Lectures (Non)-Culminatives Des Accomplissements Causatifs En Mandarin

A mes parents et mon fils Remerciements

En premier lieu, je tiens à remercier Hamida Demirdache, Angeliek van Hout, Lisa Cheng, Orin Percus et Hongyuan Sun pour avoir accepté de faire partie de mon jury de thèse.

Je voudrais tout particulièrement remercier ma directrice de thèse, Hamida Demirdache, sans qui je n’aurais jamais pu mener cette thèse à son terme. Je la remercie pour ses conseils et son suivi attentif tout au long de cette thèse. Je la remercie pour sa patience, pour son aide précieuse et pour toutes les heures qu’elle a consacrées à m’aider. Et enfin, Je la remercie pour la confiance qu’elle m’a témoigné tout au long de ces années et pour tous ses conseils et remarques constructives.

Je tiens à remercier Fabienne Martin, et Hongyuan Sun qui m’ont aidée par leurs remarques et leurs conseils à avancer dans la réalisation de cette thèse.

Merci aussi à Angeliek van Hout, qui en tant que membre de mon Comité de Suivi de Thèse, m’a permis de participer à son projet de recherche dont j’ai pu bénéficier pour réaliser ma thèse.

Merci aux membres du LLING (Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes) : Orin Percus (qui m’a appris la sémantique formelle), Jiyoung Choi, Oana Lungu, Natasa knezevic, et Ana Bosnic. Même si je n’étais pas souvent avec eux, c’était toujours un plaisir de venir et de pouvoir discuter.

Enfin, je remercie mes amis qui ont été là dans les moments difficiles. Un grand merci à ma famille et plus particulièrement à mes parents et mon fils qui m’ont toujours soutenu tout au long de mes études et sans qui rien n’aurait été possible. Vous avez toujours été là et n’avez jamais cessé de croire en moi. Je serai éternellement reconnaissant de tout ce que vous avez fait.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates (non)-culminating construals of causative accomplishments in Mandarin, which consist of two subevents, a process event brings a change of state, which may come about gradually or instantaneously. Mandarin causative accomplishments can be encoded either by Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment (MCA) verbs (e.g. shā ‘kill’) or by Resultative Verb Compounds (RVCs, e.g. shā-sǐ ‘kill-dead’).

Based on Chief (2007) and Fleischhauer (2016), according to their scale structures, this dissertation breaks down MCA verbs into two classes: gradable (having more than three degrees in the scale of state change) vs. ungradable (having only two degrees in the scale of state change). Considering their bieventive structures, the following claims are put forth: i) Unlike RVCs which entail the culmination, MCA verbs in Mandarin imply the culmination, allowing nonculminating (NC) construals; ii) Gradable MCA verbs allow NC construals without adverbial modification, while ungradable MCA verbs allow NC construals when there are modifications of frequency adverbs, such as several times. Moreover, based on Demirdache & Martin’s (2015) Agent Control Hypothesis, we contend that agenthood also facilitates NC construals for MCA verbs.

Three experiments are designed and carried out to investigate (non)-culminating readings of accomplishment verbs among Mandarin adults and children, concerning respectively accomplishments of three different constructions: (i) MCA verbs; (ii) RVCs; (iii) MCA verbs + hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. The results with Mandarin adults confirm our claim that they reject RVCs in perfective form under zero-result conditions while accepting MCA verbs in perfective form when there is modification of the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. On the other hand, adults differentiate gradable from ungradable MCA verbs for NC construals. More acceptance yields with gradable MCA verbs under zero-result condition. The results with the children suggest here that they have indeed acquired the culmination inference carried by MCA verbs, as the findings for experiment 3 clearly show, but fail to cancel this inference in the absence of explicit linguistic cues. We thus suggest that children’s overly restrictive behavioral pattern of interpretation under experiment 1 with MCA verbs arises because children fail to cancel the lexical implicature in the absence of linguistic cue or trigger, such as the adverb of frequency ‘several times’. Mandarin children’s rejection of NC readings with MCA verbs is thus a problem with implicatures. The experimental studies provide novel experimental evidence from Mandarin adult and child language that MCA verbs in Mandarin are bieventive, and that the cancelling of implicatures should be more complex than their calculation. Keywords: Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment Verbs; (Non)culminating Readings; Gradable Verbs; Agent-control

iii

Résumé

Cette thèse examine les lectures (non)-culminatives des accomplissements causatifs en mandarin. Ces prédicats décrivent deux éventualités : un événement causatif et un état résultant, liés par un opérateur causatif. On distingue deux formes d’accomplissements causatifs en mandarin: les verbes résultatifs composés (VRCs) du type V1-V2, et les verbes monomorphémiques causatifs (VMCs), qui ne contient qu’un seul verbe.

Les VMCs en mandarin se divisent en deux classes : les VMCs gradables vs. les VMCs non- gradables. Nous proposons que: 1) Contrairement aux VRCs qui assurent le changement d’état, VMCs n’assurent pas le changement d’état mais l’impliquent. 2) VMCs gradables permettent la lecture non-culminative (NC) alors que les VMCs non-gradables ne la permettent pas en l’absence d’adverbes de modification. De plus, en adoptant l’Hypothèse du Contrôle de l’Agent (Agent Control Hypothesis) proposée par Demirdache & Martin (2015), nous argumentons que l’agentivité facilite les lectures non-culminatives.

