaborates on the problems and reveals a truth that Chinese resultative construction poses a great challenge to machine translation for being very productive and flexible. Its productivity is credited to the fact that the main verbs in Chinese are mostly implied-fulfillment verbs. Its flexibility could be attributed to the hypothesis that there are fewer constraints on the co-occurrence of the main verb and the resultative in Chinese resultative construction. Finally, possible solutions are proposed in an attempt to solve the problems.
... Though there have been a lot of studies on RVCs, few of them have thoroughly examined their θ-structures. The perspectives of previous studies include but not limited to 2 : the Head of RVCs (Lv & Zhu 1952;Ding 1961;Li 1984;Ma 1987;Zhan 1989;Song 2004a;Xiong/ Liu 2005;Lin 2009), transitivity of RVCs (Zhu 1982;Li 1994), sentence patterns in which RVCs occur (Li 1980;Fan 1987;Song 2004c;Huang 2008), implications of C res (Fan 1985;Wang 1996), semantic reference of C res (Zhan 1989;Li 1990;Mei 1994;Jiang 2007), valency of RVCs (Fan 1985;Huang 1993;Guo 1995;Wang 1995;Song 2004b;Shi 2006), correlation between different levels of RVCs, like lexicon-syntax correlations (Lin 1996;Lin 1998), and syntax-semantics correlations (Lu 1977;Huang/Lin, 1993;Li 1995;Claudia 1990;Her 2004Her , 2007. ...
Mandarin Resultative Verb Compounds, different from any simplex words, have complicated θ-structures, since both the verb (Vcaus) and its complement (Cres) have the capacity of assigning their own thematic roles. The thematic roles assigned by Vcaus form the θ-structure's main structure, and those assigned by Cres form the embedded structure. Sometimes an entity plays a role in the main structure, and at the same time plays a role in the embedded structure. If the two roles are identical, they are "coindexed"; if they are different, they form a composite role. RVC's θ-structure is further compounded when ambiguity occurs and when causation is taken into consideration. The ambiguity of RVCs can be attributed to the different combination of thematic roles. As for causation, the two causative roles, causer and cause, can be assigned to thematic roles according to certain constraints.
... The first verb is an activity verb, and the second-as Li and Thompson (1981: 54-55) would have it-"signals some result of the action or process conveyed by the first element". As a construction specific to Mandarin, RVCs have attracted wide attention among scholars (Thompson 1973;Li and Thompson 1981;Ross 1990;Li 2012;Sun 2013). According to Li (2012), there are four main categories of RVC: resultative RVCs (such as -wen "stable"), achievement RVCs (such as -dao "attain"), completion RVCs (such as -wan "finish") and directional RVCs (such as -zou "away"). ...
This paper offers a quantitative study of temporal reference in Mandarin using three translation corpora (French–Mandarin, Mandarin–French and English–Mandarin). We have systematically examined a series of overt linguistic factors (such as perfective and imperfective grammaticalized particles, temporal adverbs and adverbials) and non-linguistic factors (such as lexical aspect and the Bounded Event Constraint, the latter argued to be a universal pragmatic principle) which current research suggests are responsible for expressing temporal reference in Mandarin. We used methods from the field of corpus linguistics, such as translational spotting, data coding (when no metalinguistic judgement is necessary) and data annotation (when a metalinguistic judgement is required). Our quantitative analyses indicate that, contrary to what is predicted by non-empirical studies, aspectual particles are infrequent and their role in expressing temporal reference is questionable. In contrast, temporal adverbs and adverbials play a significant role in expressing reference to past and future time, whereas linguistically non-marked situations are most frequently located in the present. In accordance with the Bounded Event Constraint, the lexical aspect of situations is central to the determination of temporal reference: events are largely located in the past, and states in the present. These results are interpreted in a relevance-theoretic model of temporal reference, according to which hearers treat temporal information coming from various cues in a cognitively coherent manner. A series of differences has been found regarding the role of the factors examined for Mandarin as a source and as a target language, partially supporting the assumption of translation universals.
