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LU, Hsiao Tung, 1922- THE VERB-VERB CONSTRUCTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1972 Language and Literature, linguistics

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

© 1972

Hsiao Tung Lu

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN' MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED THE VERB-VERB CONSTRUCTION IN MANDARIN CHINESE

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By

Hsiao Tung Lut B.A., M.A.

The Ohio State University 1972

Approved by

f f )

Adviser Department of Linguistics PLEASE NOTE:

Some pages may have

indistinct print. Filmed as received.

University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my deep gratitude to Professor Arnold M. Zwicky,

Chairman of my Supervisory Committee, for his teaching, encouragement,

criticism, and advice at each step of my graduate work over the past

two years, without which I would have never completed my graduate work

at Columbus, Ohio.

I am also greatly indebted to the other committee members,

Professors Michael Geis, David Stampe, Gaberell Drachman, for their

comments on this dissertation as well as for thier teaching and the

inspiration which they gave me in their courses and on many other

occasions. My hearty thanks also are due to other members in the

Department of Linguistics, the Ohio State University, particularly to

Professors Use Lehiste, and Catherine Callaghan for their instructions and guidance.

My gratitude also goes to two Professors who have already left

the Ohio State University. To Uiliiam S-Y. Wang for his offering me a research position at the Ohio State University in 1964 to study

Chinese syntax. Without this initial help, my dream of studying

linguistics further would probably have never been realized. To

Charles J. Fillmore, I owe a special debt. It is he who worked out a Ph. D. program for me, allowing me to take courses at Summer

Linguistic Institutes, while serving as my former adviser. His sub­

sequent help rendered to me in many respects can hardly be emphasized too much.

ii My gratitude also goes to Professor Henry W. Hoge, Chairman of the Department of Modern languages, the Florida State University, where I had been a faculty member since 196?, for giving me permission to go to the Ohio State University in order to complete my Ph. D. course work and comprehensive examinations.

Finally, I want to thank my wife Ruth C-N. Lu for all her encourage­ ment and help at every stage of my graduate work, without which I would have never been able to come thus far.

iii VITA

August 13, 1922 . . , Born - Chekiang, China

1951 ...... B.A. Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

1952-1955 ...... Teaching Assistant, Department of English, Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

1956 ...... M.A. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

1956-1960 ...... Instructor, Department of English, Department of English, Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

1960-196^ ...... Associate Professor, Department of English, Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

196^-65 ...... Research Associate, Department of Linguistics, the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1965-1967 ...... Assistant Professor, the George Washington University, Washington D. C.

1967- Assistant Professor, the Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida

PUBLICATIONS

Syntactic Structures by Chomsky (Chinese Version), the Hong-Kong University Press, Hong Kong (1966) Co-authors William S-Y. Wang

Emphatic Stress and Contrast Stress, POLA, the Ohio State University Research Foundation, Columbus, Ohio (1965 )

A Study of Intelligibility in Whispered Chinese, Speech Nomographs, Vol. XXXVI, Nov. 1969 Co-author: Anthony Holbrook

i v TABLE OP CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I Introduction 1

II The Classification of the V-V Construction in Mandarin 14

III The V-V Construction with a Direction Word as Its Second Member 19

IV The V-V Construction with the Second Member an Intentive or Resultative Complement 70

V Pour Other Types of V-V Constructions 98

VI Conclusion I38

v CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introductory

In Mandarin Chinese the surface predicate phrase of a sen­ tence often consists of a Verb-Verb (hereafter V-V) construction^: that is, two verbs in a sequence. The question then arises: Are the V-V constructions transformationally derived or do they exist in deep structure? If they are transformationally derived, we want to find out what semantic classes of verbs can be combined-- in other words, what sort of semantic constraints will have to be observed in the application of those transformations which put them in a sequence as their surface realizations. We. also want to see if any correlation can be found between the semantic classes and aspects of the syntactic behavior of their members. It is hoped that this study will shed some light on or add some under­ standing into the still-puzzling relationship between syntax and semantics in general, and the V-V construction in Mandarin in particular.

The study proposed here is similar to the one that Lees (i960) made on English nominal compounds, in that we both try to account for a certain surface structure which apparently has a variety of underlying representations. However, this study differs from Lees', at least, in the following two important aspects. First, Lees

1 2

intended his classification of English nominal compounds to "be

"based entirely on the underlying syntactic relations between the members of the compounds, thus neglecting the semantic properties of the lexical items involved. In this study of Mandarin V-V constructions, the classification of the constructions is based not only on the underlying syntactic relations of the members of the constructions, but also on the semantic properties of the lexical items involved. For example, if a class of lexical items possessing a shared feature can cooccur with some other items, the shared feature often constitutes a semantic constraint res­ ponsible for the well-formedness of the output after the appli­ cation of certain transformations. The details of this will be discussed in the next chapter. Second, while Lees takes the position that all the nominal compounds in English are transfor­ mationally derived, I will claim in this study that some V-V constructions in Mandarin are to be derived by transformational rules governed by certain semantic constraints, that others are not so productive, and that still others must be treated as idioms.

1.2 Previous Works and Their Problems

It is generally agreed among Chinese linguists that the sys­ tematic study of Chinese grammar began with the publication of v s / v Ma Jian Zhong's Ma Shi Wen Tong toward the end of last century.

Before that, studies in Chinese linguistics had been mainly con­ cerned with sound changes, tone changes, and their respective 3 historical developments. From 1930 °n, however, a considerable amount of material dealing with a wide range of problems in Chinese

/ n \j y — syntax has been produced by scholars like Wang Li, Li Jln-xi, . / V/ / \ N / \ Gao Ming-kai, Lu Shu-xiang, and especially byChao Yuen-ren,

William S-Y. Wang, Anne Hashimoto, Earl Rand, and Chang-hsi Chu in their recent works. Among the numerous materials available, the works of Chao (1968) and Hashimoto (1964, 1965, 1966) are relevant to the present study. Though Chao's work has come out more recently, his view reflects that of American structuralists, so it will be discussed first. Hashimoto's paper on Resultative

Verbs in Mandarin was first written after the earliest transfor­ mational theory and then revised on the basis of the Aspects... model. I will discuss only her revised versions (1965, 1966).

Chao terms the construction in question 'Verb-Complement (V-R) 2 Compounds.' He first lists three formal features of V-R Compounds to distinguish them from other compounds. These axe phonological features, expandability, and occurrence of -le after complements.

For the first feature, he states that, as a rule, the complement receives the main stress:

/ \ v * ' (l.l) bian - huai change-bad 'change (into) bad'

yan - chang extend-long 'extend long' 3 If a disyllabic complement has a neutral tone on the second syllable, the stress falls on the first, but otherwise on the second syllable, ass / \ ^ 1 - N (1.2) sao - ganjing sweep-clean 'sweep-clean' but

/ \ ' V> I / (1.3) bian - hueitou change-back 'change-back'

On the basis of the feature 'expandability', Chao subdivides

V-R compounds into (l) solid V-R compounds, (2) infixable V-R compounds, and (3) expandable V-R compounds. A solid V-R compound takes no infix, nor any other inserted element. For example,

(1.4) mai - lung sell-play 'show off' and

(1.5) gai - liang alter-good 'improve' do not admit any insertion. An infixable V-R compound is one which admits insertion of -de- 'can' or -bu- 'cannot' as infix (resulting in a "potential" compound), but no other insertion. For example, for

(1.6) kan - po see-through 'to be disillusioned about' there is

(1.7) kan - de - po see-can-through 'can be unconcerned about,

(1.8) kan - bu - po see-cannot-through 'cannot be unconcerned about'. For those classifed as expandable V-R compounds, insertions to form phrases are usually allowed. For example,

(1.9) chi - bao eat - full 'eat-full* can be expanded to form - \ SJ (1.10) chi - de - tai - bao eat -can - too - full •eat too full' or ' N v / (1.11) chi - de - bu - hen - bao eat - can -not -very - full 'eat not very full' and so on.

In the section in which Chao gives an account as to where the occurrence of suffix -le takes place with complements, and where it does not, he states that, in general, resultative com­ plements take the perfective suffix -le. for example, _ vy — u S V. (1.12) Ta ba ^ yifu xi - ganjin -le..- he OM clothes wash-clean Asp •he has washed the clothes clean' and that, if the sentence is negated, or in the indefinite past, the suffix -le does not occur with the complement, e.g. s / — ^ N. N (1.13) mei ba yifu xi - gan jin -le. he not OM clothes wash-clean Asp (roughly, 'the fact that he has washed the clothes clean is not true, which is con­ tradictory' )

He lists all together nine conditions under which the suffix -le is not used. And then he gives a list of common first verbs and complements. This material is useful, but like other accounts given by American structuralists it describes only the surface 6

level of utterances.

To recapitulate, Chao has not accounted for the sources of

the so-called V-R compounds at all. We know by now that two sen­

tences which have the same surface structure might have come from

two different underlying structures, and that it is also possible

for one underlying structure to appear in two different surface

structures. His list of common first verbs and complements is

particularly misleading in that readers will think that every first

verb can go with every complement in the list, but this is not true.

\ For example, lung ‘make' is listed as one of those common first

verbs, and hao 'good' and bao 'full' are listed as possible comple­ ments. One would expect that lung should be able to combine with

V either hao or bao. yet only one combination is possible, ass

(1,1*0 Ta lung - hao -le. he make - good Asp 'he has fixed something'

but not

(1.15) *Ta lung - bao -le. he make - full Asp

There are numerous cases like these. In other words, there axe

constraints on the combinations. These constraints seem to be

semantic.

Anne Hashimoto (1965# 1966) treats verbal complements in two different ways. Though they are all called 'resultative verbs,' they are subdivided into two groups, depending on whether a verbal

component is followed by a resultative or directional complement.

For those verb constructions consisting of a main verb plus a re­

sultative complement on the surface structure, her position is like that of Lees in deriving English nominal compounds -- that

is, they are all derived transformationally. For example, the

two sentences below have similar surface structures.

. (1.16) Ta he - wan jiu -le, he drink finish wine Asp 'he has drunk up the wine' / \ *“ — N (1.17) Ta he - zui jiu -le. he drink drunk wine Asp 'he has drunk wine to the extent that he gets drunk'

Yet, (l.l6) has a deep structure like

(1.18) S

NP VP

while (1 .17) has a deep structure like The subject of the embedded sentence in (1.18) is identical to the object of the main verb in the matrix sentence, while the subject of the embedded sentence in (1 .19) is identical to the subject of the matrix sentence. This difference is reflected in the fact that while (l.l6) can undergo both the Ba and Bei transformations ^ , (l. can undergo neither of them. Thus, (1.20) and (1.21) are good sen­ tences, but (1.22) and (1 .23 ) are not.

(1.20) Ta ba - jiu he - wan . -le. he OM wine drink-finish Asp 'he has finished drinking the wine'

* \ N — — / (1.21) Jiu bei -„ta he - wan -le. wine PasM he drink-finish Anp 'wine has been drunk up by him'

(1.22) *Ta ba - jiu he - zui -le. he OM wine drink-drunk Asp *'he has drunk the wine to the extent that wine gets drunk'

(1.23) *Jiu bei - ta he - zui -le. wine EasM he drink-drunk Asp *'wine has been drunk-drunk by him'

By these transformations Hashimoto has provided some explanation for the acceptability of (1.20) and (1.21), and the unacceptability of (1.22) and (1.23) on syntactic grounds. This is an accomplish­ ment which Chao did not achieve because the latter simply does not accept anything beyond the surface level.

However, like Chao, Hashimoto has neglected the semantic pro­ perties of the lexical items involved in the combination. Her statement that only transitive verbs of action, intransitive verbs of action, and a limited number of adjectives may be modified by a resultative complement is not only too general, but misleading, and leads to incorrect results in many cases. For example, the sentence

(1.24) Ta "bao he full 'he is full'

can be embedded into another sentence

(1.25) Ta chi fan -le. he eat meal Asp 'he has eaten the meal' to yield a complex sentence

(1.26) Ta chi - bao fan -le. he eat - full meal Asp 'he has eaten to the extent that he feels full'

Yet, it cannot be embedded into a sentence like

(1.27) Ta xi yifu -le. he wash clothes Asp 'he has washed the clothes'

_ N / — because the result *ta xi-bao yifu -le. is ungrammatical. This looks like some sort of. semantic constraint that has to be observed in the embedding process. To put it another way, the semantic properties of the verb in the embedded sentence must agree with those of the verb in the matrix sentence to assure that the output of trans­ formations will be well-formed. Hashimoto's transformational hy­ pothesis is simply too strong.

The above criticism seems to be further justified by the fact that there are V-V constructions which must be treated as one unit, constructions that axe not transformationally derivable. These will be discussed in Chapter Five.

There are also V-V constructions where the second member plays the key role, with the first member playing the role of modifier — e.g. - >•/ s y (1.28) Tamen tou - xi diren. they steal-attack enemy 'they attacked the enemy stealthily' 10

where the first verb serves the function of an adverb. The adverbial

nature of tou might he accounted for in terms of Lakoff's (1970)

claim that adverbs are not in deep structure but rather derived from

verbs in a higher sentence. It certainly cannot be derived by

Hashimoto*s approach.

With regard to resultative verbs having the directional complement

as the second member, Hashimoto advocates the phrase structure hypo­

thesis, that is, the complement in the deep structure will not be

rewritten as S but only as motion verb plus directional marker. She

takes this position mainly because there are difficulties involved

in deriving the directional complement from a sentence when the object

in the matrix string is inanimate. She thinks that to say that

(1.29) Shu chu lai. book out of come 'the books come out'

is the underlying sentence of the directional complement in

(1.30) Ta na chu lai shu. he take out of come book *he takes out the book(s)'

will compel us to accept the former sentence as grammatical. If the

nonoccurrence of motion verbs with nouns referring to inanimate objects

that do not move on their own is considered as a grammatical problem,

as she thinks it is, she would certainly have to exclude such sentences

as (1.29).

This treatment of resultative verbs with directional complements

is unsatisfactory for, at least, two reasons. First, if we claim that

VP can be rewritten as verb plus a motion verb and directional marker

in the deep structure, as Hashimoto does, we raise a theoretical issues 11

there will be both simple verb phrases and complex verb phrases

in the deep structure. We then need to account for why the latter

are not transformationally derivable. The reason on the basis of

which she has made the claim is certainly not adequate, because

there are good sentences made up of nouns referring to inanimate

objects that do not move on their own and some motion verbs, e.g.

(1.31) Bau lai -le. newspaper come Asp 'the newspaper has come*

It is true that bau 'newspaper' cannot move by itself, so its under­

lying structure must contain an agent plus a verb which is closely

connected with the object in question, such as sung 'deliver'. So

the underlying structure of (l.3l) will be

(1.32) Youren sung bau lai -le. someone deliver newspaper come Asp 'someone has delivered the newspaper'

g By Topicalization , we get

/ \ N V/ / \ ' (1.33) Bau youren sung lai -le. newspaper someone deliver come Asp 'as to the newspaper, someone has delivered'

O By Agent-Deletion, we get

/ 1 \ N N ' (1,3*0 Bau sung lai -le. newspaper deliver come Asp 'as to the newspaper, someone has delivered' D Finally, by Familiar-Verb-Deletion, we get

(1.35) Bau lai -le. newspaper come Asp 'the newspaper has come'

This transformational approach to the problem in question is further supported by a similar case, not involving a motion verb, e.g.

(1.36) Shu mai -le. book buy Asp 'someone has bought the book' 12

Since shu 'book* is an inanimate noun, it, of course, cannot do the

buying. So its underlying structure must have a human noun as the

agent, something like

(1.37) Youren mai shu -le. someone buy book Asp ’someone has bought the book*

By Topicalization, we get

. . — V / v / (1.38) Shu youren mai -le. book someone buy Asp ’as to the book, someone has bought’

Then, by Agent-Deletion, we get

(1.39) Shu mai -le. book buy Asp ’someone has bought the book'

There are numerous cases like this. So, although in principle I agree with Hashimoto that some verbal compounds cannot be derived transfor­

mationally, the specific example that she has given to support her

claim cannot be accepted.

As it turns out, the constructions with a directional complement as the second member are among those which can be most systematically accounted for in terms of some transformational rules now available.

Second, since we already know that a number of verbs, such as

zhldao 'know', houhui 'repent, shanghuai 'hurt', etc. cannot be followed by a motion verb with a directional marker, we should, at

least, specify the semantic properties of the first member of the construction so that we will know what type of verbs can be combined with a motion verb and directional marker in order to prevent the hypothesis from becoming too strong. 13

1.3 Theoretical Framework

Although my overall framework is within the transforma.tional-

generative theory of syntax, I am not following completely any of

the three schools (Generative Semantics, the Standard Theory of

Transformational Grammar, and Case Grammar) now in conflict. My

position is mixed. Basically, I accept the generative semantics

approach, especially with regard to the derivation of the V-V con

structions with a directional item as their second member. Yet I

believe that there are V-V constructions, which resemble certain

nominal compounds in English, that cannot be transformationally

derived. Here I seem to side with the lexicalist position of

Chomsky (1969). I also believe that Fillmore's notion of case is useful in stating semantic constraints, but how it can be applied to the V-V constructions in Mandarin is still an open question. But, above all, I am convinced that the notion of natural class in syntax, as proposed explicitly by Zwicky (1968) and demonstrated by his recent

paper (1971), has a great deal to tell us on the correlation between

some semantic classes of words and their syntactic behavior, thus

shedding light on the relationship between syntax and semantics. My

study is intended to follow this line in the investigation of the V-V constructions in Mandarin. CHAPTER I

FOOTNOTES

1. The V-V construction has been in the past often called 'resul- tative verbs,1 (See A, Hashimoto (1965)) or ’causative verbs,' or 'potential verbs,' or 'verb-complement compounds' (See Chao (1968)). Each of these terms is adequate for a number of such construction, yet, none is general enough to cover all of these. So, the term, the V-V construction, is proposed here. It is hoped that the term, being neutral with regard to its semantic implication, will be general enough to include all those verbal compounds,

2. Chao's use of the term 'feature' is in its broad sense, not in the sense now widely known as in distinctive feature system or semantic feature system (See Leech (1970) for the latter),

3. In Mandarin there are four tones generally known as high-level (1st tone), rising (2nd tone), fall-rising (3rd tone), and falling (4th tone), plus a neutral tone, which possesses none of the above four tone features. It is roughly equivalent to the unstressed syllable in English,

4. OM is short for object marker in Mandarin, which indicates that the noun phrase immediately following it is the object of the main verb in the sentence.

5. Asp is short for aspect marker in Mandarin, There are two aspect markers in Mandarin, which indicate a completed action or an action which has taken place at least once (See Wang (1964 )).

6. The Ba-transformation is a rule to move the object of a verb to the position before the verb. In order to showjthe difference between object and subject, an object marker, ba, is put before the object. The rule was first formulated by Wang (1963). The Bei-transformation is the passive transformation in Mandarin, with bei equivalent to the English preposition 'by', the noun phrase following bei is the agent, and the whole phrase always occurs before the verb. This rule was also formulated by Wang,

7. BasM is short for passive marker in Mandarin (See note 6 above).

8. Topicalization in Mandarin is very much similar to that in English — A process to move the topicalized item to the front of the sentence. 15

9. Agent-Deletion is a rule in Mandarin similar to that in English, which deletes an unspecified agent. In Mandarin, however, the rule can also deletes a known agent.