Dans cette étude, trois expériences ont été effectuées afin d’examiner les lectures (non)- culminatives des prédicats d’accomplissements de trois structures différentes chez les adultes et les enfants parlant mandarin : (i) VMCs ; (ii) VRCs ; et (iii) VMCs modifiés par l’adverbe de fréquence hǎojǐcì ‘plusieurs fois’. Les résultats chez les locuteurs adultes du mandarin confirment nos hypothèses : ils n’acceptent pas les phrases avec des VRCs aux formes perfectives pour les événements sans changement d’état, autant qu’ils acceptent les phrases aux formes perfectives avec des VMCs gradables. Autrement, quand il y a la modification de l’adverbe de fréquence hǎojǐcì ‘plusieurs fois’ pour les événements sans changement d’état, non seulement les VMCs gradables, mais aussi les VMCs non-gradables, sont acceptés. En revanche, les enfants ont montré des résultats totalement différents de ceux des adultes. Selon les résultats de l’expérience, les enfants appliquent les règles sémantiques mieux que les règles pragmatiques quand ils interprètent les culminations impliquées des VMCs. Comme les adultes, ils acceptent largement les phrases avec des VMCs aux formes perfectives modifiées par l’adverbe de fréquence hǎojǐcì ‘plusieurs fois’ même si l’événement n’arrive pas à la culmination. Contrairement aux adultes, les enfants à l’âge de 5 ans n’acceptent pas les phrases avec VMCs gradables pour les événements incomplets. Cela suggère que les enfants ne comprennent pas bien la culmination impliquée des accomplissements lorsqu'ils doivent tenir compte des paramètres contextuels et pragmatiques. Annuler la culmination paraît difficile pour les enfants. Les résultats expérimentaux ont permis de conclure que les VMCs sont des prédicats avec la structure biévénementielle, et que l’annulation des implicatures est plus difficile que leur calcul.

Mots clés : Accomplissements Causatifs ; Lectures (Non)-culminatives ; Gradable ; Contrôle de l’Agent

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1 1.1 (Non)culminating Construals of Causative Accomplishment Verbs ...... 1 1.2 The Motivations of this Study ...... 6 1.2.1 Theoretical Literature ...... 6 1.2.2 Previous Experimental Studies ...... 9 1.2.3 Goals & Research Questions...... 11 1.3 Structure of the Thesis ...... 13

Chapter 2 Nonculminating Construals of Accomplishments ...... 17 2.1 Introduction ...... 17 2.2 Aspect ...... 18 2.2.1 Lexical Aspect ...... 18 2.2.1.1 Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements and States: Vendler (1967) ...... 19 2.2.1.2 [±STATIC, ±DURATIVE, ±TELIC]: Smith (1997) ...... 21 2.2.2 Grammatical Aspect ...... 25 2.2.3 Telicity ...... 27 2.3 Event Structure of Accomplishments ...... 29 2.3.1 Process + Culmination ...... 29 2.3.2 Tests for Accomplishments ...... 32 2.4 Nonculminating Construals ...... 36 2.4.1 Types of Nonculminating Construals ...... 36 2.4.2 Source of Nonculminating Construals ...... 39 2.4.2.1 Lexical Perspective ...... 40 2.4.2.1.1 Scale Hypothesis ...... 40 2.4.2.1.2 Partitive Approach ...... 42 2.4.2.2 Aspectual Perspective ...... 45 2.4.2.3 Agent Control Hypothesis ...... 48 2.4.2.4 Pragmatic Knowledge ...... 56 2.5 Conclusion ...... 60

Chapter 3 Mandarin Causative Accomplishment ...... 61 3.1 Are there Monomorphemic Accomplishment Verbs in Mandarin? ...... 62 3.1.1 No, there are no monomorphemic accomplishment verbs in Mandarin ...... 62 3.1.1.1 Shi (1988) & Lin (2004) ...... 63 3.1.1.2 Sun Z. (2013) ...... 64 3.1.1.3 Chen (2007) ...... 70 3.1.2 Yes, there are monomorphemic accomplishment verbs in Mandarin ...... 71

3.2 Bieventive Causative Accomplishment Verbs ...... 74 3.2.1 CA Verbs in Mandarin: MCA Verbs vs. RVCs ...... 75 3.2.1.1Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment Verbs ...... 76 3.2.1.2 Resultative Verb Compound ...... 77 3.2.2 Martin et al.’s Typology ...... 80 3.2.2.1 Result-implied Monoeventive vs. Result-implied Bieventive Simple Verbs ...... 82 3.2.2.2 Gradable vs. Ungradable Result-implied Bieventive MCA Verbs ...... 84 3.2.3 Diagnostic: Subordinate Imperfective Temporal Modifider -zhe ...... 85 3.3 Gradable vs. Ungradable MCA Verbs ...... 87 3.3.1 Gradation & Gradability ...... 87 3.3.2 Chief’s Classification of Mandarin MCA Verbs ...... 91 3.3.3 Fleischhauer’s Gradable vs. Ungradable CA Verbs ...... 95 3.4 Mandarin Gradable vs. Ungradable MCA Verbs ...... 99 3.4.1 Diagnostics to Distinguish the Two Classes ...... 100 3.4.2 Gradability Experiment ...... 104 3.4.2.1 Research Questions and Hypotheses ...... 104 3.4.2.2 Method ...... 105 3.4.2.2.1 Participants ...... 105 3.4.2.2.2 Procedure & Materials ...... 105 3.4.2.3 Results ...... 109 3.4.3 Ungradable MCA Verbs Are not Achievements ...... 111 3.5 Conclusion ...... 113