... Some scholars, especially overseas scholars, define them as compounds, like 'resultative verb compounds' (e.g. Thompson 1973;Ross 1990; Li 2013), 'V-V compounds' (e.g. Chang 1997;Li 1990), 'resultative V-V compound' (e.g. ...
This paper aims to study the syntactic and semantic features of ‘marked VRC causative structures’, those special syntactic-semantic structures formed by verb-resultative constructions (VRCs) which violate both the Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis and the Thematic Hierarchy. Their syntactic and semantic features are defined as follows: 1) VRC has a causative relation within itself; 2) the argument in the object position is the causee and the only argument of the resultative complement; 3) the causer in the subject position is any conceptual component from the cause event other than the agent of the predicate verb. This paper then attempts to propose an extended account to expound how they are formed syntactically and semantically. On this account, a marked VRC causative structure is re-causativization of a VRC when the VRC is self-causative; it enables other conceptual components of the cause event than the agent to become the causer when a VRC is not self-causative. There are some constraints on what becomes the causer of a marked VRC causative structure.
... An RVC may be a verb, an adjective, or a word indicating the direction of a motion (C. Li and Thompson 1981;Lu 1977;Packard 2000;Ross 1990;Y. Shi 2002;Thompson 1973). ...
Dynamic verbs followed by the perfective aspect morpheme -le (V-le) in Chinese typically designate bounded events but can also encode states. This article proposes that the eventive designations are at the basic level and the stative interpretations are at the derived level through aspectual coercion. The categorical shifts from the former to the latter may be brought about by a number of factors, which include sentences with nonagent subject/topic, general stative sentences, and certain adverbs. These factors introduce aspectual properties incompatible with V-le's basic-level eventive interpretation. They trigger a coercion procedure to reconcile the incompatibilities, leading to aspectual reinterpretations. These findings are discussed in light of the principle of external override and the analytic nature of the Chinese language.
... al 1997;Su 1997;Tai 2003;Teng 1997;Thompson 1973;Tsai 2008;Wang 2009;Wang and Su 2015;Zhang 2001). RVCs have also attracted considerable interest in the field of teaching Chinese as a second language (Chang 2010;Ross 1990;Tsai 2005). The linguistic phenomenon is interesting for its productivity and versatile semantics, which have presented a puzzle both for Chinese linguists and for Chinese learners. ...
The present study addresses the rate of conceptual autonomy and dependence in Chinese lexical semantic analysis, presenting an analysis of how image-schema, domains and co-text interact in the [v]–[shang] construction as an example. Following a Principled Polysemy methodology, I identify the semantic prototype and four metaphorical senses of the construction. I also show the co-textual characteristics associated with each sense, which opens up further discussion of how image-schema and conceptual domains collaborate to produce the various senses. Based on these findings, I further establish a hierarchy of influence from co-text, where the semantics of an RVC depends first of all on its collocating verb and secondarily on a collocating noun phrase. This paper aims to show in some detail how image-schema, conceptual domains and patterns of co-text co-contribute to the polysemy of RVCs. It moreover proposes a novel way of analyzing Chinese lexical semantics in terms of conceptual autonomy and dependence.
... For instance, in 打破杯子 da-po beizi hit-break cup 'break the cup', the second verbal morpheme 破 po 'break' signals the result of the action 打 da 'hit'. As mentioned in Section Background, MMMCs are traditionally treated as a type of RVC; specifically the second morpheme of the construction specifies "the direction in which the subject moves as the result of the displacement [denoted by the preceding motion morpheme]" (Li and Thompson 1981: 58, also Hashimoto 1964, Ross 1990, Xiao and McEnery 2004, among others, cf. Lu 1977. ...