10. Familiar-Verb-Deletion is a rule in Mandarin which deletes the known verb in a certain context, e.g, / (l) Bau lai -le. newspaper come Asp 'the newspaper has come' s Since bau 'newspaper' is an inanimate noun, which cannot move by itself, the underlying structure of (l) must contain an agent plus a verb which is closely connected with the object in question, such as sung 'deliver'. In such a case, the verb can often be deleted in Mandarin and results in a sentence like (l). CHAPTER II

THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE V-V CONSTRUCTIONS IN MANDARIN

2,1 Previous Criteria for the Classification of Compounds

As I mentioned in Chapter I, Chao*s criterion for his classifi­ cation of V-R compounds, is purely based on the surface structure, while early transformationalists ^ like Lees and A, Hashimoto believed that surface compounds, whether they be nominal or verbal (except for those resultative verbs in Mandarin with a directional complement), were all derived from an underlying sentential structure. It was fur­ ther assumed by Lees (1959* 118-9) that the source sentence for most cases of nominal compounds in English was a noun phrase with a relative clause, e.g. puppydog is said to be derived from dog which is puppy. fishing village from village in which they fish, etc. Because of the differences he discovered in the source sentences, he believes that English nominal compounds incorporate the grammatical forms of many different sentence types, and of many different internal gram­ matical relationships within sentences, such as subject-predicate, subject-verb, subject-object, verb-object, etc. His criteria for the classification of English nominal compounds are, therefore, based first on the underlying grammatical relations of the items involved, and then, for subclassification, on the application or nonapplication of a certain transformation, or on the difference between two trans­ formations, etc. What has been neglected in his analysis is the se­ mantic properties of the items involved. As a result, his criteria

16 cannot justify the derivation of a number of nominal compounds in

English, e.g., greenhouse cannot simply be derived from house which

is green, because this underlying structure does not correctly reflect the semantic representation of the compound. Rather, its

semantic representation should be something like: a building whose roof and sides are made largely of glass and in which the temperature and humidity can be regulated for the cultivation of delicate or out-of-season plants. It seems hopeless for advocates of the trans- 2 formational hypothesis to try to reduce this semantic representation in any systematic way to the nominal compound greenhouse. Lees' transformational hypothesis works for some nominal compounds, but it is much too strong for others, like greenhouse, redcap, money order, etc«

Hashimoto, on the other hand, discussed three types of resul­ tative complements, of which only her resultative complement type I

is our concern here, because it has a surface form of V-V construction.

She further subdivides the resultative complement type I into two groups: one with a resultative complement and the other with a di­ rectional complement, with the claim that the former can be trans­

formationally derived while the latter cannot. She undertook no

finer classification.

2.2 Criteria Used Here for the Classification of the V-V Con­ structions in Mandarin

In the present study seven different types of V-V constructions

in Mandarin will be discussed. The classification is mainly based on the semantic and syntactic properties of the lexical items 18 serving as complement in the construction. It is so chosen because in most cases they are rather limited in number compared with the great number of items which can serve as the main verb of the con­ struction. Usually, the second member of the construction serves as the complement, but for one group the first member plays the complement role with the second member serving as the main verb.

The seven different types of V-V constructions are given belowj

(2.1) The V-V construction in which the second member is a directional complement, and the V-V-V construction involving dual directional complements;

(2.2) The V-V construction in which the second member is an intentive complement, and the V-V-V construction involving xue 'learn' or .jiao 'teach' as the medial verb;

(2.3) The V-V construction in which the second member is a resultative complement:

A. With the subject of the embedded sentence identical to the object of the verb in the matrix sentence;

B. With the subject of the embedded sentence identical to the subject of the matrix sentence, usually involving a reduplicating process;

C. With the subject of the embedded sentence identical to the subject of the matrix sentence, without reduplication;

(2.4) The V-V construction with the second member function­ ing as the main verb and the first member as a modifier of the second;

(2.5) The V-V construction with the second member function- as a completing complement;-^

(2.6) The V-V construction which cooccurs with potential elements;

(2.7) V-V compounds which must be treated as idioms.

I have chosen this classification mainly because each type of complement goes with its own semantic class of verbs. For example, 19 the construction with a directional complement as the second member generally requires that the first member of the construction be a movement verb. On the other hand, the construction with a resulta- tive complement requires that the first member of the construction be a nonstative verb, thus \ (2.8) Ta mang lei -le. he busy tired Asp 'he is so busy that he gets tired' and „ ^ (2.9) Ta zou lei -le. he walk tired Asp 'he has walked to the extent that he gets tired* / V where both mang and zou are nonstative verbs. On the other hand, the following two sentences will be unacceptable because both gao and zhidao are stative verbs\

(2.10) *Ta gao lei -le. he tall tired Asp 'he is so tall that he gets tired' or

— \ (2.11) *Ta zhidao lei -le. he know tired Asp 'he knows so that he gets tired'

There are occasions where we see overlapping cases. For example,

(2.12) Ta zou chu lai -le. he walk out-of come Asp 'he has walked out of some place' and

— » \ (2.13) Ta zou lei -le. he walk tired Asp 'he has walked to the extent that he gets tired' from which we can see that the lexical item zou cooccurs with both directional complement and resultative complement, simply because the movement verb zou happens to be a nonstative verb, too. The section 4.2 will be devoted to the discussion of the V-V construction in which the second member is an intentive complement.

Following that, I will try to account for the V-V-V-V and V-V-V-V-V constructions in Mandarin — problems which, to my knowledge, have remained unexplained up to this moment. The V-V construction with the second member a resultative complement is further divided into three subgroups, mainly on syntactic grounds. The details will be given in the section 4.3. The next three types of V-V constructions

(2.4 through 2.6) each involves a limited number of verbs as their complements; these types are discussed together in early sections of

Chapter V, Finally, I will try to show why some V-V constructions must be treated as idioms. I will apply the generative semantics approach to these constructions and argue that they cannot be derived transformationally. 21

CHAPTER II

FOOTNOTES

1. Those who wrote grammars after the model of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures cire now referred as early transformationalists.

2. The transformation hypothesis has been recently used in contrast with the phrase-structure hypothesis by a number of linguists to refer to the derivation of nominal compounds, verbal compounds, or conjoined structures. Advocates of the former hypothesis have regarded all those constructions as derived from an underlying complex structure by transformations, while advocates of the latter hypothesis think that those constructions are not derived transformationally, but rather exist in the deep structure. There is, however, some difference between the early transformation hypothesis and the recent transformation hypothesis. The difference lies in the fact that the early hypothesis is too strong without any semantic constraint, while the recent hypothesis advocates constraints. / U 3. There are two verbs in Mandarin wan 'finish* and hao 'good' which have a unique function when appearing as the second member of the V-V construction; they indicate that someone has done something to its completion. Tentatively, I call these items completing complements. CHAPTER III

THE V-V CONSTRUCTION

(With a Direction Word as Its Second Member)

3.1 Introduction

In this chapter I will discuss the V-V construction with a direction word as its second member. I will argue that all such constructions are derived from an underlying complex structure with the verb indicating direction in the higher sentence, by a transformation which I call PREDICATE-LOWERING. My argument is, mainly, based on semantic criteria. Several other facts also help lead to this conclusion. For example, although there are a great number of verbs which can occur in the position of the first member of the construction, only two lexical items lai 'come' and £U 'go' can occur in the position of the second member; all the first members have the common semantic feature L +LOCOMOTION J j lai and £U both can occur as the main verb of a sentence, and in some cases they can even take a noun phrase as their pseudo-object.

I will begin my discussion with the investigation of the syn- / \ tactic behavior of these two important words lai and qu, and then move on to their semantic properties. Following this, I will conduct a general discussion of the first member of the construction, the V-V construction as a unit, and reduplication as a surface constraint.

I hope that all these will help me justify the claim that I made above. In 3.3 I will also discuss the V-V-V construction, which

22 23 involves dual directions.

3.2 The V-V Construction with a Direction Word as Its Second Member S \ 3.2.1 The Syntactic Behavior of lai and £u

I will limit my discussion to occurrences of lai and jju in the following constructions: In (3.1) they behave like intransitive verbs; in (3.2) and (3.3) they cooccur with an intransitive verb and a transitive verb, respectively, and thus become the second member of the V-V construction; in (3.*0 they are followed by a noun phrase; in

(3.5) and (3.6) they act as the third member of a V-V-V construction.

I will discuss (3.1) through (3.^) in this section, (3.5) and (3.6)

in the next section.

(3;l) Ta lai/qu -le. he come/go Asp 'he has come/gone' — V / \ (3.2) Ta zou lai/qu -le, he walk come/go Asp 'he has walked over here/there' . . — ^ ^ . N (3.3) Tamen ba - shu ban lai/qu -le. they OM book move come/go Asp •they have moved the book(s) here/there' ^ , \ s n (3.*0 “ ' * ' ------he come/go school Asp 'he has come/gone to school'

(3.5) Tamen zou shang lai/qu -le. they walk up come/go Asp 'they have walked up (toward the speaker/away from the speaker)' \ (3.6) Tamen ba - shu ban xia lai/qu -le, they OM book move down come/go Asp 'they have moved the book(s) down (toward the speaker/ away from the speaker)' ^ s 2h 3.2.1.1 lai and £u as Intransitive Verbs

While lai and qu can occur as the second members of the V-V

construction, they can also occur as intransitive main verbs. In

the latter case, they behave very much like come and go in English.

For example, in the sentences below, they function as intransitive

verbs.

(3.7) Ta lai -le. he come Asp 'he has come'

(3*8; Wo raingtian qu. I tomorrow go 'I will go tomorrow'

I will ignore Aux here, because I think it is irrelevant to our

present discussion.

For a verb in a sentence in Mandarin to be classified as a transitive verb, it must meet three conditions*

(3*9) A. The verb must have an object.

B. The object can undergo the Ba-transformation.

C. The sentence can undergo the passive trans­ formation.

Since B cannot be true without G's being true, and vice versa, and since both B and G presuppose that the verb has an object, either

Condition B or C is sufficient to determine whether the verb is / \ transitive or not. By these criteria, lai and qu are not transitive verbs, because in most cases they do not take an object, and on those occasions when they do take an object, the object cannot undergo the / \ Ba-transformation; and the sentence with lai or qu as the main verb can never undergo the passive transformation. 25 On the surface level, intransitive verbs in Mandarin are often mistaken for descriptive verbs, * since they can occur in the same

environment. E.g. / (3.10) Ta lai. he come 'he comes'

(3.11) Ta mang. he busy 'he is busy'

In addition, they both can be preceded by the negative marker bu.

E.g.

(3.12) Ta bu lai. he not come 'he does not come'

(3.13) Ta bu mang. he not busy 'he is not busy'

However, they can be distinguished from each other by any of the distinctive syntactic properties listed below: 2 A. Descriptive verbs can be preceded by an intensifier, while intransitive verbs cannot, as in the examples (3.1** through 3.19).

(3.1*0 Ta hen gao. he very tall 'he is very tali'

(3.15) Women shifen mang. we entirely busy 'we are entirely busy'

(3.16) Ni feichang piaoliang. you extremely pretty •you are extremely pretty' . _ / / (3.17) *Ta hen lai. he very come

. . w s / ^ (3.18) *Women mingtian shifen qu. we tomorrow entirely go ss ~ S / (3.19) *Nimen feichang lai. you(pl.) extremely come B. Descriptive verbs can be followed by an adverbial phrase serving as an intensifier, while intransitive verbs cannot. E.g.

(3.20) Ta mang de - hen. he busy Adv Ph 'he is very busy'

(3.21) Ta mang de-bu-de-liao. he busy Adv Ph 'he is extraordinarily busy' — s ^ (3.22) Ta mang ji -le. he busy Adv Ph 'he is extremely busy'

/ v - - X ' (3.23) *Ta (lai (de -Nhen. ^ 1 qu 1 de-bu-de-liao. 1 ji - le.

C. Intransitive verbs can be preceded by a manner adverbial phrase which consists of a reduplicated descriptive verb plus a particle, while descriptive verbs cannot. E.g.

(3.2*#-) Ta kuai-kuai-de qu -le. he Man Adv Ph go Asp 'he left in a quick manner'

(3.25)/ - X Tamen - man-man-de v v lai ^ -le. they Man Adv Ph come Asp 'they came slowly*

(3.26) *Ta kuai-kuai-de mang. he Man Adv Ph busy \ \ v (3.27) *Tamen man-man-de lei. they Man Adv Ph tired

D. Intransitive verbs can be followed by a manner adverbial phrase which has a descriptive verb in it, while descriptive verb cannot, E.g.

, , - / ^ v (3.28) Ta lai de - hen - kuai. he come Man Adv Ph 'he came very quickly'

(3.29) Tamen qu de - hen - man. they go Man Adv Ph 'they went very slowly' ^ ^ PY (3.30) *Ta mang de - hen - huai. he busy Han Adv Ph / \ All these facts support the claim that lai and qu are intran­ sitive verbs.

3.2.1.2 The Pseudo-Object Construction /* N lai and qu as intransitive verbs, like some others, can some­ times be followed by a noun phrase, e.g.

/ \ * • ' ' N (3.3I) Ta lai xuexiao -le. he come school Asp 'he has come to school' _ N \ (3*32) Tamen qu fanguan -le. they go restaurant Asp 'they have gone to the restaurant'

These sentences are very much like English sentences 'John came home, / \ 'Mary went downtown,' and lai and qu here should not be treated as transitive verbs. According to the criteria we set up earlier for a f s transitive verb in Mandarin, lai and qu meet condition A, but fail both B and C; the following sentences are unacceptable 1 — ^ x ^ (3.33) *Ta ba - xuexiao lai -le. he OM school come Asp - yj N N (3.3*0 *Tamen ba - fanguan qu -le. they OM restaurant go Asp

(3*35) *Xuexiao bei - ta lai -le. school PasM he come Asp n n - \ (3*36) *Fanguan bei - tamen qu -le. restaurant PasM they go Asp

This phenomenon is also observed with verbs indicating the so-called secondary directions (up, down, into, out of, across, back). The noun phrase following these verbs must be a locative noun phrase,

In general, then, 28 (3*37) A noun phrase governed by a verb indicating a direction must be locative.

The noun phrase in (3.37) is barred from the Ba-transformation, and the sentence containing elements of (3.37) cannot undergo the pas­ sive transformation. This can be easily accounted for since there is no Agent (in the sense of Fillmore) in the strings (3.33) through

(3.36).

/ s 3.2.2 The Semantic Properties of Lai and CJu / So far I have illustrated some syntactic properties of lai and N / \ qu as the main verbs of a sentence. Semantically, lai and £U as in­ transitive verbs both possess two features, one indicating a general movement (not specifying any manner, such as walking, running, jump­ ing, crawling, etc. in which the movement proceeds), and the other indicating the direction of the movement, whether towards the speaker / or away from the speaker. Thus, the semantic properties of lai and s qu can be given as follows* s (3*38) The semantic properties of lai

A. A general cover-word for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds;

B. The movement proceeds in the direction towards the speaker. s (3*39) The semantic properties of cju

A. A general cover-word for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds;

B. The movement proceeds in the direction away from the speaker.

There seems to be no problem with A in (3*38) and (3.39). However, 29 B does not always hold as stated. For example, when the speaker / s uses a first person as the subject lai or qu, as in (3.^0), the directions indicated by either verb cannot possibly be speaker­ 's oriented, but rather are addressee-oriented.

(3.^0) Wo lai/qu -le. I come/go Asp ’I am coming/leaving'

This, however, does not mean that lai and qu possess both meanings: towards/away from the speaker and towards/away from the addressee.

The fact that the two meanings are mutually exclusive with each other indicates that in the underlying semantic representation there is only one meaning. With a first person as the subject, lai and qu are always addressee-oriented; with the second or third person as the subject, they are always speaker-oriented. The choice of one meaning or the other seems to have much to do with the characteristic 4 properties of deictic categories. / \ This way of defining lai and qu seems to be supported by another fact — - that there is no other verb indicating direction which will fit these descriptions. These two verbs are the only ones which have a speaker/addressee orientation. / \ We get further support for the analysis from ci hui, a modem

Chinese dictionary, in which the two words are defined as follows:

(3.^1) / A. lai: / 0 ^ s you yuan zhi jin from far to near 'from far to near'

B. qu: / s v \ s \ you ziji de fangmian dao bie de from one-own 's position to other 's \ \ N / fangraian jingxing position proceed 'to proceed from one's own position to some other position'

(3.4l)A implies "both 'movement* and 'direction' toward the speaker, while in (3.*H)B 'movement* and 'direction' are both explicitly expressed. One might wonder whether there is any difference between implied meaning and explicitly expressed meaning, tty answer iss the real difference between the meanings of these two words as defined in ci hui is not between the implied meaning and explicitly expressed meaning, but rather lies in the way they are being treated by the \ dictionary editors. It seems clear that while cju is treated as an / independent verb, lai is treated as if there were another movement verb preceding it.

3.2.3 The Movement Verb

Going through a list of verbs in a Chinese dictionary, we find ✓ s that those in (3 .^2 ) below can cooccur with lai or qu in a number of constructions. They seem to form a natural class because all these verbs involve 'movement'. They can be either intransitive or tran­ sitive. The class in question is exemplified by

(3.^2) A, Intransitive

zou 'walk* pao 'run* tiao 'jump' y 'crawl' gun 'roll' fei •fly' you 'swim'

B. Transitive

'move* 'bring' na •bring/take with one's hand(s) tai 'move (something) with both hands' tui 'push' kai 'drive' x s When combined with lai or qu, they occur in the following con­

structions}

A. Like a single verb, they can occur with an aspect marker.

E.g. . . . - w / (3.^3) a. Ta zou - lai -le. he walk come Asp 'he has walked over here' — u \ \ \ b. Tamen ba-zhouzi ban - qu -le. they OM desk move go Asp 'they have moved the desk away'

B. They can be preceded by an Aux. / .. \ ^ / (3.W) a. Ta nen pao - lai. he can run come 'he can run over here' — / w / N b. Tamen keyi ba- shu na - qu. they may OM book take go 'they may take the book(s) away'

C, They can be questioned.

/ i \ — / \j / (3*^5) a. Ta nen pao - lai ma?_ he can run come QM ^ •can he run over here?' / v — / s b. Tamen keyi ba - shu na - qu ma? they may OM book take go QM 'may they take the book(s)?'