Chapter 4 On the Source of Nonculminating Construals for Mandarin Perfective Accomplishments ...... 114 4.1 Gradable vs. Ungradable MCA Verbs: Partial Result Readings ...... 114 4.2 Perfective Marker -le: Partitive Operator ...... 118 4.3 MCA Verbs Combined with -le: Zero-result Readings ...... 121 4.3.1 Incremental Theme Gradable MCA Verbs + -le ...... 121 4.3.2 Nonincremental Theme Gradable MCA Verbs + -le ...... 122 4.3.3 Ungradable MCA Verbs + -le ...... 124 4.4 Agent Control over Nonculminating Readings ...... 125 4.4.1 Weak Version of Agent Control Hypothesis ...... 125 4.4.2 Agent vs. Cause Subject and Scale Structure for Gradable Verbs ...... 126 4.5 Summary ...... 128

Chapter 5 Children’s Acquisition of Event Culmination ...... 130 5.1 Children’s Early Sensitivity to Endstate Change in Production ...... 130 5.2 Children’s Neglect of Endstate Change in Comprehension ...... 132

5.2.1 Manner Bias Hypothesis ...... 133 5.2.2 Wittek’s Hypotheses: Transparent Endstate & Weak Endstate Interpretation .... 136 5.2.3 van Hout’s Studies: Form to Meaning Mapping ...... 144 5.2.4 Martin et al.’s Invariant Meaning Hypothesis ...... 156 5.3 Mandarin Children’s Acquisition of Causative Accomplishments ...... 158 5.3.1 The Acquisition of Mandarin RVCs ...... 159 5.3.2 The Acquisition of Mandarin MCA Verbs vs. RVCs: Chen (2004, 2008, 2016) 160 5.4 Summary and Conclusion ...... 165

Chapter 6 Experiment 1: Nonculminating Construals of Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishments ...... 167 6.1 Introduction ...... 167 6.2 Research Questions and Predictions ...... 168 6.3 Methods ...... 169 6.3.1 Subjects ...... 169 6.3.2 Task ...... 170 6.3.3 Materials ...... 173 6.4 Results ...... 179 6.4.1 Coding ...... 179 6.4.2 Mean “Yes” Responses for All the Three Groups ...... 181 6.4.3 Subject Types ...... 183 6.4.4 Two Classes of MCA Verbs ...... 188 6.5 Discussion ...... 194 6.6 Conclusion ...... 199

Chapter 7 Experiment 2: Culmination in Resultative Verb Compunds ...... 201 7.1 Introduction ...... 201 7.2 Research Questions and Predictions ...... 202 7.3 Methods ...... 203 7.3.1 Subjects ...... 203 7.3.2 Materials ...... 204 7.4 Results ...... 207 7.4.1 “Yes” Responses across All the Three Groups ...... 207 7.4.2 Subject Types ...... 211 7.5 Discussion：Culmination in MCA Verbs vs. in RVCs ...... 211

Chapter 8 Experiment 3: Modification of Frequency Adverbs ...... 214 8.1 Introduction ...... 214

vii

8.2 Research Questions and Predictions ...... 215 8.3 Methods ...... 215 8.3.1 Subjects ...... 215 8.3.2 Materials ...... 216 8.4 Results ...... 221 8.4.1 “Yes” Responses across All Four Age Groups ...... 221 8.4.2 Nonculminating Construals: Agent vs. Cause Subject ...... 223 8.4.3 Comparison: Without vs. With hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ ...... 229 8.4.4 Comparison: Three Experiments ...... 233 8.5 Discussion ...... 236

Chapter 9 Conclusions ...... 239 9.1 Summary of My Proposals ...... 239 9.2 Summary of My Experimental Studies ...... 245 9.2.1 Findings with Mandarin Adults ...... 245 9.2.2 Findings with Mandarin Children ...... 246 9.2.2.1 Canceling Lexical Implicatures is Difficult ...... 250 9.2.2.2 Two Different Behavioral Patterns of Canceling Lexical Implicatures ...... 252 9.3 Further Investigations ...... 254

Bibliography ...... 256

Appendix : Test Items of the Four Experiments ...... 270

viii

List of Tables

Table 1 Examples of Vendler’s verb classes ...... 19 Table 2 Smith’s aspectual feature system ...... 24 Table 3 Tatevosov’s event structures of nonculminating MCA verbs ...... 44 Table 4 Martin & Gyarmathy’s typology of perfective operators ...... 48 Table 5 Target “No” answers for simple telic predicates ...... 53 Table 6 Target “No” answers for locatum predicates ...... 53 Table 7 Yin and Kaiser’s conditions, examples and predictions...... 54 Table 8 Acceptance by conditions and predicates in the 1st experiment ...... 57 Table 9 Acceptance by conditions and predicates in the 2nd experiment ...... 58 Table 10 Martin et al.’s typology of simple verbs in Mandarin ...... 81 Table 11 Relation between durativity and gradability ...... 90 Table 12 Classification of MCA verbs (adapted from Martin et al. 2018b) ...... 100 Table 13 Predictions for Mandarin adults on two types of MCA verbs...... 104 Table 14 Gradable vs. Ungradable MCA verbs ...... 106 Table 15 Testing probes’ conditions ...... 107 Table 16 8 Testing items in order...... 107 Table 17 Acceptability of MCA verbs modified by degree adverbial “a little” ...... 110 Table 18 Design of Wittek’s experiment ...... 138 Table 19 Wittek’s Experiment 1: percentage of “No” answers under the NEC condition ...... 138 Table 20 Wittek’s Experiment 1, NEC: Percentage of “No” Answers among Children Participants ...... 139 Table 21 Wittek’s Experiment 3 vs. Experiment 1: percentage of “No” answers in the NEC condition ...... 141 Table 22: Mean percentage of telic interpretation of different sentence types in Dutch. 147 Table 23:Mean percentage of telic interpretation of different sentence types in English 147 Table 24 Types of Non-adultlike Interpretations of Telic Sentences across Languages . 157 Table 25 Chen's target sentences and Chen’s translation ...... 163 Table 26 Percentage of “Yes” responses by age and typology of V1 in Chen’s experiment ...... 163 Table 27 Overview of number, average age, age range and gender of all groups in