Mandarin Chinese often expresses motion events with more than one verbal motion morpheme, e.g., 退 tui ‘recede’ and 回 hui ‘return’ in 退回房間裏 tui-hui fangjian-li recede-return room-inside ‘return into the room’. Building on recent work on “scale structure”, this paper proposes a “Motion Morpheme Hierarchy” that can be used to better predict the order of co-occurring motion morphemes: specifically, Chinese motion morphemes can be classified into four types based on the scale information they lexicalize, and the order of co-occurring motion morphemes tends to be closely related to the type of scale they lexicalize. The hierarchy is then verified using two corpus studies drawing on naturally occurring Chinese data: the first study examines the order of motion morphemes found in all motion constructions from selected recent Chinese novels, and the second study investigates the order of eight highly frequently used motion morphemes with respect to their co-occurring motion morphemes in the CCL Corpus; both corpus studies show that the hierarchy holds for most Chinese motion morphemes. Furthermore, this paper proposes a semantic constraint named the “Scalar Specificity Constraint” to account for the morpheme order predicted by the hierarchy: the morpheme with more information about the path of motion tends to occur after the morphemes with less information. For instance, 回 hui ‘recede’ lexicalizes an endpoint for the path and thus, is preceded by 退 tui ‘recede’ which does not indicate any endpoint. The constraint not only provides better coverage of the data involving Chinese motion constructions, but also indicates the role that the path information a motion morpheme lexicalizes plays in the morpheme’s distribution. This study provides new insight into the distribution of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs and a more fine-grained analysis of the semantic relationships between the morphemes in these constructions, and thus contributes to an increased understanding of how motion events are expressed in Chinese. The findings of this study may also illuminate the distribution of motion verbs in other languages, as well as constructions in domains beyond motion.
... They are an important device to convey perfectivity by bounding events at the lexical level (Chao 1968;C. Li & Thompson 1981;Lu 1977;Packard 2000;Ross 1990;Shi 2002). b. ...
This study examines the grounding functions of eight basic clause types in Chinese written narrative. It demonstrates that variations in constituent order and clause structure are a major means to designate events versus states at the clause level and ultimately a device to encode foregrounding versus backgrounding distinction. While perfective clauses in the canonical SV(O) word order typically designate major events and are signposts of foregrounding, deviations from this prototype tend to be interpreted as stative predications in the background. Variations in constituent order and clause structure even override the verb form in indicating situation types and grounding functions.
... They are an important device to convey perfectivity by bounding events at the lexical level (Chao 1968;C. Li & Thompson 1981;Lu 1977;Packard 2000;Ross 1990;Shi 2002). b. ...
This paper analyses the encoding of perfectivity in Chinese, focusing on its form, interpretation, and grounding functions. Three major points are made based on examinations of narrative text. First, perfectivity is indicated not only by the perfective marker -le, but also by an array of “bounding expressions” that explicitly designate the endpoint of events. Second, Chinese perfective clauses as currently defined vary in grounding roles. They may present bounded dynamic events and play a foregrounding role or denote stative situations and have a backgrounding function. The different grounding functions are determined not by the verb form but by the transitivity features of the clauses and the context in which they occur. Third, the flexibility is closely related to the nature and semantics of perfectivity and the structural components of the Chinese perfective constructions. The study adds unique features of an isolating language to our existing knowledge of grounding.
... A resultative verb complex such as ku-fan 'cry-annoyed' and chi-bao 'eat-full' in (Cheng and Huang 1994), resultative verb compounds (Li and Thompson 1981;Ross 1990;He 1992), resultative verb complements (Smith 1990), resultative verb-verb compounds (Cheng 1997), V-V compounds (Y. Li 1990Chang 1990Chang , 1998, verb-complement compounds (Chao 1968;Lin 1989;Lien 1994), and compound causatives (Li and Thompson 1976). ...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-284). Microfiche.