D, They can cooccur with a time adverb indicating a habitual action. ' ~ v - — / (3.^6) a. Nei chi , niao tiantian fei - lai. that Cla bird everyday fly come 'that bird flies over here everyday'

— — — \~/ — / / b. Ta tiantian ba - shu na - lai. he everyday OM book bring come •he brings the book(s) everyday' 7 E. The referent of the logical subject of a movement verb is

typically animate. / . \ \s \/ ^ (3A?) a. Gou pao - lai -le. dog run come Asp •the dog has run over here' _ v v \ ^ b. Ta ba - gou dai - lai -le, he OM dog bring come Asp 'he has brought the dog* — >- c. Shu ban - lai -le. book move come Asp 'the book(s) has/have been moved here'

(3.^7)c looks like a counterexample to what I claim here. This is,

in fact, a case where the underlying representation has gone through both the passive transformation and agent-deletion rule, so it pre­

sents no problem here,

F. They can be preceded by a manner adverbial phrase. \ \ ^ / (3.^8) a. Ta gaogaoxingxing - de zou - lai -le. he Adv Ph walk come Asp 'he has walked over here happily' — s s v/ — — / b, Tamen man-man-de ba - shu ban - lai -le. they Adv Ph OM book move come Asp 'they have slowly movedthe books here'

G. They can undergo both the Ba-transformation and the passive transformation, in the same way as a single transitive verb, , , . v/ — ✓ / (3.^9) a. Ta ba - shu na - lai -le, he OM book bring come Asp 'he has brought the book here' _ ^ / b, Shu bei ta na - lai -le. book PasM he bring come Asp 'the books have been brought here by him'

H. They can undergo topicalization,

(3.50) a. Shu ta na - lai -le. book he taring come Asp 'as for books, he has brought them here' 33 b. Che ta kai - lai -le. cax he drive come Asp 'as for the car, he has driven here'

Assuming that these properties are sufficient to show that these verbs constitute a special class, we want to check now what types of verbs cannot cooccur with lai or cju. We find the following:

A. Activity verbs involving a human mouth or vocal tract with an inanimate object usually do not cooccur with lai or

V-V construction unless there is a secondary direction word between them. E.g. \ — /• (3.51) a. #Ta ba - fan chi - lai -le. he OM meal eat come Asp _ \ b. *Ta ba - jiu" he - qu -le. he OM wine drink go Asp s / c. *Ta ba'- ge chang - lai -le. he OM song sing come Asp _ N d* Ta ba - jiu^ he - xia - qu -le. he OM wine drink downward go Asp - 'he has drunk the wine' V/ s e. Ta ba - fan tu - chu - lai -le. he OM meal vomit out come Asp 'he has vomited the meal' / \ Descriptive verbs cannot cooccur with lai or qu 1

V-V construction.

(3 .52 ) a. *fa mang - lai -le. he busy come Asp — x s b. *Tamen lei - qu -le. they tired go Asp

C. Intransitive verbs with their activities limited to the N human mouth or vocal tract cannot cooccur with lai or qu.

(3*53) a. *Ta ku - lai/qu -le. he cry come/go Asp 3U v / \ b, *Ta xiao - lai/qu -le. he laugh come/go Asp / s D. Stative verbs, of course, cannot cooccur with lai or gu.

- - / \ (3.5^) zhidao lai/qu -le. he know come/go Asp

And so on. Since some of the verbs given above also involve a kind

of movement, the term 'movement verb' as used to represent the class

of verbs in ( 3 . ^ 2 ) is too general. Some more restrictive features are needed. Tentatively, I will define the 'movement verb* which can / x cooccur with lai or gu in the V-V construction as a verb possessing, at least, the following semantic properties1

(3.55) A. It must be one of those activity verbs which indicate visible movement.

B. The movement represented by the verb must involve the locomotion of the person or things affected by the verb.

C. The movement represented by the verb must indicate a particular manner in which the movement proceeds.

Now a 'movement verb' can be reformulated in terms of features like the following*

(3.56 ) The common features for all 'movement verbs'

^♦MOVEMENT ♦LOCOMOTION ♦MANNER

What specific manner involved with each 'movement verb' is not our concern here, so long as they are differentiated from the fNONMANNER J s verbs lai and qu.

There is another group of verbs, however, that can cooccur with / x lai or gu in the V-V construction, and yet are not overt movement verbs; for example; (3.57) oai 'buy' toil ' steal' plan 'cheat' qiang 'rob' jf 'mail' yiin 'ship'

The following examples illustrate the point. t — \s — \s / (3.58) a. Ta ba - shu mai - lai -le. he OM book buy come Asp 'he has bought the book(s), and brought it/them here'

V / — - \ b. Ta ba - shu tou - qu -le. he OM book steal go Asp 'he has stolen the book(s), and taken it/them away' — v \ / c. Ta ba - shu plan - lai -le. he OM book cheat come Asp 'he has cheated (someone) on the book(s), and brought it/them here' — \S X d. Ta ba - shu qiang- qu -le. he OM book rob go Asp 'he has robbed (someone) of the book(s), and taken it/them away' — ^ _ x / e. Ta ba - shu ji - lai -le. he OM book mail come Asp 'he has mailed the book(s), and it/they is/are here' — — N \ f. Ta ba - shu yun - qu -le. he OM book ship go Asp 'he has shipped the book(s), and it/they is/are no longer here'

Despite the fact these verbs are not overt 'movement verbs', and that no manner in which the implied movement proceeds is specified, there is one thing clearly implied, that is, all these verbs involve the feature [ +LOCOMOTIONJ , Of course, semantically, they involve more than that, but this feature alone is sufficient to explain why S X they can cooccur with lai or £u. What could be more natural than to connect the feature £ DIRECTION^ with the feature ClOCOMOTION ] ? 3.2.i+ The Category of the V-V Construction as a. Unit

After the discussion of the semantic properties of the first and the second members in the V-V construction, we are now ready to

see whether the category of the V-V construction as a unit always agrees with that of its first member. The hypothesis referred to here is that if the first member is an intransitive verb, the whole unit will behave like an intransitive verb, and if it is a transitive verb, the whole unit will behave like a transitive verb. This seems to be confirmed in the examples given below*

(3.59) a. Ta zou - lai -le. he walk come Asp 'he has walked over here' — b. Ta zou -le. he walk Asp 'he has walked away' — — — / (3.60) a. Ta ba - shu ban - lai -le, he OM book move come Asp 'he has moved the book(s) here'

b. Ta ba - shu ban -le. he OM book move Asp 'he has moved the book(s)'

In C3»59)a the first member of the V-V construction is zou. an in­ transitive verb, and the whole unit acts like an intransitive verb.

This fact, taken by itself, might make us speculate that the second member of the construction also had something to do with the intran­ sitivity of the whole construction. However, this piece of suspicion is removed when we see (3.60)a, where the first member of the V-V construction is a transitive verb, and the whole unit acts like a transitive verb. In addition, the V-V construction and its first member behave alike in the following constructions*

A. Both the V-V construction and its first member can be preceded 37 "by a manner adverbial phrase. E.g. _ \ \ \ s ^ (3.61) a, Ta man-man-de zou - lai -le. he Man Adv Ph walk come Asp 'he has slowly walked over here' _ S \ N/ b. Ta man-man-de zou -le. he Man Adv Ph walk Asp 'he has slowly walked away' _ - - v v. ^ — (3.62) a. Ta gao-gao-xing-xing-de ba - shu he Man Adv Ph OM book _ / ban - lai -le. move come Asp 'he has happily moved the book(s) here'

b. Ta gao-gao-xing-xing-de ba - shu ban -le. he Man Adv Ph OM book move Asp 'he has happily moved the book(s)'

B, Both the V-V construction and its first member can occur

in a request or a command. E.g.

(3*63) a. Ching ni zou - lai. please you walk come 'please walk over here'

b. Ching ni zou, please you walk 'please walk away'

C. Both the V-V construction and its first member can cooccur with changchang 'often'. ✓ x (3.64) a. Ta changchang zou - lai. he often walk come 'he often walks over here' ^ / w-' b. Ta changchang zou. he often walk 'he often walks' ia- — — (3.65) a. Ta changchang ba - shu ban lai. he often OM book move come 'he often moves the book(s) here'

b. Ta changchang ban shu. he often move book 'he often moves the book(s)' With these examples the claim that V-V construction as a unit behaves exactly like its first member seems to be strongly supported.

However, a close check of a wide range of data reveals that this is not entirely true. The counterexamples to this claim include the following:

A. The V-V construction cannot undergo the reduplication process while its first member can. E.g. N/ X \S a. Ni keyi zou - zou. you may walk walk 'you may do some walking' \j x \X ✓ b. *Ni keyi zou - lai zou - lai. you may walk come walk come \j X _ _ (3.67) a. Ni keyi ban - ban shu. you may move move book 'you may move book(s)' \X X' v / — X S b. *Ni keyi ba - shu ban - lai ban - lai. you may OH book move come move come

B. The Ba-transformation is obligatory for the V-V construction, while it is opioptional for a transitive verb by itself. — w _ _ x (3.68) a. Ta ba - shu ban - lai -le. he OM book move come Asp 'he has moved the book(s) here* — x' — b. *Ta ban - lai shu -le. he move come book Asp

a. Ta ban shu -le. he move book Asp 'he has moved the book(s)'

s/ - — b. Ta ba - shu ban -le. he OH book move Asp 'he has moved the book(s)'

C, The V-V construction cannot be modified by a following adverbial phrase, while its first member can. /V - NX / \ (3.70) a. Ta zou de - hen - man. he walk Han Adv Ph 'he walks very slowly' ~ v ✓ ^ ^ „ b. *Ta zou - lai de - hen - man. 3" he walk come Kan Adv Ph - — / S (3.71) a. Ta ban shu ban de - hen - man. he move book move Han Adv Ph 'he moves the book(s) very slowly* — V / — — S' / N b. *Ta ba - shu ban - lai de - hen - man. he OM book move come Man Adv Ph S \ All these seem to suggest that the V-V construction with lai or qu as its second member, though sometimes behaving like its first member, has an independent categorial status.

3.2.5 Reduplication as a Surface Constraint

There is a quite general syntactic process in Mandarin in which most transitive and intransitive verbs can be reduplicated. They can occur in a number of constructions. For example*

A. Almost all transitive verbs can be reduplicated in statements said questions. E.g.

(3*72) Ta xihuan da da qiu, he like play play ball 'he likes to play some ball'

C3»73) Kong - de - shihou, women jiu tiao tiao wu. Time Adv Clause we then jump jump dance 'when we are not busy, we do some dancing* — — v / / _ >. / (3.7*0 Jingtian ni nen lai he he cha ma? today you can come drink drink tea QM 'can youcome to drink some tea today?' / \ \ v* (3.75) Wo keyi xia xia qi ma? I may play play chess QM 'may I play some chess?'

B. Reduplication of the verb occurs in a sentence which in­ dicates that permission is granted. E.g. t s s — / '■s \S \y (3*76) Ni keyi zhai - huayuan - li zou zou, you may Loc Adv Ph _ walk walk 'you may do some walking in the garden' 1*0 \ S \J s (3.77) Kong - de - shihou, ni keyi da da qiu. Time Adv Cla you may play play ball 'when you axe not busy, you may play some ball'

G. Intransitive verbs, except those indicating directions, can also be reduplicated in questions, E.g,

(3*78) Wo keyi zhai - huayuan - li zou zou ma? I may Loc Adv Ph walk walk QM 'may I do some walking in the garden?'

. — ^ N V' (3.79) Ta nen qu zou zou ma? he can go walk walk QM 'can he go to do some walking?' v ^ D. Reduplication of the verb also occurs after wo xiang 'I think', e.g,

(3.80) Wo xiang ching ni qu zou zou. I think invite you go walk walk 'I would like to ask you to do some walking' V ^ ^ v ^ V S (3.81) Wo xiang ching nimen qu da da qiu. I think invite you(pl.) go play play ball 'I would like to invite you to play some ball'

In all these constructions, the reduplication process carries a special meaning, to do something a little bit. However, in the following constructions, the reduplication process does not take place.

A. It does not take place in the passive construction. \j N'* — — (3.82) a. Jiu bei ta he -le. wine IfeisM he drink Asp •wine has been drunk by him'

v S — __ b. *Jiu bei ta he he -le. wine PasM he drink drink Asp

B. It does not take place with an aspect marker. . V ____ ,_ .—■ (3.83) a. Ta xiang he he jiu. he think drink drink wine 'he would like to drink some wine' Ui — W _ _ v> b. *Ta xiang he he jiu -le. he think drink drink wine Asp

C. It does not cooccur with a negative marker.

(3.84-) a. Ta yao da da qiu. he want play play ball •he wants to play some ball'

- x v w v _ / / b. *Ta bu yao da da qiu. he Neg want play play ball

D. It does not occur in a command.

(3.85) a. *Da da' qiu. play play ball v \/ b. *Bao pao. run run

E. In a causative sentence, some descriptive verbs can also be reduplicated, but not when they are preceded by an intensifier. E.g. V - - \ — V a. Ni shi ta gaoxiang gaoxiang. you make him happy happy •you make him happy' V V — ^ — v b . Ni shi ta hen gaoxiang. you make him very happy •you make him very happy' V — / _ s _ \ c. *Ni shi ta hen gaoxiang gaoxiang. you make him very happy happy

All these restrictions seem to be explicable on some semantic grounds. Reduplication of the verb does not occur in the passive construction, because when one intends to do something a little bit, one usually does not express his intention in a passive sentence.

This seems to be true in English too. For example,

(3.87) a, I want to drink some wine.

b. *To drink some wine is wanted by me.

c. *Some wine is wanted to drink by me. Reduplication of the verb does not cooccur with an aspect

marker, because the former indicates an intention, which is yet

to be realized, while the latter implies that something has already

taken place at some point of time before now. Thus, the two processes are clearly in conflict with regard to time dimension. It does not

cooccur with a negative marker or in a command because when you want to do something a little bit, you do not usually negate the sentence or give it in a command. It does not take place in the presence of an intensifier because the latter signifies 'a high degree' of a state, which conflicts with the light degree indicated by the former.

So far I have given only a sketch of the reduplication process, but it is enough for our purpose here. What has interested us here

is that the process seems to have imposed some kind of surface con­

straint on a particular V-V construction which I am going to discuss below.

One interesting phenomenon which we have noticed in Mandarin

is that all movement verbs are neutral with regard to the direction

in which the movement proceeds. That accounts for the fact that / s they can take a lexical items such as lai or gu to indicate the direction. However, the above statement should not be construed as

saying that all movement verbs must have either lai or gu as a di­ rectional indicator. There are c-ses where the direction of the movement verb is not speaker-oriented. In such a case, either zou or kai each meaning 'away', is often used. .For example, in (3.88) the direction involved with the movement verb is not speaker-oriented. It simply states that the book has been taken away from where it

was originally, but it does not say in which direction it goes.

. — \ ^ S <— ^ (3.88) Ta ba shu na - zou -le. he OM book take away Asp 'he has taken the book away'

Or

(3.89) Ta ba zhouzi ban - kai -le. he OM desk move away Asp 'he has moved the desk away'

■— Syntactically, zou and kai are the second members of the V-V con- / \ struction here, and semantically they differ from lal and qu in that

while the latter are speaker-oriented the former cire not. It might

be somewhat confusing to see that these two lexical items are also

listed in (3.^2) A and B, respectively, as full verbs. One might

wonder what happens if the first member of a V-V construction is

either zou or kai. and the second member a non-speaker-oriented di­

rection word. Since we know that both

(3.90) zou - kai walk away 'walk away from where you axe'

and —• C/ (3.91) kai - zou drive away 'drive (the car) away from where it is' v v — — are good verbs, the question is: Are the sequences zou-zou or kai-kai

possible as a V-V construction? The answer is no, because it happens that duplicate verbs in Mandarin are permitted only as instances of reduplication. Thus, in a V-V construction if the first member hap- pens to be zou. then the second member will automatically be kai in a non-speaker-oriented situation, and vice versa. If this analysis

is correct, then the reduplication process discussed above results in 1*1* a surface constraint for any V-V construction in which the first

member is identical to the second.

After this digression, we are now ready to argue that the V-V

construction with lai or qu as the second member is derived from

an underlying complex structure with the verb indicating direction

in the higher sentence.

3.2.6 Underlying Representations of the V-V Construction

Based on the material in the previous sections, we now can

assume that the two members of the V-V construction in question

have the following semantic propertiest

(3*92) 1st Member 2nd Member

f ^MOVEMENT lai f+M0VEMENT ♦LOCOMOTION +NONMANNER t. +MANNER 'n +SPEAKER direction s qu "♦MOVEMENT +NONMANNER -SPEAKER DIRECTION

Nonpertinent features of the first member are not listed here. Since

there are verbs (See (3.51)) which involve movement and yet cannot o' N cooccur with lai or qu, and since there are verbs which are not overt

'movement verbs' (See (3.58)) and yet can cooccur with lai or qu, we know that the feature [+MOVEMENTJ alone is not sufficient to gua- rantee that a verb possessing it can take lai or qu, but rather, that

the feature £+LOCOMOTIOn ] plays the determining role here. So until we find any counterexample(s), our hypothesis now is that only those movement verbs which possess the feature £+IOCOMOTIOn J can cooccur with / V lai or qu in a V-V construction. This certainly looks like a Deep

Structure Constraint in the sense defined by Perlmutter (1968), because the presence or absence of the feature in the first verb in the under' lying structure determines the well-formedness or ill-formedness of the output in the surface structure. Other structural conditions are as followsi

(3.93) A, The V-V construction in question always has a . complex underlying structure with its subject and the first member of the V-V construction (with or without an object) constituting the most-deeply embedded sentence. x \ B. The directional word lai or cju serves as the predicate of the next higher sentence, and the whole of the most-deeply embedded sentence serves as its subject.

C. Any other surface category, such as Asp, serves as the predicate of the topmost sentence, with the rest of the sentence dominated by the top­ most noun phrase serving as its subject.

A couple of examples are given below for illustration.

(3.9*0 Ta sou - lai -le. he walk come Asp 'he has walked over here'

(3.9*0 has an underlying representation liket

(3.95) A.

Ered

-le

+M0VEMENT +N0NMANNER +SFEAKER DIRECTION ]

♦MOVEMENT ♦LOCOMOTION ♦MANNER Since the verb in the most-deeply embedded sentence possesses the feature £ LOCOMOTIONJ , and since all other structural conditions listed above are all met, we apply a transformation which I call

PREDIGATE-LOWERING, that is, we lower the predicate lai to sister- adjoin to the predicate zou, and as a result the S node immediately dominating the predicate lai is deleted (Ross' tree-pruning process), and also the node NP in the same sentence is deleted due to the fact that it is now dominated by another NP, The resulting structure looks like:

(3.95) B. S Erjd

-le

NP Pred I ta zou lai "+M0VEMENT "+MOVEMENT +MANNER +NONMANNER s +LOCOHOTION y , +SPEAKER DIRECTION t Then by applying PREDICATE-LOWERING again, we get

(3.95) C.

ZOU -le +MOVEMENT +MOVEMENT +MANNER +NOHMANNER +LOCOMOTION (+SPEAKER DIRECTION ) The V-V construction, as a unit, has the following semantic features:

(3.96) zou - lai +MOVEMENT ♦MANNER ♦LOCOMOTION ♦SPEAKER DIRECTION

The semantic features of the two lexical items involved here are seen to he completely compatible, with the feature £ +MOVEMENT] being redundant and the feature ( +NONMANNER) yielding to the feature

£ +MANNER) and others simply being added to the list.

If the movement verb involved is a transitive verb, then we need to apply the Ba-transformation after we apply PREDICATE-LOWERING to move the object right before the verb. E.g.

(3.97) Ta ba - shu ban - lai -le. he OM book move come Asp 'he has moved the book(s) here'

(3*97) has .an underlying representation like:

(3.98) A.

NP Pred I I S -le

NP Pred I S lai '♦MOVEMENT NP Pred +NQNMANNER I ♦SPEAKER DIRECTION ta NP l _ ban shu ♦MOVEMENT ♦LOCOMOTION ♦MANNER 1»8 By PREDICATE-LOWERING, we sister-adjoin the predicate lai with predicate ban, and the output of this operation will look liket

C3.98) B.