Experiment 1 ...... 170 Table 28 Experimental conditions in Experiment 1 ...... 174 Table 29 32 Test items in order in Experiment 1 ...... 176 Table 30 Descriptive statistics of mean proportion of “Yes” responses, standard deviation, and number of “Yes” responses in Experiment 1 ...... 182 Table 31 Mean acceptance (“Yes” answers) per group in two zero-result conditions .... 184 Table 32 Number of “Yes” answers under zero-result in sequential order among 3-Y-O ...... 191 Table 33 Overview of number, average age, age range and gender of all groups in Experiment 2 ...... 204 Table 34 English equivalents of the 8 RVCs in Mandarin in Experiment 2 ...... 204 Table 35 Experimental conditions in Experiment 2 ...... 205 Table 36 Descriptive statistics of mean proportion of “Yes”-responses ...... 208 Table 37 Overview of number, average age, age range and gender of all groups in Experiment 3 ...... 216 Table 38 8 MCA verbs+ hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ in Mandarin in Experiment 3 ...... 218 Table 39 Experimental conditions in Experiment 3 ...... 218 Table 40 Descriptive statistics of mean proportion of “Yes”-responses, number of “Yes”- responses and standard deviation...... 222 Table 41 ACH tested across the three experiments ...... 236 Table 42 Locus of nontarget-T interpretations of causative accomplishments ...... 248 Table 43 Testing sentences in order in the 1st experiment (MCA) ...... 270 Table 44 Testing sentences in order in the 2nd experiment (RVCs) ...... 273 Table 45 Testing sentences in order in the 3rd experiment+ hǎojǐcì ...... 276 Table 46 4 Gradable and 4 ungradable MCA verbs tested in Chapter 3 ...... 278

List of Figures

Figure 1 Classification of MCA verbs in Mandarin ...... 5 Figure 2 Naturalness rating (n refers to the number of participants) ...... 55 Figure 3 Chief’s four types of induced change of state verbs ...... 92 Figure 4 Chief’s gradable incremental scale ...... 92 Figure 5 Chief's two types of gradable scales...... 93 Figure 6 Modified classification of MCA verbs ...... 95 Figure 7 Gradable+ degree adverbial modifier ‘a little’ ...... 108 Figure 8 Ungradable+ degree adverbial modifier ‘a little’ ...... 108 Figure 9 Average acceptance of degree modification by Mandarin adults...... 110 Figure 10 Average acceptance of degree modification across verbs ...... 111 Figure 11 Degree of state change with incremental theme gradable MCA verbs...... 115 Figure 12 Degree of state change: nonincremental theme gradable MCA verbs ...... 116 Figure 13 Scale structure of events denoted by gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs..... 116 Figure 14 Agentive incremental theme gradable MCA verbs -le ...... 122 Figure 15 Agentive ungradable MCA verbs combined with -le ...... 124 Figure 16 Agent vs. cause subject with gradable MCA verbs ...... 128 Figure 17 van Hout’s results for Polish, Dutch and Italian children: proportion of correct answers by tense/aspect ...... 152 Figure 18 Means of “Yes” answers (1 equals “Yes” while 0 equals “No”) with incomplete perfective among Adults vs. Children ...... 155 Figure 19 Agent in full-result situation (“close”) ...... 174 Figure 20 Agent in zero-result situation (“close”) ...... 175 Figure 21 Cause in full-result situation (“close”) ...... 175 Figure 22 Cause in zero-result situation (“close”) ...... 175 Figure 23 Mean “Yes” answers by groups, 1 being “Yes”, 0 being “No”...... 183 Figure 24 Subject oriented non-culmination acceptance in adult group ...... 185 Figure 25 Subject oriented non-culmination acceptance in 3-Y-O group ...... 185 Figure 26 Subject oriented non-culmination acceptance in 5-Y-O group ...... 186 Figure 27 Estimated marginal means of “Yes” answers : cause-zero vs. agent-zero ..... 187 Figure 28 Mean “Yes” answers devided by verbs among adults ...... 188 Figure 29 Adults’ mean “Yes” answers under zero-result condition with the two classes of