... In both English and Chinese the distance is implicit, and the situation is somehow bounded. We can use the so-called resultative v erb compound (RVC) to test if the situation type in question is an accomplishment or an activity, because RVCs can be used only with accomplishments and achievements, i.e., not activities (Thompson 1973, Lu 1977, Teng 1977, Ross 1990). 10 (51) a. Ni chi wan fan gan shenme? ...
this paper I will investigate the interaction between adverbial quantification and perfective aspect with special reference to Chinese. In English perfectives can co-occur with adverbial quantifiers like often, but in Chinese the perfective marker -le cannot. However, the perfective in Chinese can co-occur with adverbial quantifiers if either some adverb like dou `all' or a when-/if-clause is present
The article is devoted to the description of buyu (补语 bǔyǔ), i. e. a linguistic concept of a complement perceived as a special part of a sentence in Chinese linguistics. The problem of distinguishing grammatical units of a sentence that share one syntactic function is considered. Less than a century ago China did not have any knowledge of theoretical linguistics of its own, so it had to borrow the concept from foreign science. Thus, the notion of a complement that supplements the semantics of a verb or an adjective in a predicate was introduced by Li Jinxi who had borrowed it from English grammars and applied to Chinese syntax. However, soon enough it had become a subject of revision. The article reflects how the concept of buyu has become a mixture of related linguistic phenomena by its gradual meaning extension. Besides, the paper analyses topmost structural and semantic features of the units that perform the role of buyu in a sentence, as well as summarises the criteria for distinguishing it from other parts of a sentence, i. e. an object and adverbial modifier. It is claimed that a single and consistent approach should be employed to the relevant elements with the same syntactic function and that the existing descriptions of Chinese grammar should be reexamined providing the concept of buyu. Finally, the author stresses the necessity to use the term dopolnitel’niy element (‘an additional element’) for terminology consistency in Russian sinological literature.
This volume comprises a collection of contrastive studies on language and time. Languages represented include Czech, French, German, Mandarin, Norwegian and Swedish, all of which are contrasted with English. While the amount of published research on temporal relations in general is considerable, less work has been carried out on comparing how we talk about time in various languages and how languages change over time. Several methodological challenges are addressed and solutions proposed, such as how to deal with poor quality historical data and how to identify n-grams in typologically different languages for purposes of comparison. The results of the various studies show how multilingual corpora can increase our knowledge of language-specific features as well as linguistic, typological and cultural differences and similarities across languages.
This book is a corpus-based description and discussion of how Modern Mandarin Chinese encodes motion events, with a focus on how the distribution of verbal motion morphemes is closely associated with the meanings they lexicalize. The book is not only the first work that proposes a finer-grained classification and diagnostics of Chinese motion morphemes from the perspective of scale structure, but also the first to more comprehensively account for the ordering of Chinese motion morphemes. The findings of this study will not only enrich the literature on motion events, but more importantly, further our understanding of the nature of motion events and the way motion events are conceived and represented in the Chinese language. The major proposals and the cognitive functional approach of this work will also shed light on studies beyond motion. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars interested in motion events, syntax-semantic interface, and typology.
In recent work (Packard 1990, 1992, 1993), Packard has presented a variety of arguments that Mandarin morphology should be analyzed in terms of a stratum-orderedl model of the kind proposed in Lexical Phonology and Morphology (Pesetsky 1979; Kiparsky 1982; Mohanan 1982, 1986) — henceforth LPM. Packard’s arguments are based upon various kinds of evidence, including purely morphological evidence (Packard 1990), phonological evidence (Packard 1992), and neurolinguistic evidence (Packard 1993). Packard’s proposal, if correct, would lend strong support for the theory of LPM, for a couple of reasons.
This paper shows that there are some syntactic and semantic discrepancies among three seemingly semantically equivalent verbs denoting one of the most basic actions in any language, i.e. the verbs meaning 'kill' in English, Chinese and Thai. Specifically, it examines the possibility of these verbs to appear in two syntactic patterns in which English is used as the metalanguage: (A) X kill Y dead, and (B) X kill Y but Y not die. The different syntactic properties among these verbs suggest that the verbs for 'kill' in the three languages are not completely semantically equivalent. It is found that the resulting dead event of kill in English is lexically entailed but that of shā in Chinese is merely implied. Thai is a more complicated case. The verbs for 'kill' in the three languages are thus classified into different categories based on their syntactic and semantic properties.