NP Pr^ed

-le

NP Pred

ta han lai NP +MOVEMENT > f +M0VEMENT +MANNER +NONMANNER -) L ( +LOCOMOTION J I +SPEAKER D shu

We then apply PREDICATE-LOWERING again to get

(3.98) C.

ta ban lai -le +M0VEMENT ' +MOVEMENT 1 +MANHER +NONKANNER [ +SPEAKER D J shu +LOCOMOTION f Finally, we apply the Ba-transformation to get

(3.98) D.

NP ban lai -le £ — ‘ \ f+MOVEMENT I +MOVEMENT 1 ba shu- I +MANNER I +NONMANNER i +LOCOMOTION J +SPEAKER D J Notice that Ba-transformation must apply after PREDICATE-LOWERING, because the former rule does not apply to a simple sentence like

(3.99) Ta" ban shu. he move book 'he moves books'

If it applies to (3.99)» the output will be ill-formed.

(3.100) *Ta ba - shu ban, he OM book move

The conditions for the application of the Ba-transformation can be roughly stated as follows:

(3.101) A. In a simple sentence there must be the aspect marker -le in the sentence, and the rule is optional,

B. In a V-V construction with a directional com­ plement there must be the aspect marker -le. or a modal word, and the rule is obligatory.

Thus, PREDICATE-LOWERING in (3.98) serves as a FEEDING-RULE (in the sense of Kiparsky) to the Ba-transformation here.

In deriving the V-V construction in (3.95) and (3.98), I have accepted the argument of generative semanticists that only a small inventory of syntactic categories functions in the 'deeper' stages of the 'derivational history' of sentences. Many syntactic cate­ gories are 'derived' rather than 'basic' for example, Asp in Mandarin originates as a higher predicate. This seems to be semantically well- justified because the aspect marker really refers to the whole sen­ tence, not just verbs.

There is, however, some controversy with regard to whether lai is derived from a lower sentence complementing the first verb, or from a higher sentence with the most deeply-embedded sentence as its sub­ ject as in the approach adopted in the above example. My argument is 50 this that the former approach does not satisfactorily show that the underlying structure is the semantic representation of the surface structure, while the latter approach does. Take (3.97) for example.

If it is derived from a lower embedded sentence, there are two possi­ bilities, either (3«102) or (3 .103). (3.102)

S

ta Asp

(3.102) does not correctly stand for the semantic representation of

(3.97) because the embedded sentence simply states that he has come; it does not say, however, that the books are also here as a result of the action taken by the same person in the matrix sentence. So

(3.102) is unsatisfactory. Now let us take a look at (3 .IO3 ).

(3.103)

VP

I ta Asp NP

-le ban shu NP VP

shu Asp V I -le This underlying structure is rejected by A. Hashimoto (1965) because _ / shu lai -le ’the books have come’ is not an acceptable sentence, since shu 'book' is am inanimate nonmovable noun. This seems to have made her adopt a phrase structure hypothesis for the V-V constructions with a directional word as its second member. Her rejection of the above underlying structure appears to be correct, but not her hypo­ thesis.

After arguing against the derivation of the V-V constructions

(3.9*0 and (3.97) from a lower embedded sentence, now let us see what explanation we can give in deriving them from a higher sentence. In assuming that (3-97) has as an underlying representation (3.98)A, we are saying that the predicate lai has a sentence serving as its sub­ ject, and the sentence in question indicates that someone moves books.

This is to say that the whole action involving two concrete noun phrases someone and books and a verb move takes place in a direction towards the speaker of the sentence, not just the person who does the action, or the books being moved. This fits the semantic representa­ tion of the surface sentence (3.97) perfectly. The predicate lai presupposes an animate subject. It must be a human being, or a dog, or anything which can move by itself. Shiu 'book' does not fall in this category, so A. Hashimoto is correct in refusing (3.IO3 ) as the

/ \ n ^ underlying structure of (3.97). However, in treating ban lai 'move toward the speaker' as something existing in the deep structure, she has neglected the fact that the direction also involves the mover and the things being moved. Thus, (3.98)A is well-justified as the under­ lying structure of (3.97) on semantic grounds. 52

Finally, I would like to say a few words on the transformation which I call PREDICATE-LOWERING, The processes involved in the rule are quite similar to McCawley's PREDICATE-RAISING, only in reverse.

That is, the predicate in the higher sentence is lowered and sister- adjoined to the predicate in the lower sentence.

In summing up, what I have been saying above is the followings

(3.1(A)

A, The syntactic behavior of lai or qu justifies that each of them has a full intransitive verb status.

B, The semantic properties of lai or qu ares +M0VEMENT , MANNER not specified, +DIRECTION SPEAKER or -DIRECTION SPEAKER ,

C, The essential semantic property for a movement verb to occur as the first member of the V-V construction is +LOCOKOTION ,

D, The V-V construction with a directional complement, though sometimes behaving like its first member, has an independent categorial status.

E, Reduplication in Mandarin also serves as a surface consgraint, in addition to its semantic implication,

F, All the V-V constructions in question are derived from an underlying complex structure with the verb indicating direction in the higher sentence, by a transformation which I call PREDICATE-LOWERING .

In trying to justify the claim (3.1(A)F, I have been using semantic arguments supported by the syntactic behavior of the lexical items involved in the V-V construction in question. In the next section

we will see how easy it is to extend this approach to account for

the V-V-V constructions in Mandarin, which involve dual directions.

3.3 The Dual-Direction Construction

In the previous section I have shown how two semantic classes

of words can be transformationally combined into a surface V-V con­

struction. The conditions for the application of the rules involved are of two typest structural and semantic. The structural conditions

in this case, are threet

(3.105) A. The V-V construction has a complex underlying structure with its subject and the first member of the V-V construction (with or without an object) constituting the most- deeply embedded sentence. s \ B. The directional word lai or qu serves as the predicate of the next Immediate higher sen­ tence in the underlying structure, and the whole of the most-deeply embedded sentence serves as its subject,

C. Any other surface category such as Asp serves as the predicate of the topmost sentence with the rest of the sentence dominated by the top­ most noun phrase serving as its subject.

The semantic constraint involved is thisi

(3.106) The verb in the most-deeply embedded sentence must possess the semantic property of C +LOCOMOTION J ,

If any one of these conditions is violated, the output of the rules will not be a well- rmed sentence.

In this section, I will show that the same process can be ex­ tended to cover what I call the Secondary Direction Words here. In the real world the direction of motion is not limited to a plane. 5U Human beings and things can move up or down, into or out of some place, across a plane, or back and forth. We are concerned with \ \ \ _ v six secondary direction words, namely, shang, xia, jing, chu, guo, and hui. I will investigate aspects of their syntactic behavior as well as their semantic properties. I will also include in this treatment the V-V-V construction, and argue for the existence of a N guo serving as a direction word which should be distinguished from \ the guo generally known as an aspect marker in Mandarin, despite their homophony.

3.3,1 The Secondary Direction Words

In addition to those verbs listed in 3*2.3 (3.^2) A and B, there S. \ N are six other verbs, namely, shang 'go up', xia 'go down', .jing 'go

— v / into', chu 'go out of', guo 'go across', and hui 'go back to', which form a class by their syntactic behavior. E.g.

A. They all can be followed by a noun phrase.

(3 .IO7) a, Ta shang lou -le. he go-up floor Asp 'he has gone (come) upstairs' _ \ / b . Ta xia lou -le. he go-down floor Asp 'he has gone (come) downstairs' — s / c. Tamen jing fangjie -le. they go-into room Asp 'they have entered the room'

— — d, Tamen chu fangjie -le. they go-out room Asp 'they have gone (come) out of the room'

e, Ta guo qiao -le. he go-across bridge Asp 'he has gone (come)across the bridge' - x ^ 55 f. Ta hui jia -le. he go-back-to home Asp 'he has returned home'

Moreover, none of the noun phrases following a secondary direction word can undergo the Ba-transformation. E.g.

(3.108) a. *Ta ba - lou shang -le. he OM floor go-up Asp _ v/ / s b. *Ta ba - lou xia -le. he OM floor go-down Asp

c. *Ta ba - fangjie jing -le. he OM room go-into Asp

Nor cam a sentence containing a secondary direction word followed by a noun phrase undergo the passive transformation.

(3 .IO9; a. *Lou bei ta shang -le. floor PasM be go-up Asp / s s b. *Lou bei ta xia -le. floor PasM he go-down Asp X \ _ N c. *Fangjie bei ta jing -le. room PasM he go-into Asp

B, All the secondeLry direction words can cooccur with lai or \ qu freely.

(3.110) a. Ta shang lai/qu -le. he go-up come/go Asp •he has come/gone up' - s ^ \ b. Ta xia lai/qu -le. he go-down come/go Asp 'he has come/gone down' — " x \ c. Ta jing lai/qu -le. he go-into come/go Asp 'he has come/gone in'

• • / C. All the secondary direction words can cooccur with lai or \ qu when the former are followed by a noun phrase. \ ^ ✓ \ (3.111) a. Ta shang lou lai/qu -le, he go-up floor come/go Asp 'he has come/gone upstairs' S / / N b, Ta xia lou lai/qu -le. he go-down floor come/go Asp 'he has come/gone downstairs' - N. /• ^ N c. Tamen jing fanjie lai/qu -le. they go-into room corae/go Asp 'they have come/gone into the room'

D, All the secondary direction words can be inserted into the

V-V construction to make a V-V-V construction, whether or not the first member is a transitive verb.

(3.112) (A) With the first member an intransitive verb: _ 'w' N S n a. Ta zou shang lai/qu -le. he walk go-up come/go Asp 'he has walked up (toward/away from the speaker)' v N. \ b. Tamen pao xia lai/qu -le, they run go-down come/go Asp 'they have run down (toward/away from the speaker)' — \ s \ c. Ta zou jing lai/qu -le, he walk go-into come/go Asp •he has walked in (toward/away from the speaker)'

• • •

(B) With the first member a transitive verb: \ / \ a. Ta ba - shu ban shang lai/qu -le. he OM book move go-up come/go Asp 'he has moved the book(s) up (toward/away from the speaker)' __ V- - - N ^ \ b. Ta ba - shu ban jing lai/qu -le. he OM book move go-into come/go Asp 'he has moved the book(s) in (toward/away from the speaker)’ c. Ta ba - shu ban hui lai/qu -le. he OM book move return come/go Asp 'he has moved the book(s) back (toward/away from the speaker)'

E. A secondary direction word together with the noun phrase following it can be inserted into the V-V construction to make a

V-V NP -V construction, whether or not the first member is a tran­ sitive verb.

(3.113) (a ) With the first member an intransitive verb: - V / /' V a. Ta zou shang lou lai/qu -le. he walk go-up floor come/go Asp •he has walked upstairs (towaxd/away from the speaker)'

- \ b. Ta pao jing fangjie lai/qu -le. he run go-into room come/go Asp 'he has run into the room (toward/away from the speaker)' — ^ ^ ^ c. Ta zou hui jia lai/qu -le. he walk return home come/go Asp 'he has walked home (toward/away from the speaker)'

(B) With the first member a transitive verb: - v / — - N S S N a. Ta ba - shu ban shang lou lai/qu -le. he OM book move go-up floor come/go Asp 'he has moved the book(s) upstairs (toward/away from the speaker)' S.\ b. Ta ba - shu ban jing fangjie lai/qu -le. he OM book move go-into room come/go Asp 'he has moved the book(s) into the room (toward/ away from the speaker)' _V'- - ^ ✓ N, c. Ta ba - shu ban hui jia lai/qu -le. he OM book move return home come/go Asp 'he has moved the book(s) back home (toward/away from the speaker)'

P. Unlike other intransitive verbs, the secondary direction / \ words cannot occur by themselves, without lai or qu. 58 - \ \ (3.11*0 a. Ta shang lai/qu -le. he go-up come/go Asp ’he has come/gone up’ — x b. *Ta shang -le. he go-up Asp ^ / N c. Ta hui lai/qu -le, he return come/go Asp 'he has come/gone back' _ / d. *Ta hui -le. he return Asp / s e. Ta guo lai/qu -le. he go-across come/go Asp 'he has come/gone over here/there' _ \ f. *Ta guo -le. he go-across Asp

These aspects of the syntactic behavior of the secondary direction words are unique and uniform. They are unique because no other verbs behave exactly like them; the fact that they can occur between the two verbs in a V-V construction to make a V-V-V construction is especially notable. These six words behave uniformly, because where one can occur, the others can too, and where one is barred, the others are too. We now investigate what semantic properties of these words make them be­ have like this.

\ N N _ \ / 3,3,2 The Semantic Properties of Shang, Xia, Jing, Chu, Guo, and Hui

In 3 .2.31 I have stated that only movement verbs with the pro­ perty C+LOCOMOTION 3 can cooccur with either lai or qu to form a V-V construction. Since these six secondary direction words can be freely ✓ N combined with lai or qu, they must have that property, too. In fact, they form a special subset of the movement verb; because they possess not only the feature C+LOCOMOTION ] , but also some other properties that other movement verbs do not have. Among the six direction words, shang 'go up' and xia 'go down' make a pair because they differ only in that one is in the reverse direction of the other; this is also N \ the case with .jing 'go into' and chu 'go out of'. Guo 'go across' indicates that the movement involved takes place on a plane, while hui shows that there are two opposite directions involved in the movement. Most Chinese dictionaries seem to agree on the following semantic properties for the six direction words. N (3.115) The semantic properties of shang.

A. It is a general cover-word for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds.

B. The movement proceeds in the direction upward.

(3.116) The semantic properties of xia

A, It is a general cover-word for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds.

B. The movement proceeds in the direction downward.

(3.117) The semantic properties of .jing

A. It is a general cover-word for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds.

B. The movement proceeds in the direction of going into some place usually of three dimen­ sions.

(3.118) The semantic properties of chu

A, It is a general cover-word for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds.

B. The movement proceeds in the direction of • going out of some place usually of three dimensions. v 60 (3.119) The semantic properties of guo

A. It is a general cover-word. for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds.

B. The movement proceeds across a level plane,

(3.120) The semantic properties of hui

A. It is a general cover-word for movement, without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds.

B. The movement proceeds in the direction towards some point from which it originally comes.

These semantic properties are very much like those of the primary direction words in that they all indicate a certain direction, as well as a movement without specifying any manner in which the movement proceeds. However, the directions indicated by these six words are independent of speaker's orientation. This seems to have made it possible for them to be combined freely with the primary direction words lai or £U, since the two primary direction words cannot cooccur in a sequence, due to semantic conflict. Nor can any two of the six secondary direction words. In other words, there will be four possible different sequences in the V-V construction under discussion with the primary direction words (PDW) and the secondary direction words (SDW) as its constituents.

(3.121) A. SDW PDW B. *PDW SDW C. *PDW PDW D. *SDW SDW

Out of the four possibilities, only (3.12l)A is well-formed. (3.121)B manifests a semantic constraint. Thus, we can state that in a sen­ tence where the V-V construction indicates dual-directions, the second­ ary direction word must be the verb of the most-deeply embedded sentence, 6l z' V while the primary direction word lai or gu must be the verb of the

immediate higher sentence. Other surface categories such as Asp

come from even higher sentences. The following tree diagram il­

lustrates this point,

(3.122) S

Pred ! - ■, -le

NP Pred

/ , s lai/qu

NP Pred

- V . N V _ N / ta shang (xia, jing, chu, guo, hui)

By repeating PREDICATE-LOWERING twice, we will get a well-formed

surface structure like

(3.123) Ta shang lai -le. he go-up come Asp 'he has come upward toward the speaker'

• • •

If the positions of the two different types of direction words are

exchanged, that is, when the verb in the most-deeply embedded sentence / s is either lai or gu, and the verb in the immediate higher sentence is

one of those six secondary direction words, then the output of the

sentence will be ill-formed, since the condition stated above is not met. In other words, an underlying structure like (3.12*0 will not be acceptable. \ shang (xia, jing, chu, guo, hui)

NP Pred I ta lai/qu

This, again, looks like Perlmutter's Deep Structure Constraint.

There remains one problem for PREDICATE-LOWERING when the verb in the most-deeply embedded sentence has an object following it, as in — N, s ' s ' (3.125) Ta shang lou lai -le. he go-up floor come Asp 'he has come upstairs (toward the speaker)'

(3 .125 ) will have an underlying structure like

(3.126) A. S

Pred

-le

NP Pred I V S lai

NP Pred

ta J T shang lou ✓ s By PREDICATE-LOWERING, lai Hill Le Chomsky-adjoined to shang. The resulting tree will look like

(3.126) B.

Apply PREDICATE-LOWERING again, we get

(3 .126) C.

NP Pred

ta V NP I shang lai -le

But (3.126) C is not grammatical, so we need to move lou back to its original position, that is, to the immediate right of shang. To achieve this, a rule which I call the PSEUDO-OBJECT MOVEMENT, is proposed here. Its operation will get us the correct surface structure of the sentence (3.126) D. 6k (3.126) D. S

NP [ ta

However, PSEUDO-OBJECT MOVEMENT must be distinguished from the Ba£ transformation, which is also a movement rule involving a noun phrase after a verb -- because, while the former moves the noun phrase to the immediate right of the verb, the latter moves the noun phrase to the immediate left of the verb with the addition of Ba before the noun phrase.

The PSEUDO-OBJECT MOVEMENT might be dispensed with if we revised

PREDICATE-I/OWERING to the effect that it sister-adjoins the higher predicate to the predicate of the lower sentence, rather than just to the verb, when the predicate consists of a verb plus an object.

The problem did not occur because, when we first proposed PREDICATE-

LOWERING, it really did not make any difference whether we sister- adjoined the higher predicate to the lower predicate or to the lower verb since in both cases, we had to apply the Ba-transformation to get the correct surface structure. The only difference then was, in \s applying the Ba-transformation, that we move the noun phrase from the end of the sentence to the immediate left of the verb if PREDICATE-

LOWERING means to sister-adjoin the higher predicate to the lower verb, and from the immediate right of the verb to the immediate left of the verb if PREDICATE-LOWERING means to sister-adjoin the higher pre­ dicate to the lower predicate. That was all. But now it makes a significant difference, as we have seen that in one case a new rule called PSEUDO-OBJECT MOVEMENT will he needed, and in another case it will not. Facing this, we will naturally choose the simpler one; that is, PREDICATE-LOWERING must he defined as to sister-adjoin the higher predicate to the lower predicate, not to the lower verh.

The other two possibilities, namely (3.12l)C and D, are hoth unacceptable because of the violation of the onndition of mutual exclusiveness. Thus, the following two underlying structures will not be possible in Mandarin,

(3.127)

Pred I -le

lai (qu)

(3 .128)

Pred I -le

shang (xia, jing, chu, guo, hui) 66

Whether this is a case of semantic constraint or structural condi­

tion is still an open question. For the moment, it seems to me

that (3 .127) illustrates a semantic constraint because lai or £u

is not supposed to be the verb of the most-deeply embedded sentence \ in a V-V construction anyway. On the other hand shang and other

secondary direction words can occur as the verb of the most-deeply embedded sentence provided the verb of its immediate higher sentence

is not one of its kind. Hence, (3.128) looks like a structural con­ dition. This, of course, is subject to further revision.

Correspondingly, there are no surface sentences like the following in Mandarin*

(3.129) *Ta lai qu -le. he come go Asp *'he has come gone'

(3.130) *Ta guo shang -le. he go-across go-up Asp *'he has come/gone across up'

• • •

All these illustrate that both the structural conditions and the se­ mantic constraints sire to be observed. Otherwise, either the trans­ formational rules are blocked or the resulting string is somewhat deviant.