MCA verbs ...... 189 Figure 30 Verb oriented acceptance under zero-result condition among 3-Y-O ...... 190 Figure 31Non-culmination acceptance for two classes of MCA verbs among 3-Y-O .... 192 Figure 32 Verb oriented acceptance under zero-resut condition among 5-Y-O ...... 193 Figure 33 Non-culmination acceptance for two classes of MCA verbs for 5-Y-O ...... 193 Figure 34 Mean “Yes” answer with gradable MCA verbs on agent-zero conditions by age groups ...... 196 Figure 35 Agent in full-result situation (“close”) ...... 205 Figure 36 Agent in zero-result situation (“close”) ...... 206 Figure 37 Cause in full-result situation (“close”) ...... 206 Figure 38 Cause in zero-result situation (“close”) ...... 207 Figure 39 Mean “Yes” answers across three groups ...... 208 Figure 40 Non-culmination acceptance across participants in 5-Y-O group ...... 209 Figure 41 Mean “Yes” answers over 3-Y-O children ...... 210 Figure 42 Mean “Yes” answers across the 3 Groups for Mono vs. RVC verbs ...... 212 Figure 43 Pirate’s endeavor in closing the door ...... 217 Figure 44 Repeated gust of wind exerting their force on the window ...... 217 Figure 45 Agent in full-result situation (“close”) ...... 219 Figure 46 Agent in zero-result situation (“close”) ...... 219 Figure 47 Cause in full-result situation (“close”) ...... 220 Figure 48 Cause in zero-result situation (“close”) ...... 220 Figure 49 Mean “Yes” answers among the adult group ...... 223 Figure 50 Non-culmination acceptance over 20 adult participants ...... 224 Figure 51 Non-culmination acceptance with agent-subject over 20 adult participants .. 225 Figure 52 Mean “Yes” answers among the 7.5-Y-O group ...... 225 Figure 53 Non-culmination acceptance over 20 7.5-Y-O participants ...... 226 Figure 54 Non-culmination acceptance with agent subject over 20 7.5-Y-O ...... 226 Figure 55 Non-culmination acceptance over 20 5.5-Y-O participants ...... 227 Figure 56 Non-culmination acceptance over 20 5.5-Y-O on agent-zero condition ...... 227 Figure 57 Mean “Yes” answers for the 3.5-Y-O group ...... 228 Figure 58 Non-culmination acceptance over 20 3.5-Y-O participants ...... 228 Figure 59 Mean “Yes” answers of the 3.5-Y-O group under agent-zero condition ...... 229 Figure 60 Mean “Yes” answers in the 1st Experiment vs. 3rd Experiment ...... 230

vii

Figure 61 % of “Yes” answers under agent-zero condition in 1st vs. 3rd Experiment among adult group ...... 230 Figure 62 Adults’ mean “Yes” answers for zero condition in two classes of MCA ...... 231 Figure 63 % of “Yes” answers under agent-zero condition in 1st vs. 3rd Experiment among 3-Y-O ...... 232 Figure 64 Mean “Yes” answers under the Agent-zero Condition among 5-year-old Group: 1st vs. 3rd Experiment ...... 233 Figure 65 Mean “Yes” answers across three experiments among adults ...... 234 Figure 66 Mean “Yes” answers across three experiments among 3-Y-O ...... 235 Figure 67 Mean “Yes” answers across three experiments among 5-Y-O ...... 235 Figure 68 Scale structure of events denoted by gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs.... 242 Figure 69 Gradable MCAs -le ...... 244 Figure 70 Ungradable MCA modified by -le ...... 244

viii

Abbreviation

1SG first person singular REFL reflexive

3SG third person singular RVC resultative verb compound

ACC accusative Tc compositional telos

ADJ adjective Tm maximal telos

ADV adverb Ts telos of onset

AUX auxiliary TT topic time

CA causative accomplishment UT utterance time

CL classifier VP verbal phrase

CoS change of state

DUR durative aspect marker

IPFV imperfective aspect marker

MCA monomophemic causative accomplishement

M masculine

N numeral

NC nonculminating

NEG negative

OBJ object

PST past

PERF perfective aspect marker

PL plural

PROG progressive

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 (Non)culminating Construals of Causative Accomplishment Verbs

This thesis investigates a class of predicates in Mandarin Chinese: causative accomplishment (CA) verbs.

CA verbs correlate to “causativity”. An intentional human or an inanimate causer executes a manipulation of an object. Corresponding to such manipulation, the attribute of the verb’s argument, i.e. the object, should undergo a change, which is generally defined as a change along a scale, see Rappaport Hovav & Levin (2002, 2010), Chief (2008), Fleischhauer (2016) etc. A CA verb (e.g. build and break in (1)), denotes an eventuality involving two essential components: a process event brings a change of state, which may come about gradually or instantaneously.

(1) a. Tom built a house.

b. Sam broke the plate.

In English, a perfective sentence with a causative accomplishment entails a culmination. van Valin & La Polla (1997: 92) defined CA verbs as “temporally extended (not instantaneous) changes of state leading to a terminal point.” That the culmination is an entailment can be seen in (2). Since the sentence asserts the culmination of the event described by “write a letter”, the negation of the completion of the letter is infelicitous.

(2) I wrote a letter yesterday, #but I didn’t finish writing it.

(Smith 1991: 107)

However, unlike English, in many other genetically unrelated languages, perfective accomplishments are found to license non-culminating readings. That is to say, a perfective sentence with a CA verb does not entail but merely implies the culmination of the event. This means that the culmination inference is cancelable. See Thai (Koenig & Muansuwan 2000), Korean (Park 1993, van Valin 2005), Japanese (Ikegami 1985, Tsujimura 2003), Hindi (Singh 1998, Arunachalam & Kothari 2011, Altshuler 2014), Tamil (Pederson 2008), Salish languages (Bar-el 2005, Gerdts 2008, Jacobs 2011, Kiyota 2008, Matthewson 2004, Turner 2011, Watanabe 2003), Tagalog (Dell 1983) a.o..

For example, in the following sentences (3) and (4), the negations of the culmination of these accomplishment verbs ‘open’ and ‘eat (a cookie)’ in the second part are deemed as felicitous.

(3) Mado-o aketa-kedo sabituiteite akanakatta. Japanese window-ACC opened-but rusty did-not-open ‘I opened the window, but it didn’t open because it was rusty.’

(Tsujimura 2003: 397-398)

(4) Maya-ne biskuT-ko khaa-yaa, par us-e puuraa nahiin khaa-yaa Hindi Maya-Erg cookie-Acc eat-Perf but it-acc full not eat-Perf ‘Maya ate a cookie but not completely.’