The present study sets out to construct a semantic network for
-kai
in Chinese resultative verbs based on the framework of Principled Polysemy. Our analysis concerning the cognitive-pragmatic motivations for the meaning extensions of postverbal
-kai
pinpoints the significance of perspective-taking and real-world force dynamics in the conceptual structure of Chinese resultative verbs. With the aid of corpus data, we further demonstrate how pertinent textual cues help to disambiguate polysemous V
-kai
complex verbs and evoke metaphorical readings of the gestalt V–V constructions, hinting at the distributed and context-sensitive nature of the meaning construction of Chinese resultative verbs.
This paper offers a comprehensive lexical-semantic account of Mandarin resultative verb compounds (RVCs). On this account, the complex thematic relations expressed by RVCs result from different interactions of the individual thematic relation expressed by each component of the compound and the composite thematic relation expressed by the whole compound, and from the different ways of realizing the Causer and the Causee. This lexical-semantic account has theoretical implications for the relation between the Agent and the Causer and for the division of labor between syntax on the one hand and semantics (and pragmatics) on the other.
We theoretically investigate two-photon excitation by correlated photons with energy anticorrelation. A three-level atomic system is used to evaluate selectivity and efficiency of two-photon excitation. It is shown that tailored squeezing of two-photon probability distribution concurrently enhances excitation efficiency and high-contrast selective excitation, without phase manipulation or pulse-shaping techniques. We also discuss candidates to generate such squeezed photons in real material systems.
With a brief discussion of the issues related to the lexical classification of Mandarin verb complements, this paper discusses the functions of the verb complements in grammar: (a) they expand the meaning of the head verb of the V-V compound and consequently change the Aktionsart of the VP from activity to simple change and complex change; (b) the different stresses on markedness - with the simple verb emphasizing the process of the action and the V-V compound emphasizing the result of the action reflect the fundamental ways of viewing situations. Walter de Gruyter.
In this paper the relevance of the verbal category situation type (Aktionsart) for the aspectual interpretation of a verb phrase in Pre-Tang Chinese will be discussed and the semantic and syntactic constraints situation type readings of a verb or a verb phrase are subject to will be presented. The analysis will be based on a comprehensive study of situation types in Han period Chinese and on the evidence from one single verb, the verb xing 'to walk, to march, to put in motion', for which different but related meanings are provided in the literature. It will be shown that verb phrases built with this verb can – according to their syntactic environment – attain different situation type readings, namely an activity and two different event readings. On the basis of the syntactic constraints the different situation type readings of this verb are subject to it will be hypothesised that verbs in Chinese usually display one basic situation type, i.e. a set of basic syntactic features, which can shift due to the addition of other syntactic elements. Additionally, it will be shown that contrary to what has been assumed by many authors for Modern Mandarin, in Pre-Tang Chinese the category accomplishment, i.e. one of the four verbal categories proposed in VENDLER's seminal study, evidently exists for verb phrases consisting of a verb and its definite inner argument.
This paper proposes that for single-clause resultatives in a language to allow the scare reading, two conditions must be met, namely that the resultative must be realized as a compound and that the compound must be headless. On this proposal, non-compound resultatives in English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Romanian and Swedish cannot have the scare reading because they do not meet the first condition. Moreover, Japanese and Swedish RVCs do not allow this reading because they do not meet the second condition. Finally, as Igbo and Mandarin RVCs meet both conditions, they can have the scare reading. In addition, the paper offers a formal analysis of the scare reading which stresses the interaction of the individual thematic relation expressed by each component of an RVC and the composite thematic relation expressed by the whole compound.
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