3.3.3 The V-V-V Construction

With the V-V-V construction, the situation should look much more complicated because it involves three underlying sentences, plus the hierarchical relations among them. But, in fact, it is quite simple because we already know that in the construction under study manner movement verbs always come before direction movement verbs, and the secondary direction movement verbs always come before the primary direction movement verbs -- plus a general constraint that no two verbs of one kind can cooccur in a sequence. In other words, all the semantic constraints (See (3.105) and (3*121)) and structural conditions stated previously apply to the V-V-V construction as well.

Thus, in a V-V-V construction there are six possible combinations since it involves three types of movement verbs. Out of the six possibilities only (3.131)A is grammatical.

A. MMV SDW PDW

B. ♦MMV PDW SDW

c. *SDW MMV PDW

D. *SDW PDW MMV

E. ♦PDW MMV SDW

P. ♦PDW SDW MMV

Thus, we can state the structural conditions and the semantic con­ straints for the V-V-V construction as follows*

(3.132) A. Structural Conditions'

a. Every V-V-V construction has an under­ lying complex structure containing three sentences with the manner movement verb serving as the verb of the most deeply- embedded sentence, the secondary direction movement verb as the verb of the next higher sentence, and the primary direction move­ ment verb as the verb of the highest sentence.

b. The most deeply-embedded sentence serves as the subject of the next higher predicate, and the whole under the domination of the next higher sentence serves as the subject of the highest predicate.

B. Semantic Constraints

a. The manner movement verb in the most deeply- embedded sentence must have the semantic property [+LOCOMOTION] . b. The verb in the next higher sentence must not be speaker-oriented, while the verb in the still higher sentence must be speaker-oriented.

Any violation of the structural conditions will block the trans­ formational rules, and any violation of the semantic constraints will result in a semantically-ill-formed string. An example is given below to illustrate (3.132).

(3.133) Ta zou shang lai -le. he walk go-up come Asp 'he has walked up (toward the speaker)'

(3 .133) has an underlying structure like

(3.13*0 A.

NP Pred I I S - le

NP Pred I S l a i

NP Pred I S shang

NP Pred I \S ta zou

By PREDICATE-LOWERING, we get

(3.13*0 B.

Pred

- le

NP I V/ ta zou 69 Repeating the same process we get (3.13*+) C and D, respectively.

(3.13*0 C.

NP Pred I S - le

NP Pred

(3.13*+) D. S

' NP

[ W ta

(3.13*+) D is the correct surface form of (3.133). Since the linear order of the verbs in the V-V-V construction on the surface level corresponds to the hierarchical order of the sentences embedded into each other in the underlying structure, we might assume that the first verb in the V-V-V construction must be one of those manner movement verbs with the semantic property ( +L0C0M0TI0N] , the second verb a secondary direction verb, and the third verb a primary direction verb. If this is true, we can tell by looking at the surface form where things go wrong. E.g.

— \ / (3 .135 ) a. *Ta shang zou lai -le. he go-up walk come Asp _ V ^ \ b. *Ta zou lai shang -le. he walk come go-up Asp — \ / c. *Ta chi shang lai -le. he eat go-up come Asp

(3 .135 )a violates structural condition-a because the first verb in the V-V-V construction is not a manner movement verb. (3*135)^ violates the same condition because the second verb in the con­ struction is not a secondary direction movement verb, and the third verb not a primary direction movement verb. (3 .135 )c violates se­ mantic constraint-a because the first verb in the construction does not possess the semantic property £+L0C0M0TI0N3 .

i s N 3.3.4 Guo as a Direction Word vs. Guo as an Aspect Marker

William S-Y. Wang (1965) treats guo as an aspect marker, as in the sentences below:

(3.136) Ta mai guo shu. he buy Asp book 'he has bought books'

(3.137) Tamen chi guo Jungguo fan. they eat Asp China meal 'they have eaten a Chinese meal'

He is correct in assuming that the guo in (3.136) and (3.137) func­ tions as an aspect marker, indicating that the action represented by v' *—• the verbs mai and chi, respectively, has taken place, at least once. •s However, the other guo treated above as a direction word is not even mentioned. This leaves the impression that there is only one guo in Mandarin. My purpose here is to cite as many examples as possible chiefly on syntactic grounds, to show that these two guo's must be distinguished from each other, despite their homophony.

A, Aspect guo (hereafter A guo) cannot cooccur with time adverb y \ indicating future tense, while direction guo (hereafter D guo) can. V/ \ J S ’ y j S / (3.138) Qing nl mingtian zou - guo - lai. please you tomorrow walk-go-across-come 'please walk over here tomorrow'

(3.139) *Qing ni mingtian chi guo fan. please you tomorrow eat Asp meal

\ B, A guo cannot cooccur with a time adverb indicating habitual s action, while D guo can. / 1 \ — V-/ \ / (3.140) Ta meitian zou - guo - lai. he everyday walk-go-across-come 'he walks over here everyday'

(3.141) *Ta meitian chi guo fan. he everyday eat Asp meal \ \j C, A guo cannot cooccur with the intentional word xiang, while N D guo can.

(3.142) Ta xiang zou - guo - lai, he think walk-go-across come 'he intends to walk over here' / , n - ^ ' n (3.143) *Ta xiang chi guo fan. he thing eat Asp meal N D, A guo cannot cooccur with zhe, an auxiliary indicating s progressive tense, while D guo can, \ / (3.144) Tamen pao zhe guo - lai. they run Aux go-across-come 'they are coming over by running'

— — \ \ (3.145) *Tamen chi zhe guo fan. they eat Aux Asp meal N / / E, A guo cannot cooccur with the adverb changchang 'often', \ while D guo can. / ✓ V \ ^ (3.146) Tamen changchang pao - guo - lai. they often run go-across-come 'they often run over here' — / y — N \ (3.147) *Tamen changchang chi guo fan. they often eat Asp meal

All these syntactic differences seem to be explicable on the basis 72 of the different semantic properties of the two distinctive guo's.

A guo refers to a perfective aspect of action; it naturally cannot cooccur with adverbs indicating future tense, habitual action, or s progressive tense. On the other hand, D guo is not involved with tense at all, so it can take an adverb indicating future tense, or habitual action, or progressive tense. 73

CHAPTER I I I

FOOTNOTES

1. Adjectives in Mandarin can be used as predicates without the verb to be: hence Wang (1963) used the term 'descriptive verbs' to refer to them,

2. Intensifiers are ofter*, used to modify descriptive verbs in Man­ darin: hen 'very', shifen 'entirely', feichang ’extremely', showing a high degree of a quality, state, etc, sThere are also post-verbal intensifiers such as de-hen 'very', de-bu-de-liao 'extraordinarily*,

3. See Fillmore (1966),

4. See Weinreich (1963), also Lyons (1968).

5. QM is short for question marker in Mandarin,

6. Cla is short for classifier, also known as measure word. Different nouns in Mandarin have different classifiers. E.g. — — yi ben shu^ 'a book' yi zhang hua 'a painting’ yi kuai chyan 'a dollar' etc,

7. Logical subject, a term used earlier, is roughly equivalent to the deep subject in today's sense.

8. The term locomotion was suggested to me by Zwicky,

9. See 3.2.5 CHAPTER IV

THE V-V CONSTRUCTION WITH THE SECOND MEMBER AN

INTENTIVE OR RESULTATIVE COMPLEMENT

^.1 Introduction

In the previous chapter I have claimed that in Mandarin all the V-V constructions with a direction verb as its second member are to be derived from an underlying complex structure with the verb indicating direction in the higher sentence. I have suggested at the same time PREDICATE-LOWERING, a transformation which I think can best handle the problem under discussion, with empirical support for the claim that the rule must be defined as a procedure to lower the higher predicate and Chomsky-adjoin it to the immediate right of the lower predicate, not to the immediate right of the lower verb,

since a predicate may sometimes consist of a verb plus an object. I also have shown that this same procedure can be easily extended to cover the V-V-V construction in Mandarin, a construction consisting of a manner movement verb combined with two different types of direc­ tion movement verbs. In order to make sure that the output of the transformation will be well-formed, certain semantic constraints and structural conditions must be met for the application of the rule(s).

One of the conditions suggested above is that manner movement verbs must come before direction movement verbs. To put it another way, the verb in the most deeply-embedded sentence in the underlying 75 structure must be a manner movement verb if there is any in the construction. This, however, does not mean th a t there is no possi­ b ility in Mandarin for a V-V construction with a direction movement verb as its firs t member and another type of verb as its second member. In fact, there are such constructions; they describe a s itu a tio n in which someone goes to some place wj.th an in ten tio n to perform something. So, I call this construction a V-V construction w ith i t s second member an in te n tiv e complement: i t w il l be discussed in 4,2. Also included in this section w ill be a discussion of the

V-V-V-V and V-V-V-V-V constructions in Mandarin, In4.3 I w ill tr y to account for the more complicated V-V construction with its second member a re s u lta tiv e complement.

There is a marked difference between the V-V constructions which will be dealt with below and those in the previous chapter. This, however, will not be discussed until 4,4, where it will make more sense after we have discussed all the V-V constructions mentioned above.

4.2 The V-V Construction with Its Second Member an Intentive Complement

In this construction the choice of the firs t member is limited / \ to either lai or c|U, while the second member can be any performance verb 1 . E.g. / - \ (4.1) Ta lai chi fan, he come eat meal 'he comes to eat'

(4.2) Tamen qu ban shu. they go move book 'they go to move books' 76 ^ / N \ (4.3) Wo lai kan bau, I come read newspaper 'I come to read newspaper'

(4.4) Ta qu dzou sh£. he go do thing 'he goes to work'

(4.5) Women lai xue yinwen. we come learn English 'we come to learn English'

The second members in the V-V construction in the above examples — N ^ \ / are chi 'eat', ban 'move', kan 'read', dzou 'do', xue 'learn', etc.

respectively. Semantically, they can hardly form a natural class,

since chi is an activity verb involving the use of the mouth, ban

is a manner movement verb having the semantic property £LOCOMOTION3 , \ \ s' kan a verb indicating the use of one's eyes, and dzou and xue are verbs of more general nature. However, they are all performance verbs, though the types of performance represented by the verbs are

quite various. Syntactically, descriptive verbs or stative verbs

are not allowed to be the second member in the construction in

question. Thus, the following strings are not acceptable.

(4.6) *Ta lai lei. he come tired 'he comes to be tired'

(4.7) *Tamen qu zhidao. they go know 'they go to know'

The underlying structures of the sentences (4.1) through (4.5) are

all of the following type, with the subscripts indicating an iden­

tity condition. 77 (4.8) A. S

[♦PERFORMANCE]

2 By PREDICATE-RAISING , a sequence of operations w ill take place: the predicate in the most deeply-embedded sentence w ill be moved up to the immediate right of the higher verb; the NP^ in the lower

sentence w ill be deleted, due to EQUI-NP-DELETION , and the node w ill also be deleted by tree-pruning. The resulting tree diagram w ill look like:

(4.8) B. S

V v np2 | ( +PERFORMANCE ] l^ i/q u

From the tree diagrams above, we see that some conditions must be

imposed in order to make sure that the output of the transformations

is well-formed. They can be roughly stated as follows: Semantic Constraints

A. The verb in the main sentence must be a direction verb, speaker-oriented, while the verb in the embedded sentence must possess the semantic pro­ perty i PERFORMANCE ] .

B. NP^ must be a human noun.

C. NP_ must possess certain semantic properties which are compatible with those of the per­ formance verb in the same sentence.

(4.10) Structural Conditions

A. The noun phrase in the embedded sentence must be identical to the noun phrase in the main sentence.

B. The noun phrase serving as the object of the verb in the embedded sentence must not be identical to the noun phrase in the main sentence.

4.2.1 The V-V-V Construction with a Primary Direction Verb as Its First Member

In Mandarin there are two verbs which are themselves performance verbs, and yet can be followed by almost any other performance verb.

They are xue 'learn', and .jiao 'teach'. Thus, the following sure all good sentences. \ / s . — \ — (4.11; Ta lai xue/jiao chang - ge. he come learn/teach sing song 'he comes to learn/teach to sing songs'

(4.12) Tamen lai/qu xue/jiao shuo - yinwen. they come/go learn/teach speak English •they come/go to learn/teach to speak English'

Sentences (4.11) and (4.12) will have the following type of under­

lying structure. lai/qu NP, Pred

xue/ jiao NP^ Pred

V n p 2 [♦PERFORMANCE J

By PREDICATE-RAISING, we get

(4.13) B.

lai/qu NP^ Pred

I [+PERFORMANCE] xue/jiao

Repeating the same transformation, we get 80 (4.13) C.

[+p e r f o r m m c e ] lai/qu xue/jiao

(4,13) C is a good surface structure in Mandarin.

To permit this additional output, we need only to make a few revisions in the statement of (4.9) and (4,10). They are as follows:

(4,14) A. (4.9)A will be replaced by the following statement.

In a V-V or V-V-V construction with an intentive complement, the verb in the most deeply-embedded sentence must be a performance verb, the verb in the next higher sentence must be either xue or .jiao in the case of a V-V-V construction, and the verb in the highest sentence must always be a direction verb, speaker-oriented.

B. (4.10)A will be replaced by the following statement.

The subjects of all the embedded sentences must be identical to the subject of the main sentence.

With these available, now we can account for the V-V-V-V or V-V-V-V-V constructions in Mandarin.

4.2,2 The V-V-V-V and V-V-V-V-V Constructions

In 3.3.3 we see that the two primary direction movement verbs / \ lai and

/i \ ►— V \ V — (4.15) Ta pao - qu - kan shu. he run go read book 'he runs there to read books'

(4.16) Ta shang - qu - kan shu. he go-up go read book 'he goes upstairs to read books'

(4.17) = (^.15) + (4.16) - x/ V- V \ — Ta pao - shang - qu - kan shu, he run go-up go read book 'he runs upstairs to read books (away from the speaker)'

(4.18) Ta" pao - qu - xue - chang ge, he run go learn sing song 'he runs there to learn to sing songs' /. n - N \ ✓ s _ (4.19) Ta shang - qu - xue - chang ge. he go-up go learn sing song 'he goes upstairs to learn to sing songs'

(4.20) » (4.18) + (4.19) - V \ \ / N — Ta pao - shang - qu - xue - chang ge. he run go-up go learn sing song 'he runs upstair to learn to sing songs'

The surface verbal constructions in sentences (4.15) through (4.20) can be represented by (4.21) A through F below, where the manner movement verb (MMV), the secondary direction verb (SDV), the primary direction verb (FDV), the two verbs xue and .jiao CVx^/jiao ^’ the performance verb (Vperf) are linearly ordered. 82

(4.21) MMV SDV PDV xue/.iiao/jia perf

A. X X X (4.15)

B. X X X (4.16)

C. XXXX (4.17)

D. X XX X (4.18)

E. XXXX (4.19)

P. XX X X X (4.20)

The underlying structure of sentence (4.20) will he given below to illustrate how all these structures can be derived by the same

transformations which have been used in the previous sections, though it is by far more complicated than anything we have dealt with so far.

(4.22) A. S n

NP Pred

NP Pred qu NP Pred

ta 4

s /\ NP Pred shang xue NP Pred I ta V ta NP I 1 pao chang ge 83 Facing such a tree diagram, we have to decide whether PREDICATE-

LOWERING applies first in S^, or whether PREDICATE-RAISING applies first in S2. If PREDICATE-RAISING applies first', it will raise the predicate in S^ to S^. However, we cannot repeat the same process to raise the new predicate of Sg to Sq because the structural con­ dition is not met there: the subject of Sq is not ta. On the other hand, if PREDICATE-LOWERING applies first in S^, the resulting tree diagram will be:

(4.22) B.

xue NP

chang

In (3.132) we said something to the effect that in a V-V-V construc­ tion with two directional verbs, PREDICATE-LOWERING applies if the verb in the most deeply-embedded sentence is a manner movement verb with the property (_ LOCOMOTION ) , the verb in the next higher sentence a secondary direction verb, and the verb in the highest sentence a primary direction verb. And by PREDICATE-LOWERING we mean to lower 8U the higher predicate and Chomsky-adjoin it to the immediate right of the lower predicate. Now in order to derive the correct surface structure for (4-.20), we need to make some modification with respect to the rule. That is, by the new definition, PREDICATE-LOWERING will not only lower the verb in the higher sentence, but everything domi­ nated by the same predicate node. Thus, by applying PREDICATE-LOWERING in its new sense to (^.22) B, we get

(^.22) C.

Pred

S2

v \ \ / pao shang qu NP Pred

ta V I / xue NP Pred

ta V NP

chang ge

Sq is deleted by tree-pruning after the whole predicate is lowered and Chomsky-adjoined to the predicate in S^, so is the subject NP node under SQ. It seems that in this specific case lowering on the left is independent of raising on the right until the SQ cycle. There is a certain type of V-V construction (it will be discussed in Chapter

V) in which PREDICATE-LOWERING must precedes PREDICATE-RAISING. After all the predicates are lowered to the same level on the left side, we apply PREDICATE-RAISING to the most deeply-embedded sentence on the right side. The resulting structure will look like:

(*<•.22) D.

n; Pred

ta

pao shang qu NP Pred

ta

x — xue chang ge

Now the structural condition for PREDICATE-RAISING is met again in

(4.22) D since the subject of is ta, which is identical to the subject of Sg. Repeating the same process, we get

(4.22) E.

Pred

V VVV V NP

pao shang qu changxue ge 86 (*<•.22) E is the correct surface structure of (*f,20). All other

V-V-V-V constructions, such as (*<-.21) C, D, and E, can be derived in the same way. Thus, the multiple-verb construction, long a puzzling problem in Mandarin has been accounted for.

*<■.3 The V-V Construction with Its Second Member a Resultative Complement

The V-V constructions with a resultative complement axe much more difficult to derive than those constructions involving the primary direction movement verbs, mainly because there are a great number of verbs which can occur as the first member of the con­ struction, and there axe almost an equally great number of verbs which can occur as the second member of the construction. The only semantic condition imposed on the first verb is that it be nonstative.

As for the second verb, it can be either a descriptive verb or an intransitive verb, as long as their semantic properties are compatible with those of the first verb. If we use X and Y to represent all those verbs which can occur as the first and the second members, res­ pectively, we see that the relation between X and Y is not a simple formula such as

(*<-.23) X - Y which indicates that any member of X can cooccur with any member of

Yj rather, something of the following type of relationship exists between the two variables! 87 (4. 24) x - y

xi ' yi

where a semantic dependency between members of X and Y must be observed all the time, though the actual situation is even more complicated than what is indicated by (4.24), because in many cases two or more members of X may cooccur with a certain member of Y, or one member of X may cooccur with several members of Y, E.g.