(Arunachalam & Kothari, 2011: 27)

In Mandarin, causative accomplishments also have been widely recognized as allowing nonculminating (NC) construals (see Tai 1984, Talmy 2000, Chief 2007 a.o.) as shown in examples (5) and (6). In (5), the use of huǐ ‘destroy’ with the perfective marker -le in the first clause does not yield culminating construal since the occurrence of the expected resulting state (the iPhone’s being totally destroyed) can be felicitously denied in the subsequent clause.

(5) Tāmén huǐ-le wǒ-de iPhone, dàn méi wánquán huǐ-diào 3PL destroy-PERF 1SG-DE iphone but NEG completely destroy-DROP ‘They destroyed my iPhone, but not thoroughly.’ (Demirdache & Martin 2015:40)

(6) Wǒ zuótiān huà-le yì-zhāng huà, kěshì méi huà-wán I yesterday paint-PERF one-CL picture, but NEG paint-complete ‘I painted a picture yesterday, but I didn’t finish it.’ (Tai 1984: 292)

CA Verbs in Mandarin can be encoded either as resultative verb compounds (RVCs) or monomorphic verbs. For example, the concept ‘pick’ can be expressed by the RVC

zhāi-xià ‘pick-descend’ and the monomorphemic CA verb zhāi ‘pick’ as seen in (7) and (8).

(7) Xiǎohóng zhāi-xià-le nà gè píngguǒ. Xiaohong pick-descend-PERF that CL apple ‘Xiaohong picked the apple.’

(8) Xiǎohóng zhāi-le nà gè píngguǒ. Xiaohong pick-PERF that CL apple ‘Xiaohong picked the apple.’

Causative RVCs1 in Mandarin entail the occurrence of a state change encoded by V2 that results from the causing action encoded by V1 (See Talmy 2000). In a transparent way, RVCs encode the cause and the result meaning components in two separate verbs: V1(action)+V2(caused state) (e.g. shā-sǐ ‘kill-die’, dǎ-kāi ‘open-open’, qiāo-suì ‘strike-break’, kāi-hǎo ‘open-good’ and suì-diào ‘break-down’). The second verb (V2) thus overtly spells the described state change in RVC. In the first clause of example (9), guān-shàng ‘close-up (the window)’ entails the full state change ‘the window is closed’. Thus, the negation of the full state change in the second clause méi guān-hǎo ‘not close-completely’ contradicts the first clause with a RVC in perfective form, yielding contradiction.

(9) Hǎidào guān-shàng-le chuānghù , #dàn méi guān-hǎo Pirate close-up-PERF window, but not close-completely Intended ‘The pirate closed the window, but it didn’t get closed at all.’

Differently, Mandarin Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment (MCA) verbs do not entail but imply a realization of a state change/ culmination (see Talmy 1991, 2000, Chen 2008, 2016, Martin et al. 2018b). Mandarin MCA verbs allow NC readings, see e.g. shāo ‘burn’ and guān ‘close’ in (10) and (11). Although MCA verbs in Mandarin are not numerous, they are highly frequent predicates. (Martin et al. 2018b: 1)

1 In this dissertation, we are only concerned with one kind of VV compounds in Mandarin: causative resultative verb compound (RVC), where V1 encoding the process causes the state change encoded by V2.

(10) Wǒ shāo-le nèi-běn shū, dànshì méi shāo-zháo. 1SG burn- PERF that-CL book but NEG. PERF burn-reach ‘I burnt the book, but the book didn’t burn at all.’

(11) Wǒ guān -le mén, dàn gēnběn méi guān-shàng. I close - PERF door but at.all NEG. PERF close-up ‘I closed the door, but it didn’t get closed at all!’

This dissertation investigates the (non)-culminating construals of these two classes of CA verbs (RVC vs. MCA verbs) in Mandarin, checking how Mandarin adults and children yield (non)-culminating readings with RVCs which entail the state change and with MCA which imply the state change. In particular, we elaborate on the typology of MCA verbs, whose (non)-culminating construals are debated in literature.

In keeping with Fleischhauer’s (2016) classification of accomplishments, we assumed that Mandarin MCA verbs can be divided into two types: gradable (e.g. kāi ‘open’, shāo ‘burn’, qiē ‘cut’, jiě ‘untie’) vs. ungradable (e.g. shā ‘kill’, jiù ‘save’, chú ‘get rid of’), depending on the number of degrees involved in the scale of state change. A gradable MCA verb involves at least three degrees (zero degree “d0”, full degree “df” and some degree(s) in between d’, d’’, d’’’ etc.), while an ungradable MCA verb only involves two degrees (zero degree “d0” and full degree “df”). The event denoted by a gradable MCA verb does not necessarily reach the maximum telos2, and the result holds to a degree equal or larger than the standard telos3. Whereas, the event denoted by an ungradable MCA verb terminates only when the maximum telos is attained.

Gradable MCA verbs in Mandarin are further divided into two types: incremental theme (e.g. consumption predicates like chī píngguǒ ‘eat an apple’; creation predicates like jiàn fángzi ‘build a house’ and xiě xìn ‘write a letter’, incremental change-of-state predicates like xǐ chènyī ‘wash a T-shirt’) vs. non-incremental theme (e.g. guān mén ‘close the door’, jiě húdiéjié ‘untie the knot’ ). For incremental theme MCA verbs, there is a homomorphic mapping between the degrees on the scale measuring the incremental theme state change and the event’s part-whole structure. On the other hand, non-

2 As was first proposed by Kearns (2007), a maximal telos is a transition which qualifies as “become maximally A”. 3 As was first proposed by Kearns (2007), a standard telos is a transition which qualifies as “become A”.

incremental theme MCA verbs do not necessarily involve an increase in values along the scale. There is no homomorphism between the scale measuring the degrees in the incremental theme state change and the event’s part-whole structure.