(4.25) X - Y

xi 'wash* s sao 'sweep' ganjin

ca~ 'wipe*

\s \ xie 'write' dei v cuo 'wrong'

huai 'bad'

It is extremely difficult to form some general rule to cover all these cases. This is why I said in section 1.1 that the derivation of some types of V-V construction is not very productive. However, on syntactic grounds, the V-V construction in question can at least be subdivided into the following three groups»

(4.26) A, The V-V constructions in the first group can all undergo the Ba-transformation, the passive transformation, and topicalization. They are exemplified by the following verbst 88

X1 Y1 \ xi •wash* - ganjin 'clean' \ lung 'play' - huai 'bad (not working)' \S \ da •hit' - po •broken*

—- xiu 'repair* tm hau 'good (working)' —- \ qi 'cut' - sui 'small (pieces)' w zhu ' cook' •* lao 'over (time)'

• • l • • •

B. The V-V constructions in the second group cannot undergo any of the above transformations, but instead are derived by the application of reduplica­ tion and deletion of the verb and its object. They are exemplified by the following verbsi

X2 Y2

he 'drink' zui •drunk*

chi 'eat' bao 'full' V/ xie 'write* huai •bad' \ \ chang 'sing' lei 'tired* s. tiao 'dance*

da' 'play'

C, The V-V constructions in the third group can undergo none of the transformations mentioned above. They are exemplified by the following verbst

ku 'cry bing 'sick*

xiao laugh' lei 'tired' X raang 'busy \ lei 'tired 89 The following examples illustrate these points. „ ^ \ — 2?) A. Ta xi - ganjin yifu -le. he wash-clean clothes Asp *he has washed the clothes clean'

— . — v \ j B. Ta he - zui jiu -le. he drink-drunk wine Asp 'he has drunk to the extent that he gets drunk'

Co Ta xie - lei -le he write tired Asp 'he has been writing to the extent that he gets tired'

- / N D. Ta mang - bing -le. he busy sick Asp 'he has been busy to the extent that he gets sick'

(it.27) A can undergo the Ba-transformation, the passive transformation, and topicalization, while (it,27) B cannot* — \ s **" ^ (it.28) A. 1. Ta ba - yifu xi - ganjin -le. he OM clothes wash-clean Asp 'he has washed the clothes clean' — \ - v/ s 2. Yifu bei - ta xi - ganjin -le. cbthes EasM he wash-clean Asp 'the clothes have been wash-cleaned by him' — — v / N 3. Yifu ta xi - ganjin -le. clothes he wash-clean Asp as for the clothes, he has washed clean' — s-/ V _ ^ B. 1. *Ta ba - jiu he - zui -le. he OM wine drink drunk Asp 'he has drunk to the extent that the wine gets drunk' \J N _ _ N'. 2. *Jiu bei - ta he - zui -le. wine EasH he drink drunk Asp 'wine has been drunk-drunk by him'

3. *Jiu ta he - zui -le. wine he drink drunk Asp 'as for wine, he has drunk to the extent that wine gets drunk'

For (if. 27) C and D the problem of the application of the three trans­ formations simply does not arise, since all these rules presuppose that the sentence involved must have a noun phrase serving as an object, which is not the case in either (4.27) C or D. Only in­

transitive or descriptive verbs can occur as the first member of

the construction exemplified by (4.27) D, One additional fact to

help distinguish (4.27) B and G from (4.27) D is that the former usually involves a reduplicating process while the latter does not.

Thus, (4.29) A and B are good sentences, while (4.29) C is not.

(4.29) A. Ta he - jiu* he - zui -le. he drink wine drink-drunk Asp 'he has drunk to the extent that he gets drunk' — - N V N B. Ta xie - zi xie - lei -le. he write character write-tired Asp •he has written characters to the extent that he gets tired' - / s / C. *Ta mang - bing mang -le. he busy sick busy Asp

4.3.1 The Underlying Structure of the V-V Construction with a Resultative Complement

The three groups of the V-V construction in question have some common semantic constraints, as well as some common structural con­ ditions. In addition, each group has its own conditions. They are

stated belows

(4.30) General Semantic Constraints

A. All the first members in the V-V constructions under discussion must be nonstative.

B. The semantic properties of the second member in each case must be compatible with those of the first member.

(4.31) One General Structural Condition

All these V-V constructions have a complex under­ lying structure with the sentence indicating the result of the action represented by the first verb embedded into the predicate of the next sentence up. (4,32) Some Specific Conditions

For Group At The subject of the embedded sentence must be identical to the object of the verb in the immediately higher sentence.

For Group B: The subject of the embedded sentence must be identical to the subject of the immediately higher sentence, and the verb in the higher sentence must be transitive.

For Group Cj The subject of the embedded sentence must be identical to the subject of the immediately higher sentence, and the verb in the higher sentence must be either intransitive or descriptive.

The underlying structures of the sentences in (4,2?) and their derivations are given below for illustration,

(4.2?)A has an underlying structure like

(4.33)

S

ganjin

In (4.33) all the semantic constraints are met. The first verb is a nonstative verb, and the semantic properties of the second verb ganjin 'clean* are compatible with those of the firs t verb xi 'wash'

The general structural condition is also met, and since the subject of the embedded sentence is identical to the object of the verb in the immediately higher sentence, we know that the output w ill be a

Group A V-V construction.

We apply PREDICATE-LOWERING f ir s t i

(**.3*0

s

NP

V NP S Asp

xi yifu NP Pred -le I y ifu

ganjin

Then, by PREDICATE-RAISING, we move ganjin to the immediate rig h t of xi, with both the lower NP and the S node deleted, due to Equi-

NP-Deletion and tree-pruning, respectively!

(*£35 )

v L ganjin 93

The string associated with (4.35) is (4.27) A. Vie can also get the same result by applying PREDICATE-RAISING first, and then PREDICATE-

LOWERING. It does not make any difference here. However, there are cases where the latter has tc be applied first (as in (5»35)* plus what we have seen in (4.22) with respect to SQ node). Thus, the ordering of these two rules as proposed in (4.34) seems to be preferred.

Both (4,27)B and C belong to the Group B V-V construction.

(4.27)C has an underlying structure likej

(4.36) A.

NP Pred I Asp

NP Ered -le

V NP S

(somethingxie Ered unspecified)

By PREDICATE-RAISING, we get the verb lei raised and Chomsky-adjoined v/ to xie, the verb in the immediately higher sentence. At the same time the lower NP and the S node are both deleted, due to Equi-NP-

Deletion and tree-pruning, respectively. The resulting tree will look like xie^ lei something -lei unspecified

Finally, we apply Unspecified-NP-Deletion to get

(4.36) C.

Pred

Asp

y j n xie lei -le

which is the correct surface structure for (4.27)0.

If the noun phrase in the lower sentence of the underlying structure is specified, then there will he a reduplication trans­ formation, obligatory for some verbs, but optional for he"'drink* and chi 'eat'. For example, reduplication is obligatory for a sentence like (4.37)

(4,37) Ta da qiu da lei -le. he play ball play tired Asp 'he plays ball to the extent that he gets tired' (4.37) 112113 an underlying structure like

(4.38) A.

Pred I l e i

Here the ordering of PREDICATE-RAISING and Reduplication is crucial,

"because i f we apply PREDICATE-RAISING f i r s t we w ill get 96 Since no V-V construction can be reduplicated, this ordering is

apparently wrong because we cannot derive (4.3?) from it. So we

reorder the two rules in the manner belowt

(4.39) A. REDUPLICATION

B. PREDICATE-RAISING

Now we apply REDUPLICATION to get

(4.40)

Then by PREDICATE-RAISING, we raise lei and Chomsky-adjoin it to

THE right-most verb, namely the one just derived by reduplication; the final tree will look like*

(4.41) S 97 As for (^.27)B, it has an underlying structure like

( * A 2 )

S

Ered

ta

\ zui

A A 2 ) looks very much like (4,3 8)A; however, for semantic reasons, reduplication of the verb in (kA2) is optional. If we apply

PREDIGATE-RAISING without reduplication, we get

_ \ \S A A3 ) Ta he - zui jiu -le. he drink drunk wine Asp •he has drunk to the extent that he gets drunk'

If we apply reduplication before PREDICATE-RAISING, we get __ __ V/ _ v (k,lA) Ta he - jiu he - zui -le. he drink wine drink drunk Asp 'he has drunk wine to the extent that he gets drunk'

If we delete the first verb and its object, we will get

(^.^5) Ta he - zui -le, he drink drunk Asp 'he has drunk to the extent that he gets drunk'

(^.^3) through (^.^5) are all good sentences in Mandarin. The other processes being the same, they are omitted here. For (4.27)D, none of the above rules (the Ba-transformation. the passive transformation, topicalization, reduplication) is applicable. It has an underlying structure likei (4 .46)

S

I

By PREDICATE-LOWERING and PREDICATE-RAISING, we will get the correct surface structure. However, since both intransitive verbs and des­ criptive verbs can occur as the first or the second member in the construction in the (4.26)C group, it is important to note that the semantic properties of the second verb must be compatible with those / s of the first. For example, mang-blng 'busy-sick (to be busy to the extent that one gets sick)' is a good V-V construction, but not N X bing-mang 'sick-busy', which is not a good V-V construction under the normal situation, because it is odd to say that one is sick to the extent that one gets busy. 99

4.4 One Variable or Two Variables, and Their Implications

So far I have been arguing that the V-V constructions with its

second member a direction movement verb, or a performance verb in­

dicating what the person involved intends to do, or an intransitive

or a descriptive verb indicating the result of the action represented

by the first verb, are all to be derived through certain transforma­

tions, mainly PREDIGATE-LOWERING and PREDICATE-RAISING, I have also

proposed, for the well-formedness of the output of the rules, that

certain semantic constraints and structural conditions be met in the application of the transformation(s). In addition, I have stated that the V-V construction with a resultative complement are much more difficult to derive than those of others. What I actually meant by that is that the generation of the underlying structures of those

•V-V constructions is not as productive as that of others. This seems to have a great deal to do with the number of variables in the con­

structions. Roughly speaking, those V-V or V-V-V constructions con­ taining only one variable can be readily generated as long as the common properties set for that variable are met, while those other

V-V or V-V-V constructions containing two variables cannot be so readily generated, because in this case the semantic properties of the second member must be compatible with those of the first, in addition to the condition that the first verb must meet the common semantic properties set for the first variable.

Here a variable is treated as a semantic category. Any lexical item to be included as a member of a variable in the V-V constructions under discussion must meet the following conditions: 100 (4.4?) A. The item must be a verb.

B. The verb must meet all the semantic properties set for that variable.

In addition to these two conditions, the verb must be in a particular position of the string. If we treat those limited items (such as the two primary direction verbs) in the V-V construction as members of a natural class, and regard as members of a variable the large number of verbs which can occur as one of the verbs in the construction, then a fairly complete list of the constructions containing one variable would include the followingi

A. MMV PDV

B. MMV SDV PDV

PDV V c. perf D. PDV 1 I — V xue/jiao vr perf E. MMV PDV V perf F. MMV SDV PDV ^perf G. MMV PDV V / “ V xue/jiao perf MMV SDV PDV V x / "" V H. xue/jiao perf

(4.48)A through D present no problem because in (4.48)A and B only the MMV (manner movement verb) is a variable, and in (4.48)C and D only the V (performance verb) is a variable. SDV (secondary direction verb), PDV (primary direction verb), and the verb xue and jiao each consist of a limited number of lexical items, and their semantic properties are predictable, so none of them is considered as a variable here. However, (4.48)E through H have both MMV and

Vperft which are variables, and yet each of them is treated as a construction containing only one variable. How are we going to 101 account for that fact? The answer is that these variables are se­

parated from each other by PDV, which is not a variable, and thus

there is no interdependency between them. In other words, it is the

PDV serving as a connecting point with both MMV and V ^ ^ , The com­

mon semantic properties set for MMV have nothing to do with those for

Vperfi each having connection only with those of PDV. For example,

if we use X to represent MMV, and Y Vperf» a. huge number of sentences

can occur within the formula below:

(b.49) X PDV Y where the semantic properties of X have nothing to do with those of

Y. This analysis is supported by the fact that the generation of

V-V or V-V-V, or V-V-V-V, or V-V-V-V-V constructions containing only

one variable is very productive. There are semantic constraints and

structural conditions to be met in the application of the transfor­

mation (s), but they can be clearly stated, and the number of condi­

tions is always limited.

It is a completely different story with those V-V constructions with a resultative complement because there are two variables there.

This is why the V-V construction with a resultative complement as its

second member cannot be readily generated.

To refer back to A. Hashimoto's claim that these resultative verbs can be transformationally derived without any reference to the

semantic properties of the lexical items involved, we can see now that this claim is not supported by the facts given above. 102

CHAPTER IV

FOOTNOTES

1, A performance verb can be any verb as long as it indicates a certain performance, concrete or abstract, physical or mental. The verb generally requires an animate subject, in most cases, a human subject,

2, PREDICATE-RAISING was first worked out by McCawley (1968a, 1968b, 1969).

3, See Rosenbaum (1 9 6 7). CHAPTER V

FOUR OTHER TYPES OP V-V CONSTRUCTIONS

5.1 Introduction

In this chapter four other types of V-V constructions will be

discussed, '.they are as follows:

(5.1) A, The V-V construction with the second member functioning as a completing complement

B. The V-V construction which cooccurs with potential elements

C. The V-V construction with the second member functioning as the main verb and the first member as a modifier

D. The V-V construction which must be treated as an idiom.

Evidences to support the above classification will be given on both

semantic and syntactic grounds. They will be discussed in the order

as listed in (5.1).

5.2 The V-V Construction with the Second Member Functioning as a Completing Complement

In the V-V construction under discussion the first member can be

any nonstative verb. In this respect, the semantic constraint imposed

on the first member is very much like that of the first member of the

V-V construction with a resultative complement. E.g.

(5.2) A. Ta mang wan -le. he busy finish Asp 'he has finished being busy (he is no longer busy)'

103 B. Ta da wan qiu -le, he play finish hall Asp 'he has finished playing hall* / N C, Ta chi wan fan -le, he eat finish meal Asp 'he has finished eating the meal'

(5.2)A, B, and C are all perfect sentences. But, if the first member is a stative verb then the V-V construction containing it is usually not acceptable, E.g,

(5*3) A, *Ta gao wan -le, he tall finish Asp 'he has finished being tali'

B, *Ta zhidao wan -le, he know finish Asp •he has finished knowing'

Since there are a huge number of nonstative verbs which can occur in this position, the first member in the V-V construction in question constitutes a variable in the sense of (4.4-7). The second member, s i however, is limited to the lexical item wan 'finish' ; thus according to what I have suggested in the previous chapter, the V-V construction in question will be very productive.

The V-V construction with a completing complement can be easily distinguished from the V-V construction with a resultative complement on the following two accounts, although they share the same semantic constraint on the first member:

(5.4) A, The former has only one variable in the construction, while the latter has two. 105

B, The former is derived by PREDICATE-LOWERING from a complex underlying structure with the completing element in the immediately higher sentence, while the latter is derived by PREDICATE-RAISING from a complex underlying structure with the resultative sentence embedded into the predicate of its immediately higher sentence.

(5.4)A can, roughly, be represented as follows* s (5.5) A. X - wan

x,

X2

x3

B. X -

X1 - yl

X2 " y2 x3 - y3

where both X and Y are variables, and small x's and y's are instances of- X and Y, respectively. It is clear, with the semantic properties of the second member fixed as shown in (5»5)A, that there cannot be any dependency relationship existing between any individual member of X in (5.5)A and wan. All the condition that the large number of verbs, which can occur as the first member in (5»5)A, have to meet is the common semantic constraint set for that variable, which, in this case, is the semantic property (NONSTATIVEJ .

As for their derivations, we know already that the underlying structures for a V-V construction with a resultative complement must be either (5«6)A or (5.6)B. 106 (5.6) A

where the identity condition is indicated by indexes. But, none

of these can possibly be the underlying structure of a surface

structure like (5.2)B, ta da-wan qlu -le. The sentence simply means

that he started playing ball some time before now, and now he has

stopped playing. It is not a resultative construction because it

does not make sense to interpret the sentence to mean that he started

playing ball some time before now, and as a result of this, he or the ball is finished. So, alternatively, (5.2)B is more likely to have am underlying structure like the followings 107

(5.7) S

Pred

The underlying structure in (5.7) is very much lilce that of the V-V construction with a direction movement verb as its second member; we apply PREDICATE-LOWERING to bring the higher predicate down on the same level with the predicate of the most deeply-embedded sentence.

As stated in 3.3.2, PREDICATE-LOWERING is a rule which will lower the higher predicate and Chomsky-adjoin it to the immediate right of the lower predicate, not to the immediate right of the lower verb; the resulting string will be

— v/ / (5.8) *Ta da qiu wan -le. he play ball finish Asp

One problem arises now. (5.8) is not a grammatical sentence. We s s still need to move qiu to the right of wan to make it acceptable. We might devise a movement rule just to achieve the purpose. The problem now is how we can avoid making an ad hoc rule, since apparently any rule which will work in this case will not work in other V-V constructions, 108 especially those of the constructions involving direction movement verbs.

We face a choice. We can either operate PREDICATE-LOWERING to lower the higher predicate and Chomsky-adjoin it to the immediate right of the lower verb as suggested first in 3.2.6, or devise some new movement rule to change (5*8) into (5.9), which is a perfect sentence. _ ^ / / (5.9) Ta da - wan qiu -le. he play finish ball Asp •he has finished playing ball*

If we choose the former, we will have to keep the PSEUDO-OBJECT

MOVEMENT RULE. The actual difference seems to be a choice between the PSEUDO-OBJECT MOVEMENT RULE and some new movement rule. Since any new rule will be of ad hoc nature, we are forced to go back to our earlier suggestion with regard to the operation of PREDICATE-

LOWERING. That is, it should lower the higher predicate and Chomsky- adjoin it to the immediate right of the lower verb, not the lower predicate. Thus, with the new evidence available, we revise our earlier suggestions along with it.

5.2.1 Ambiguous Cases

All the V-V constructions with a resultative complement can undergo the passive transformation and the Ba-transformation if the subject of the embedded sentence is identical to the object of the verb in the main sentence, while none of the V-V constructions with a completing complement can undergo the rules. The following examples illustrate this point. - ^ / / 109 (5.10) Ta da - wan qiu -le. he play finish hall Asp 'he has finished playing hall'

. . H- V/ / \ (5.11) Ta zhu - wan fan -le, he cook finish meal Asp 'he has finished cooking the meal'

There might he some dialectal differences ahout whether the Ba- transformation can apply to (5.10) and (5 .1 1 ), hut almost all people will agree that neither of the two sentences can undergo the passive transformation* / N _ / (5.12) *Qiu hei - ta da - wan -le. hall EasM he play finish Asp *'hall has heen finished playing hy him' s \ — w f (5 .1 3 ) £Ean hei - ta zhu - wan -le. meal EasM he cook finish Asp *'meal has heen finished cooking hy him'

Then, what ahout the following sentence? - / x (5.1*0 Ta chi - wan fan -le. he eat finish meal Asp 'he has finished eating*

(5.1*0 is apparently a V-V construction with a completing complement, \S and yet it can undergo hoth the Ba-transformation and the passive transformation, because hoth (5 .1 5 ) and (5.16) are perfect sentences in Mandarin, _ v/ s / (5 .1 5 ) Ta ha - fan chi - wan -le. he OM rice eat finish Asp 'he has eaten to the extent that the rice is finished* N \ / (5.16) Fan hei - ta chi - wan -le. rice EasM he eat finish Asp 'rice has heen eaten up hy him' \ The important thing that we should notice here is that fan happens to have two readings in Mandarin* 'meal* or 'cooked rice'. When it means cooked rice as in (5 .1 7) (5.1?) Ta chi - wan fan -le. he eat finish rice Asp 'he has eaten up the rice' it comes from an underlying structure like the followingt

(5.18)

S

NP Pred

Pred

(5.18) is different from (5 .1 9)* the underlying structure of (5.1*0 hecause the former is a V-V construction with a resultative com­ plement, while the latter is a V-V construction with a completing complement. Although (5*18) and (5.19) have the same surface structure, only

(5.18) can undergo both the Ba-transformation and the passive transformation. This, in turn, gives further syntactic support to the claim that these two V-V constructions should be distinguished from each other.

In a further comparison between these two V-V constructions and other V-V constructions we have discussed, a pattern seems to be emerging on the basis of whether or not they can undergo the

Ba-transformation and the passive transformation and on the type of transformational rule involved in the operations (5 .20)

V-V V-V V-V V-V Directional Intentive Resultative Completing

Can we, apply the Ba-trans­ formation? Yes No Yes No

Can we apply the passive transformation? Yes No Yes No

What type of rule is in­ volved? PREDICATE- PREDICATE- PREDICATE- PREDICATE- LOWERING RAISING RAISING LOWERING

The V-V construction with an intransitive verb as the main verb is irrelevant here since both the Ba-transformation and the passive transformation presuppose a transitive verb in the construction.

If the above analysis is correct, the four different types of

V-V constructions seem to be well-justified on both semantic and syntactic grounds. 112 5.3 The V-V Construction Which Cooccurs with Potential Elements

The two Mandarin lexical items bu and de, when inserted into

a V-V construction, indicate the potentiality or ability of the

person involved in doing or accomplishing something. While bu“ shows

a negative potentiality, de indicates a positive capacity. Notice

that they are only words of 'estimate* in the speaker's opinion, not

of fact, so they are generally known as potential elements. The V-V

constructions which cooccur with potential elements can roughly be

classified into two major groups: a bound-form group and a free-form 2 group By bound-form I mean those V-V constructions which must take

either tu or de if they are to be acceptable. All the constructions v / in this group invariably have qi as the second member. The verbs which

can occur as the first member in the construction are exemplified by

the following:

(5.21)

chi •eat* zhu' 'live' mai 'buy* kuei 'suffer a loss' k|p 'see' \ pei !indemnify' bu zuo 'sit in a ride' yun 'use' de nian •study' he". 'drink' du_ •gamble' hua • spend'

~ ~ \ J \ ^ v v In other words, chi qi. zhu qi. mai qi, etc, are all unacceptable v/ forms. literally means 'rise', but it apparently does not have any connection with the special V-V construction in question here. 113

Chi bu ql means ’cannot afford to eat*, chi de ql means *can afford \ \ V' to eat’; zhu bu ql means ’cannot afford to live (in a certain place)’, N ^ zhu de ql means ’can afford to live (in a certain place)’; etc. Thus, ql seems to mean ’afford’. At first glance, the verbs listed in the left column in (5*21) do not seem to have anything in common, but now with £i meaning ’afford’, we can see that all these verbs involve the use of money. They differ from each other only in the specific way of using the money. Hence the first member in this particular V-V construction is again a variable: any verb involving the use of money can occur in- this position. This is confirmed by the following con­ structions:

(5.22) \ zhao ’manufacture’ •open (an restaurant, etc.) v xue ’learn (something)’ •treat (people with food)*

However, there are two exceptions which also involve either bu or de plus £i, and yet have nothing to do with money. They are given below:

(5.23) \ x x/ ’look down upon (someone)* qi ’look up to (someone)’ q£ ’feel sorry to (someone) qi ’do not feel sorry to’

Cases like those in (5.23) are limited and by no means productive.

Since no generalization can be drawn out of them, for the moment

I can only treat them as idioms. 5.3*1 Some Possible Underlying Structures of the V-V Construction with a Bound-form Potential Element N Since on the surface level bu or de must occur with the V-V construction in question, the question 1st Are they transfor­ mationally derived or do they exist in the deep structure? Two possible underlying structures are given below, with (5*24) re­ presenting the transformational hypothesis and (5 .2 6 ) the phrase structure hypothesis. (5.2*0 S

NP Pred

S V

NP Pred qi

S Potential

ta V NP

chi yu

By PREDICATE-LOWERING as redefined in the section 5.2, we eventually will get

_ _ — \ / (5.25) Ta chi bu/de qi yu, he eat Pot afford fish 'he can/cannot afford to eat fish' which is a perfect sentence. 115 If (5.25) has an underlying structure like

(5 .2 6 )

S

NP Pred

S Potential V

\ NP Pred bu/de qi

ta V NP

chi yu

where the potential element is part of the higher predicate, we still can apply PREDICATE-LOWERING to get the same surface structure. Now the question isi Which of these underlying structure is more appro­ priate for a surface structure like (5 .2 5 )? If we choose (5 .2 6 ) as the underlying structure of (5 .2 5 ), we will have to specify the en­ vironment in which the potential element can occur. In addition, we will also have to explain why an element like potential bu or de can be part of the predicate, while other items cannot. These problems do not arise if we adopt (5.2*0 as the underlying structure of (5 .2 5 ),

We can simply state that all such V-V constructions must have a com­ plex underlying structure consisting of three sentences with the verb of the most deeply-embedded sentence being one which involves the use of money, the predicate of the intermediate sentence being either bu or de, and the predicate of the highest sentence being £i. If this is correct, the construction under discussion will actually be a V-V-V ll6 construction, rather than a V-V construction.

Nevertheless, something is wrong with (5 .24), especially because of the fact that the so-called potential element bu or de must cooccur with the V-V construction in question. Since the first member of the construction is a variable, while the second and the third are fixed items; this opens up a third possibility that (5*25) might have an underlying structure like

(5.27)

Potential

bu/de qi

where bu qi or de qi cannot be separated, meaning 'cannot afford' and

'can afford', respectively. If this underlying structure is adopted, ■s s ^ v/ the potential element will not be just bu or de, but bu ql or de ql instead. Yet, there are V-V constructions into which the potential \ element bu or de can be optionally inserted. How are we going to account for this fact? We need to check with other data to see if any one of the above three underlying structures has compelling reasons to be the most likely one of (5.25). For the moment, I will leave the problem open. 5.3.2 The V-V Construction with an Optional Potential Element

The V-V constructions into which the potential element can be optionally inserted include the followingt

(5.28) A. Dual-Direction V-V Construction \ shang 'go up* 'go down' jing 'go into* ,bU) lai s cjiu 'go out of’ 'de' qu guo 'go across' hui 'go back to*

B, The V-V Construction with Dao or Zhao both meaning 'successful after an attempt' as the Second Member \ kan jap •find’ \ mai_ •buy' dao^ chi 'eat' A'de' zhao hs 'drink' zhu •live'

C, Resultative V-V Construction \ xl_ 'wash' ganjin 'clean' xiu 'repair' hao 'good (be in working ,bU) condition)' vde' da^ 'attack' dao 'down' yuh 'use' huai 'bad (be not in working condition)*

D. Completing V-V Construction / nonstative wan 'de'

E. Others (5.28)A is very productive; because, for each position in the con­

struction only a limited number of lexical items can occur, and they

belong to a natural class. There is no constraint whatsoever with regard to their combinability. \ / Both dao and zhao as the second member of the V-V construction

in (5.28)B indicate that something has been done successfully after an attempt. For the most part they can be used interchangeably. When a potential element is inserted into the construction, it simply means

'to be able to do something' or 'not to be able to do something'. For examplei — \ / __ (5 *2 9) Ta jao - bu/de - zhao shu. he find Pot -successful book 'he has (not) been able to find the book (after an attempt)'

(5.29) has an underlying structure like For the resultative V-V construction as listed in (5.28)C, the poten-

\ tial element bu or de can "be freely and optionally inserted as long as the semantic dependency relationship between the first and the second members of the construction is maintained. A possible under­ lying structure for (5-33.) is like (5.32). — — \ v/ v/ (5.31) Ta xiu bu hao biao. he repair Pot good watch ’he does not have the ability to repair the watch'

(5.32)

xiu biao Pred

Applying PREDICATE-LOWERING first, we get the potential element bu to the immediate right of the lower verb xiuj We then apply PREDICATE-RAISING to move the predicate in the most \ deeply-embedded sentence to the immediate right of bu with both the lowest NP and S nodes deleted. The resulting tree diagram will be the correct surface structuret — — N ^ V (5.3*0 Ta xiu bu hao biao, which is the same as (5.31). Now if we apply PREDICATE-RAISING first and then PREDICATE-LOWERING, we will get (5.35)

_ -- - s / sf (5.35) xiu hao bu biao. he repair good Pot watch which is not a good sentence. This gives further support to our earlier argument that PREDICATE-LOWERING should apply before PRE­

DICATE-RAISING.

The underlying structure for Completing V-V Construction with a potential element is the same as that of the V-V construction with dao or zhao as the second member; I will not repeat the derivation here.

(5.28)E has only one V-V construction listed. Lai as the second 121 member in the construction is different from lai as a directional movement verb with speaker's orientation because it is a bound form in (5.28)E and does not mean a movement in a direction toward the speaker. (5.28)E differs from the other types in (5.28) in that it cannot be transformationally derived (detailed discussed will be given in 5.5). The construction qi lai simply means 'get up'. With the availability of another similar case xing lai meaning 'wake up', we might think that they are transformationally derivable if the function lai in these two cases can be clearly defined. This, however, turns out to be not true, because we find that any specific function we assign / to lai in the above cases will not work with other verbs. Finally, we ^ / are forced to conclude that qi lai and xing lai are only two idioms.

There is one type of V-V construction which cannot cooccur with any potential element -- the V-V construction with an intentive com­ plement, Thus, none of the following is acceptable: / N \ (5.36) A. lai/qu bu/de Vperf

B. l / i / q u bu/de

\ In summing up we see that the potential elements bu and de can be used as a test for a certain way of classification of the V-V construction in Mandarin. Based on this, there will be four different types. They are

(5.37) A, The V-V construction which must cooccur with the potential element bu or de, such as those in (5.21).

B, The V-V construction which cannot cooccur with the potential element bu or de, such as those with an intentive complement. 122 G. The V-V construction which can optionally cooccur with the potential element bu or de. the construction itself being trans­ formationally derivable, such as (5.28)A through D.

D. The V-V construction which can optionally cooccur with the potential element bu or de, the construction itself not being transformationally derivable, such as (5.28)E.

The syntactic behavior of (5<>37)A, B, and D is each unique, and they do not need further classification. Only (5«37)C, which consists of several different groups of V-V constructions, calls for subclassi­ fication, perhaps along the lines in (5.20).

5.4 The V-V Construction with the Second Member Functioning as the Main Verb and the First Member as a Modifier

In a sentence as given in (5.38), the relation of the two verbs in the construction is quite different from those of the other V-V constructions we have studied above.

(5.38) Ta tou mai shu. he steal buy book 'he bought the book(s) in a stealthy manner'

There are two things worth noticing in (5*38). First, the second verb mai plays the role of the main verb here — a phenomenon not seen in other V-V constructions. Second, the first verb tou has lost its original meaning 'steal', and is used metaphorically here to modify the whole sentence. It would be treated as anidiom if this were the only case. The fact that quite a fewother verbs can follow tou in a similar manner makes one wonder whether they are not transformation­ ally derivable. All those given in (5*39) are good V-V constructions. 123 (5.39) / xi 'attack' kan 'read' mai 'buy* mai 'sell' Jie 'borrow' tou yuh 'use' 'in a stealthy chi’ 'eat' manner* hV 'drink' xie_ 'write' chuan 'wear'

The belief that they might be transformationally derived is further strengthened by the following examples!

( 5 M ) \ K 'memorize' bian 'debate' qiang 'borrow* 'in a forcible mai 'buy' manner' mai •sell' yun 'use' zhif •live'

v/ \ si 'memorize' 'in a never-stop nian 'read' manner* chan 'get mixed with

N an shan 'hurt' 'in the dark' lung 'play trick on'

N ying yao •want' •in a forcible gan •do' manner*

All the first verbs in (5.^0) have lost their original meaning, and function here as a modifier in a way similar to (5.38). For example, qiang originally means 'stong', but here it means 'in a forcible v manner'; si means 'die', but here it means 'in a never-stop manner*; an means 'dark', here it means 'in the dark (used figuratively)'; \ ying means 'hard', here it means 'in a forcible manner', etc. Had

the original meanings of these words been kept, none of the con­

struction would have been acceptable as a good V-V construction.

By now one might raise the question: Could it be the case that they are homophonous lexical items rather than one being derived from the

other? The answer is negative, because in that position the five verbs given above as the first member in the construction under discussion never keep their original meanings. The only exception

is the item tou, but it must be followed by a direction movement verb,

such as tou lai meaning 'stealing (something) and moving it in a di­ rection toward the speaker', or tou qu meaning 'stealing (something) and moving it in a direction away from the speaker'. Thus, the two readings of each of the five verbs are in fact complementarily dis­ tributed, The predictability of each of the two readings on the basis of their relative position and the type of verb following them, in turn, rules out any possibility that they might be .just homophonous.

Our next problem is what kind of underlying structure that a

sentence like (5*38) might have, and how we sire going to derive it.

I would venture to posit something like the following as the under­ lying structure of (5.38). It is obvious that we need to apply PREDICATE-LOWERING to lower the

— higher predicate tou to the same level as the verb mai. But if we

apply the rule as redefined in the section of 5.2, the resulting tree

diagram will be

(5^2) S

NP Pred

ta" NP

mai tou shu

which is not acceptable. In order to get the correct surface struc- \ .— ture, we have to permute mai with tou. It is not difficult to

devise a rule to achieve this. The problem is how to justify such

a rule and to prove that the rule will not be of ad hoc nature.

There seem to be two ways of doing this. Both involve the

marking of the higher predicate with a specific semantic property,

that is, tou should be marked as C+METAPHORICAL} . Then, we can

supplement PREDICATE-LOWERING with the following statement* If

the higher predicate is marked with the property C+METAPHORICAL) we should lower it to the immediate left of the lower verb instead

of to the immediate right of the lower verb. Or, we can set up a new rule, saying that in a V-V construction the verb which is marked with the property C +METAPHORICAL} always precedes the other. Since all the first member in the V-V construction in question have to be marked C+METAPHORICAL) the property seems to constitutes a semantic constraint for the well-formedness of the output in the derivation.

We have seen as in (5.39) a great number of verbs which can occur as the second member of the construction under discussion, and, although they do not have much in common as a natural class, they all seem to be verbs of performance, involving a certain action of the person referred to in the sentence. So we can posit a more gen­ eralized underlying structure for the construction, something like the following:

(5.^3) S

f +METAPHORICAL J

V NP ( +PERFORMANCE J

both the higher verb and the lower verb are variables. The semantic properties of one must be compatible with those of the other. So, again, a certain semantic dependency relationship must be maintained \y s between the two verbs. This is supported by the fact that si ,ji *me- v/ x raorize in a never-stop manner', si nlan 'read in a never-stop manner', si chan 'mix up with (someone) without ever letting him go' are all v/ yj good V-V constructions, but *si mai 'buy in a never-stop manner', 'j \ si mai 'sell in a never-stop manner' etc, are not.

One strange aspect of the V-V construction under discussion is that examples of it do not always behave alike with regard to the Ba- 127 transformation and the passive transformation. E.g.

— - \ (5.44) Ta tou - kan xing -le. he steal read letter Asp *he has read the letter without permission*

We can apply both the Ba- transformation and the passive transformation to (5.44) to get — ^ — \ (5.45) Ta ha - xing tou - kan -le, he OM letter steal read Asp *he has read the letter without permission* N \ — — X (5.46) Xing bei - ta tou kan -le, letter PasM he steal read Asp 'the letter has been read by him without permission'

However, we cannot apply the Ba-transformation or the passive trans­ formation to (5*47), which has a V-V construction similar to (5.44). — ^ \ (5.47) Ta tou - xie xing -le. he steal write letter Asp 'he has written the letter without being known*

(5.48) *Ta ba - xing tou - xie -le, he OM letter steal write Asp \ s _ — / (5.49) *Xing bei - tatou - xie -le. letter PasM - he steal write Asp

This seemingly puzzling problem can be accounted for in terms of what traditional grammarians have labelled affectum object and effectum ob.ject \ Note that in one case (as in (5.44)) the object is under­ stood as existing antecedently to his activities, while in the other case (as in (5.47)) its existence resulted from his activities. Since both the Ba-transformation and the passive transformation presuppose an existing object, (5.44) can undergo these two rules, while (5.47) cannot.

Zwicky has pointed out to me that this criterion does not work in the English passive construction. He provides the following examples! (5.50) A. The hole was dug by John.

B, The building was built by my company.

The objects in these two sentences axe effectum objects, and yet they can occur in a passive construction. Similar examples are found in

Mandarin. Thus, the claim that I made above is apparently too strong.

It works with some instances, but not with all. The V-V constructions in Mandarin like the English idioms ^ do not behave alike with regard to the operation of certain transformations. Some may undergo several different transformations while others can undergo none of them (see the section 5.5). There are, of course, some V-V constructions which fall in between.

5.^.1 The Constraints of the Ba and the Eassive Transformation

Chinese grammarians have been long puzzled by the fact that some v/ simple verb-object constructions cannot undergo the Ba and the passive transformations, while others can. E.g.

(5.51) Ta he jiu -le. he drink wine Asp *he has drunk wine*

To (5.51) we can apply both the Ba and the passive rules to get . . — v 'J — (5.52) Ta ba - jiu he -le. he OM wine drink Asp 'he has drunk wine' v' S ■— — (5.53) Jiu bei - ta he -le, wine EasM he drink Asp •wine has been drunk by him'

However, we cannot apply either Ba or the passive transformation to

(5.5*0» which has a structure exactly like (5.5 1). — N V (5.5*0 Ta tiao - wu -le. he jump dance Asp 'he has danced' 129 v \ (5.55) *Ta ba - h u tiao -le. he OM dance jump Asp \ _ v (5.56) *Wu bei - ta tiao -le. dance BasM he jump Asp

In general, there are two types of verb-object construction which v/ cannot undergo the Ba and the passive transformations. One is the pseudo-object construction (see 3.2.1.2), and the other is exemplified by the followingj

(5.57) \ _ chang ge 'to sing songs* 4 jia> •to fight* da qiu •to play ball* da_zi x 'to hit words (to type)* chi chu_ 'to eat vinegar (to be jealous)' mai guangzi 'to be mysterious' pai rnapi 'to pat the rear of a horse (to flatter)' kan xiang 'to look at one's facial appear­ v / ances (to predict one's future)' ti^o sheng 'to jump rope (to do rope-jumping)' tiao wu 'to jump dance (to dance)'

For example, (5.58) is a good sentence, but both (5*59) and (5«6o) are not, \J s (5.58) Ta da qiu -le. he play ball Asp 'he has played ball'

(5.59) *Ta ba"- qiif da’* -le. he OM ball play Asp

(5.60) *Qiu bei - ta daf -le. ball BasM he play Asp

None of the constructions listed in (5*5?) can undergo either the

Ba-transformation or the passive transformation. According to the section 3 .2.1.1 the verbs in (5 .57) will not be classified as tran­ sitive verbs because the sentence containing the verb-object con­ struction cannot undergo these two rules, and yet the same verb with \/ ✓ another object, such as da haizi 'beat the child' can. E.g.