Figure 1 Classification of MCA verbs in Mandarin MCA Verbs

Even though Mandarin MCA verbs have been early and widely recognized to license NC construals, not all types of MCA verbs do allow NC construals without adverbial modification. As shown in (12)-(14), a NC reading is available with xiě ‘write’ in (12), and with xiū ‘repair’ in (13). However, for (14a) with shā ‘kill’, no NC readings are available, only after combining with the frequency adverb liǎngcì ‘twice’ in (14b), does NC construal become available.

(12) Wo zuotian xie-le gei Lulu de xin keshi mei xie-wan. I yesterday write-PERF to Lulu DE letter but Neg write-finish. ‘Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Lulu, but I didn’t finish (writing it).’ (Martin & Gyarmathy 2018: 10)

(13) Wǒ xiū -le nà liàng zìxíngchē, dànshi méi xiū-hǎo I repair -PERF that CL bicycle but not repair-good ‘I have started repairing that bicycle but have not finished it’

(14) a. Wǒ shā -le nà zhī jī #dànshi méi shā- sǐ I kill -PERF that CL chicken but not kill-die Intended ‘I killed the chicken, and it did not die.’

b. Wǒ shā -le nà zhī jī liǎngcì, dōu méi shā-sǐ I kill -PERF that CL chicken twice all not kill-die ‘I killed the chicken twice, but it did not die.’

This dissertation will elaborate on the availability of NC construals in different types of Mandarin MCA verbs, exploring the correlation between the typology of MCA verbs and the NC construals.

1.2 The Motivations of this Study

1.2.1 Theoretical Literature

In the literature, linguists have extensively discussed the source of the NC construals, i.e. what parameters can trigger NC construals (e.g. does the source of NC construals lie in the meaning of verbs? Or does it lie in the meaning of aspectual operators?) They have analyzed the triggering factors for NC construals from lexical, morpho-syntactic as well as pragmatic perspectives.

At the lexical level, they examine inherent lexical semantic features of the core MCA verbs as well as in the argument structures. There are two influential theories which impute NC construals to the lexical properties of verbs: i) The Scale Hypothesis, according to which, NC construals is imputed to the gradability of the MCA verbs; ii) the Partitive Approach, which assumes the result change occurs in an inertia world, but not in the actual world.

The representative authors adopting Scale Hypothesis are Chief (2007) and Fleischhauer (2016). Chief (2007) imputes NC construals to the nature of the scales that predicates are associated with. Predicates of ungradable verbs are of a binary scale, e.g. tōu ‘steal’, tóu ‘vote’ and mǎi ‘buy’. On the other hand, gradable verbs consist of at least three degrees. Chief claims that gradable verbs display the NC construals while ungradable verbs do not. Fleischhauer (2016) also correlate NC construals to the nature of the scale in the predicates. She offers an explanation for NC construals with two kinds of telos of the events: a standard telos vs. a maximal telos. Fleischhauer claims that ungradable accomplishments are associated with the maximum telos, thus reject NC construals, while gradable accomplishments are associated with the entailed standard telos and the implicated maximum telos, thus allow NC construals.

The Partitive Approach is developed from two different perspectives, those that suppose NC construals come from the meaning in the verbs, and those that suppose NC construals come from the perfective operators or context parameters. The representative authors taking the former approach to NC construals are Krifka (1998), Koenig and Muansuwan (2001), Bar-el et al. (2005), and Tatevosov (2008). They suppose that the events referred to by NC accomplishments are parts or stages of events from the denotation of culminating ones, i.e. events not ‘developed’ enough to yield culmination. Linguists taking the later approach are Smith (1991,1997), Singh (1991, 1998), Altshuler &Filip (2014), Martin & Gyarmathy (2018) etc. They impute NC construals to aspectual parameters and in particular to the meaning of aspectual operators across languages. Their analysis shed light on viewing Mandarin verbal -le as a partitive aspectual operator, which may combine with MCA verbs and return the proper part of the event. In this way, the perfective marker -le in Mandarin facilitates NC construals for MCA verbs.

From a morpho-syntactic perspective, Folli & Harley (2005), Travis (2005), Schäfer (2012), and Demirdache & Martin (2015) elaborate on the correlation between agenthood of the subject and the NC construals. Demirdache & Martin (2015) put forward Agent Control Hypothesis (ACH), according to which the ‘agenthood’ property of the subject might be the reason for the state change neglect among speakers. They distinguish two types of NC readings for causative accomplishments: zero-result vs. partial-result readings, corresponding to Tatevosov’s (2008) failed attempt events and partially successful events. Concerning Mandarin, they claim that for zero-result condition, agenthood is required. The perfective statement in the first clause of (15a), with the pure cause huǒ ‘fire’ as the subject do not license zero-result NC construals. This is why the second clause negating any result contradicts the first clause. On the other hand, in the first clause of (15b), the human agent Yuēhàn ‘John’ is the subject, controlling over the event described by the MCA verb shāo ‘burn’. Thus, NC construals is available, and there is no contradiction between the first clause and the second clause asserting the absence of any result.

Mandarin Chinese

(15) a. Huǒ shāo le tā-de shū, #dàn méi shāo-zháo. fire burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch Intended ‘The fire burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all.’

b. Yuēhàn shāo le tā-de shū, dàn méi shāo-zháo. Yuēhàn burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch ‘Yuēhàn burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all.’