(5 .61) Ta da^ haizi -le, he beat child Asp 'he has beaten the child' , , \ — v / s \J (5.62) Ta ba - haizi da -le. he OM child beat Asp 'he has beaten the child* / \ - v" (5«63) Haizi bei - ta da -le, child BasM he beat Asp 'the child has been beaten by him'

So, the problem is not with the verb. A close check with all the constructions in (5.57) reveals that some constructions there are idioms, such as the following1

(5.64) N/ ^ da,jia, 'to fight' da qiu 'to play ball* da z i _ 'to type' mai guangzi 'to be mysterious' pai mapi 'to flatter' kan xiahg 'to predict one's future on the basis v / of one's facial appearances' tiao sheng 'to do rope-jumping'

In other words, the verbs here are used metaphorically, no longer retaining their original meanings. Thus, we might hypothesize that in a verb-object construction if the verb is used metaphorically, the sentence containing the construction, then, cannot undergo either the Ba or the passive transformation. This seems to be supported by the following examples: _ \ (5.65) Ta chi fan -le, he eat rice Asp 'he has eaten rice’

The verb in (5 .65 ) retains the original meaning 'to eat', so the V sentence can undergo both the Ba and the passive transformations. he OM rice eat Asp 'he has eaten rice'

^ — — (5.67) Fan bei - ta chi -le. rice EasM he eat Asp 'rice has been eaten by him'

In (5.68), however, the same verb chi 'eat' is used together with the following object idiomatically to mean 'to be jealous', so the sen­ tence containing them cannot undergo the two rules.

(5.68) Ta chi - chu -le. he eat vinegar Asp 'he has been jealous* — V V — (5 .6 9) *Ta ba - chu chi -le. he OM vinegar eat Asp

(5.70) *Chu bei - ta"" chi -le. vinegar EasM he eat Asp

If (5.69) and (5.70) both mean that he actually has eaten the vinegar, then the two sentences will be good sentences. Similar examples can

"be found with other verbs in (5.6*0. But the verbs in the remaining two verb-object construction in (5*57) are not used metaphorically.

They still retain their original meanings} 'to sing', and 'to jump', respectively. E.g.

(5.71) \ _ chang ge 'to sing song* tiao wu 'to jump dance (to dance)'

Thus, to claim that in a simple verb-object construction, only those marked with the property ( +METAPH0RICAL3 are barred from the Baf and the passive transformations, is not all true. We need to search a more general constraint. At first, I thought of borrowing Fillmore's notion of cases ^ in the underlying structure to serve as the semantic constraint. A statement like (5*72) might serve our purpose here. (5.72) A sentence containing an Agent in the under- lyingstructure can invariably undergo both the Ba and the passive transformations; other­ wise, it cannot.

After testing this over all the verb-object constructions in (5*57).

I have found (5.72) too strong because it does not work with chang ge

'to sing songs' and da qiu 'to play ball'. According to Fillmore, the subjects in the following two sentences will be classified as

Agents, and therefore the sentences containing them should be able to undergo both rules. \ _ (5.73) Ta chang - ge -le. he sing song Asp 'he has sung songs'

(5.7*0 Tamen da - qiu -le. they play ball Asp 'they have played ball'

However, the outputs of (5.73) and (5.7*0 after the application of the two rules are all unacceptable.

_ n/ — (5.75) *Ta ba - ge chang -le. he OM song sing Asp __ N _ X (5.76) *Ge bei - ta chang -le. song EasM he sing Asp

So the Agent criterion does not work completely, either.

This situation is very much like the V-V constructions in the previous section; while some of which can undergo both the Ba and the passive transformations, others cannot.

5.5" The V-V Construction Which Must Be Treated As an Idiom

In this section I will argue that there are some surface V-V constructions in Mandarin which cannot be derived transformationally.

They must be treated as idioms. That is, they must exist in the 133 underlying structure. My argument is mainly based on the following

points:

(5.77) A, Semantic correlation between the V-V construction and its members is not properly maintained,

B, Structural conditions for transforma­ tional rules such as PREDICATE- LOWERING or PREDICATE-RAISING do not exist,

C, The claim that synonymous sentences have the same underlying structure is dubious,

D, No generalization can be drawn out of the V-V construction which must be treated as idioms, except in the negative sense.

The rest of this section is devoted to a discussion of (5*77)A-D.

5.5.1 Semantic Correlation between the V-V Construction and Its Members

In all the V-V constructions we have studied so far, there is a strong semantic correlation between the V-V constructions and their respective members. E.g. _ ^ / (5.78) A. Ta shang - lai -le. he go - up come Asp 'he has come up (toward the speaker)' _ ^ \ \ B. Ta ba - shu ban - guo - qu -le, he OM book move across go Asp 'he has moved the books over (away from the speaker)' _ / — x C. Ta lai chi - fan. he come eat meal 'he comes for meal' — \y •—> v % D. Ta ba - yifu xi - ganjin -le. he OM clothes wash clean Asp 'he has washed the clothes clean' 13k - ^ ^ \ E. Ta xie - wan xing -le. he write finish letter Asp 'he has finished writing the letter' _ v \/ _ P. Ta mai - bu - qi shu. he buy cannot afford book 'he cannot afford to buy the book' - — \ \ G, Ta tou - kan xing -le. he steal read letter Asp 'he has read the letter without permission'

The semantic representations of the V-V constructions (5.78)A-G are actually the combination of their respective members. For instance, shang-lal refers to a movement going upward and toward the speaker. \ / and this is exactly the combination of shang 'going upward' and lai \ \ 'a movement going in the direction toward the speaker'; ban-guo-qu means to move something across a plane in a direction away from the / — speaker: lai-chl means to come to eat: etc. Each of these V-V con­ structions represents the total meaning of their members. The verb which is most deeply embedded usually plays the key role in the V-V construction, and the other verb adds some additional raeaning(s) to it.

However, none of the V-V constructions below carris the meaning which amounts to the combination of the meaning of its respective members.

/ . — N ^ / — (5*79) Ta mai - lung wenzhang. he sell play writing 'he shows off with his writings' s v/ _ (5.80) Dianylng sha - qing -le. movie kill blue Asp 'the movie (the shooting of) is completed'

(5.81) Ta xun - duan - jian -le. he look- for short view Asp •he has committed suicide' 135 \ \ s Mai-lung 'to show off' has no direct correlation with mai 'to sell*

or lung ’to play' . Sha-qing 'to complete' can in no way be related

to sha 'to kill* or qlng 'to be blue* except in a historical sense

(in the ancient time when paper was not invented yet, Chinese people

often wrote their first draft on the blue skin of the bamboo because

it was easy to erase, and when the whole thing was finished, they took

off the blue part of the bamboo. This was referred to as sha-qing

. ✓ v/ \ then), Xun-duan-.jian 'to commit suicide' can hardly be related to

any of its three membersi xun 'to look for', duan 'to be short', and

.jian 'view',

5,5,2 Structural Conditions for Transformational Rules

The condition(s) for the application of a transformation must be

considered as one of the essential parts in the theory, A check over

the previous chapters or sections of this chapter will convince any

reader of this dissertation of this, especially in the derivations of

the V-V constructions such as those listed in (5.78). Now what sort

of underlying structure might we suggest for such V-V constructions as

those in (5.79)-(5«8l)? For the application of either FREDICATE-

LOWERING or PREDICATE-RAISING, we need a complex underlying structure with one sentence embedded into another plus some other conditons.

Take (5.79) for instance. We might first assume that it has an under­

lying structure like the followingj mai wenzhang

If (5»82) is the correct underlying structure of (5.79)» we can simply apply PREDICATE-LOWERING to get the correct surface structure.

But, this will violate two basic principles: First, the underlying

structure must correctly represent the semantic interpretation of the corresponding surface structure, and this, apparently, is not the case \ \ here. Mai-lung 'to show off' can hardly be derived from an underly- v \ ing structure with mai 'to sell' in the embedded sentence, and lung

'to play' as the higher predicate because the semantic representation of (5.82) is not only incorrect but unacceptable. Second, McCawley

(1969b) has taken the position that all transformations should be n meaning-preserving . Thus, even if (5.82) were an acceptable under­ lying structure, the application of any transformation to change (5.82) into (5.79) would result in a change of meaning. It is under these conditions that (5.82) cannot be accepted as the correct underlying structure of (5.79). We then might try to derive the V-V construction in (5.79) from an

underlying structure like (5*83) PREDICATE-RAISING.

(5.83)

s ^ — mai wenzhang

wenzhang

This will not do, either, because this type of underlying structure represents the resultative V-V construction. It has a specific semantic interpretation such as 'As a result of X, Y occurs'. Here

X refers to the action taken by the person involved in the higher

sentence, and Y refers to the thing(s) happening as stated in the embedded sentence. This simply is not correct if we say that as a result of his selling his writings, he plays with them.

Finally, we might try to derive (5.79) from a conjoined structure, such as the followingi \ ^ - z' — mai wenzhang wenzhang

There are two objections to having (5.84) as the underlying structure of (5-79)• First, Sg ta lung wenzhang ’he plays with writings’ is not ~ V s ^ — a good sentence in Mandarin, Second, ta mai lung wenzhang ’he shows off with his writings' is different from the combination of S^ ta mai / _ N. /^ - wenzhang ’he sells writings', and Sg ta lung wenzhang 'he plays with \ \ writings’, -If mai-lung can be so derived, any transformation which makes this possible will again violate the principle of meaning- preserving. So, our conclusion is that the V-V constructions in (5.79)-

(5.81) must exist in the underlying structure.

5.5.3 The Claim that Synonymous Sentences Have the Same Underlying Structure

Some Generative Semanticists like Postal have been arguing that sentences which axe synonymous with each other should have the same underlying structure. For example, I eat pork should have the same underlying structure as I eat meat which comes from a pig. If Postal \ \S _ is correct, the underlying structure of (5 .8 0) dianylng sha-qing -le 139 'the movie is completed' will be the same as that of (5.85), since

the latter is synonymous with (5 .8 8). N V/ / / (5 .85 ) Dianying wan - cheng -le. movie finish~succeed Asp 'the movie is completed'

However, this claim is dubious, owing to the following two points.

First, the fact that (5«80) and (5.85) a x e synonymous does not

warrant that the two V-V constructions sha-qing 'to complete' and

wan-cheng 'to complete' can substitute for each other in other places.

s ' A check over the uses of these two constructions reveals that wan-

cheng has a much wider distribution than sha-qing. for the latter can

only refer to the completion of a literary work or the shooting of a

movie, while the former can refer to the completion of anything. Thus,

(5.86) is a good sentence, while (5*87) is not.

(5.86) Gonglu wan - cheng -le. highway finish-succeed Asp 'the highway is completed'

(5•87) *Gonglu sha - qing -le. highway kill-blue Asp

Second, while wan-cheng can be used either transitively or in­

transitively, sha-qing can be used only intransitively. This is

illustrated by (5*88), which is grammatical, and (5.89), which is not. — / / \ v (5.88) Tamen wan - cheng dianying -le, they finish-succeed movie Asp 'they have completed the movie' — \ V (5.89) *Taraen sha - qing dianying -le. they kill-blue movie Asp

All these show that there are more constraints for sha-qing than for wan-cheng.

We might argue, as Postal does on the English verb remind, that lUO — / ^ sha-qing has wan-cheng as its semantic representation, and that when / / the subject of wan-cheng is either a literary work or a movie, an / / _ - optional transformation will change wan-cheng into sha-qing. This is not acceptable, either, because the rule will be completely of ad hoc nature, too idiosyncratic to be useful in a generative grammar.

On the other hand, there are clear cases where the synonymous sentences have the same underlying structure, E.g,

(5.90) Mary wrote the letter,

(5»9l) The letter was written by Mary, or

(5.92) The assertion that she smokes pot was made by John,

(5*93) The assertion was made by John that she smokes pot.

What all these indicate is that sentences with the same underlying structure are synonymous, but not necessarily vice versa,

5.5A No Generalization Gan Be Drawn Out Of Idiomatic V-V Construc­ tions Except in the Negative Sense

In all the V-V constructions we have studied in the previous chapters or previous sections of this chapter, we have sooner or later come to make some generalization with regard to their structural con­ ditions as well as semantic constraints for the application of a par­ ticular transformation or for the well-formedness of the output of the transformation. But for the idiomatic V-V constructions such as listed below in (5.9^0» we cannot find any generalization except in the negative sense, ^ \ (5.9*0 mai - lung sell play 'to show off' lUi

sha - qing kill - blue *to complete' / \ N xun - duan - jian look for - short - view 'to commit suicide' V. \ v/ kan - bu - ai look - Pot - rise 'to despise (look down upon)* \ v' kan - de ~ qi look - Pot rise •to respect (look up to)' \ \ v/ duei - bu - qi correct - Pot - rise 'to feel sorry to (someone) for failing to do what one was supposed to do' \ v/ duei - de - qi correct - Pot - rise 'not to feel sorry to (anyone) for having tried one's best in carrying out one's duties'

For example, the lis t in (5*95) indicates some of the things they a ll

share,

(5*95) A, None of the V-V construction in (5.9*0 can undergo the Ba-transformation,

B, None of them are derived through PREDICATE-LOWERING or PREDICATE-RAISING.

C, None of them to le ra te s any in sertio n ,

D, None of them has any d ire c t correlation with their respective members with regard to their semantic representation.

The l i s t might be fu rth e r expanded. However, I cannot fin d any syn­ tactic behavior they share in common in the positive sense. This plus the other facts stated above, leaves me the only alternative, that is, the V-V constructions in question are different from a ll the others we have discussed in the previous sections. The semantic idiosyncrasies of each of the V-V constructions in (5»9*0 justify the claim that they are idioms. 1U3

CHAPTER V

FOOTNOTES

1. The lexical item hao ’good' in Mandarin sometimes can be used to substitute for wan to mean 'finish'. This is a borrowing from Wu dialect. Also see Chapter III footnote 3»

2. The terms free and bound are borrowed from Chac (19W).

3. Chao has called dao or zhao as phase complement. The term is not very well defined; hence it is not adopted here. k . Fillmore discussed affectum object and effectum object in the Case for Case and justified the distinction between these two types of objects on syntactic ground with English examples.

5. Fraser (1970) discussed English idioms in terms of the application or nonapplication of certain transformational rules. He claims that English idioms do not behave all alike with regard to their applicability of a certain number of transformations, thus, they can be hierarchically arranged. For example, the four idioms below reflect different degrees of applicability with regard to the following three rules: particle movement, passive transformation, and nominal!zation,

blow off some steam fcorapletelh frozen) put on some weight (less frozen) make up one's mind (still less frozen) lay down the law (not frozen)

In other words, for (l) none of the three transformations can apply. For (2) only particle movement is permitted; for (3 ) both particle movement and passive transformation can apply; for (4) all three rules can apply.

6 . See Fillmore (1966a), (1966b), and (1968).

7. See Barbara Hall Eartee (1971)* CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

To sm up, I have done the following things in this disserta­ tions

I have stated how the V-V constructions in Mandarin (under d iffe re n t lab els) were treated by Y. R, Chao and A. Hashimoto, and why their treatments were not very satisfactory. As an alternative,

I have classified the V-V constructions into the following types:

(6,1) A. The V-V construction in which the second member is a directional complement;

B, The V-V construction in which the second member is an in te n tiv e complement;

C, The V-V construction in which the second member is a re s u lta tiv e complement;

D, The V-V construction with the second member functioning as a completing complement;

E. The V-V construction which cooccurs with potential elements;

F. The V-V construction with the second member functioning as the main verb and the firs t member as a modifier of the second;

G. V-V compounds which must be treated as idioms; on the basis of the semantic and syntactic properties of the lexical items serving as complement in the construction. The complements were chosen because in most cases they are ra th e r lim ited in number compared w ith the great number of items which can serve as the main verb o f the construction,

144 1^5

My analysis is also extended to the V-V-V, V-V-V-V, and

V-V-V-V-V constructions, which always involve a primary direction verb.

In providing the sources of these constructions, I have relied mainly on the semantic representation of each of the constructions.

In the derivation of these constructions I have proposed a transfor­ mation, namely PREDICATE-LOWERING, and borrowed the rule PREDICATE-

RAISING from McCawley with some modification to suit the data here.

I have demonstrated that in some cases (as in (4.22) and (5.32)) the above two rules must be ordered in the manner below:

(6.2) A. PREDICATE-LOWERING

B. PREDICATE-RAISING although there are cases where the ordering of these two rules does not make any difference,

I have also subdivided the V-V construction with a resultative complement into three more classes on the basis of their syntactic behavior.

In addition, I have made the following claims:

(6 .3 ) A. Reduplication of the verb in Mandarin can serve as a surface constraint in the sense of Perlmutter.

B, There are various levels of semantic variable just as we have seen that there are various levels of natural class in phonology as well as in syntax. It is extremely difficult to distinguish semantic variable from natural class on formal grounds.

C, The V-V construction in which the second member is a resultative complement cannot be very productive because there are two low-level 146

semantic variables involved in the construction, plus a semantic dependency relatio n s h ip existing between these two variables,

D, The g en erativity of a grammar has a great deal to do with the level of the variables involved in the construction. Roughly, if the con­ struction involves two variab les, and they are both of high level (sharing a ll common proper­ ties except one), then the construction is most productive. On the other hand, if the two variables are both of low level (sharing only one or two common properties with others differing from each other), then there w ill be a dependency re latio n s h ip required in the construction, and the rule to derive the construction is not very productive. A third case iss I f one o f the two variables is of low level and the other of high level, then the construction is again productive. For those classes which fa ll in between, it is s till an open question as to how they are connected with the g en erativity o f the grammar. Presumably, the productivity of the mile is in proportion to the number of the properties shared in common.

In stating that certain V-V compounds must be treated as idioms,

I have given examples to show th at they cannot be derived through transformational rules.

Above a ll, the study has made clear that semantic classes of lexical items correlate closely with their syntactic behavior. For example, the V-V construction with a resultative complement cannot undergo PREDICATE-LOWERING, while the V-V construction w ith a direc­ tio n a l complement cannot undergo PREDICATE-RAISING, This, to a con­ siderable degree, can be accounted for in terms of the underlying semantic representation. The semantic representation of the V-V construction w ith a re s u lta tiv e complement is required to have an identity condition between the subject of the embedded sentence and the subject or the object in the matrix sentence, which happens to "be the structural condition for PREDIGATE-RAISING, but not for

PREDICATE-LOWERING. Likewise, the semantic representation of the

V-V construction of a d ire c tio n a l complement does not meet the id e n tity condition, so i t cannot undergo PREDICATE-RAISING, In other words, a semantic class of lexical items, whether we call it semantic variable or natural class, has certain definite syntactic behavior which uniquely reflects this particular class. Of course, it is quite possible for two semantic classes to have some overlap­ ping cases. Some may be able to undergo a great number of transfor­ mations, others a few less, and s till others none of any of the rules.

If this phenomenon exists across languages, we then might claim that the true nature of language is just like this. Some part of language can be most system atically accounted fo r , others have to be d e a lt with idiosyncratically, and some others fa ll in between. Then our goal in the study of - linguistics is not to try to provide a theory which w ill enable us to write a grammar which, in turn, w ill account for every phenomenon in linguistics in terms of formalized rules, but rather a theory which w ill enable us to face the nature of language as it is----- that is, a theory which w ill enable us to write a grammar to reach the maximal degree of formalism in accounting for a ll the linguistic phe­ nomena observed, while accepting a ll the exceptions which we have confronted in the study of natural languages. m

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