(Demirdache & Martin 2015: 7)

At the pragmatic level, linguists such as Smith (1991), Kothari (2008), Pederson (2007), Arunachalam & Kothari (2011), Altshuler & Gyarmathy (2017) and Martin et al.(2018a), have investigated the role of pragmatic reasoning in yielding NC construals.

Altshuler & Gyarmathy (2017) claim that for defeasible causative verbs4, the result inference of result-implied verbs arises via pragmatic abductive reasoning. In particular, they suppose the speakers use an abductive inference/ abduction to infer the implied result.

Altshuler & Gyarmathy propose that abductive reasoning would proceed roughly as follows in the case at hand: assume that Observation is true of the process a result- implied verb describes (e.g. a process of eating), and Explanation is true of the complete causative event which consists of a process and a result state change (e.g. the process of eating and the result “eaten up”). Theory: if there is an Observation, then there is an Explanation (Observation → Explanation). That is to say, if there is a process of eating, then there is a complete causative event leading to a result state change “the apple is eaten up”.

(16)

Theory: If there is an actual completed causative event Q of eating y, there is a process subevent P of eating y (i.e. P is a necessary condition for Q)

Observation: There is a process P of eating y

Explanation: There is an actual completed event Q of eating y

4 Defeasible causative verbs in Altshuler & Gyarmathy’s paper refer to Causative accomplishment verbs which allow NC construals.

Therefore, for listeners who have acquired the theory, and who have observed the process corresponding to CA verbs, the completed event is very much indicative of the CA verbs. The completed event would not be inferred otherwise when the process is not indicative enough of the change.

Altshuler & Gyarmathy’s abductive reasoning hypothesis explains nicely why culmination is the default reading for MCA verbs, as well as suggesting an attractive potential explanation for why NC construals is possible.

In sum, previous studies on the source of NC construals in CA verbs have shown elaborated explanations from different perspectives. We explore here, for Mandarin MCA verbs, which factors mostly account for NC construals. Moreover, to our knowledge, even though Mandarin data have been extensively quoted in the previous studies on NC construals, there has been hardly any systematic theoretical, as well as experimental investigation of the source of the NC construals of MCA verbs in Mandarin.

1.2.2 Previous Experimental Studies

There are very few experimental studies discussing the source of NC construals in CA verbs in adult language at least to our knowledge. Most experimental studies concern language acquisition, investigating the source of NC construals in child language. Experimental studies carried out across various languages have found that children occasionally allow NC construals for CA verbs in perfective forms. The experiments of Gentner (1978b), Gropen et al. (1991), Tamasello (1992), Wittek (2002) a.o. have led to the paradox that, on the one hand, children show early on sensitivity to state change, being able to understand and produce CA verbs, while on the other hand, they seem to neglect the endstate change encoded in the meaning of CA verbs, since they accept perfective CA statements under incomplete situations. Neglect of the endstate has been reported for the acquisition of telic incremental theme verbs with perfective aspect in diverse languages: Dutch and English (van Hout 1998, 2008); German (Schulz & Penner 2002; Wittek 2002) and Spanish (Hodgson 2001).

This paradox has been at the center of acquisition research. Many hypotheses have been put forward. Gentner (1978b) and Gropen et al. (1991) proposed the Manner Bias Hypothesis, attributing non-target patterns of acquisition to incomplete semantic representations, and assuming that children learn the manner action meaning component before the change of state component. Under Wittek’s (2002) Weak Endstate

Interpretation Hypothesis, children do not completely neglect the endstate meaning, but interpret CA verbs as if an endstate is optional, i.e. might well come about, but need not. According to van Hout’s (1998a, 1998b, 2007, 2008, 2010,2014) Transparency Principle, Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis and Semantic Markedness Hypothesis, morpho-syntactic forms transparently and unambiguously encoding the endstate change, such as verb particle constructions in Germanic languages, and complex compound verbs in Hindi, should be easier and earlier to acquire than opaque simple forms.

Mandarin children’s acquisition of RVCs has attracted much attention in the last three decades. Previous acquisition studies have shown that children begin early to use RVCs or verbs in the V2 slot, indicating the possible existence of RVC-formation rules. However, there are few empirical studies analyzing children’s acquisition of Mandarin monomorphemic causative accomplishment (MCA) verbs. Chen’s (2004, 2008, 2016) experimental study is the only one bearing directly on the issue of (non)-culminating construals. Chen studied how Mandarin Chinese-speaking children of four age groups (around 2;6, 3;6, 4;6 and 6;1) interpreted the culmination entailment/implicature in RVC (V1+V2) and in monomorphemic V1 (same V1 as in RVC). The task was a Truth Value Judgment (TVJ) task. There were sixteen video clips in total, with eight showing full result events and eight showing zero result events. After watching each video, participants were asked to judge two statements as illustrated by the pair in (17).

(17) a. RVC Ayi zhai-xia le pingguo ma ? auntie do.picking.action-descend PERF apple QP ‘Did auntie pick the apple?’

b. MCA

Ayi zhai le pingguo ma ? auntie do.picking.action PERF apple QP ‘Did auntie pick the apple?’

(Chen 2016: 8)

In Chen’s experiment, under the no-state-change condition, the three youngest groups of children (2;6, 3;6 and 4;6) gave some “Yes” answers. The youngest age group

(the 2; 6 years old group) yielded the highest acceptance rate (20%). The acceptance rate decreases as age increases. These findings are similar to the endstate neglect in the experiments of Gentner (1978b), Gropen et al. (1991), Tamasello (1992), Wittek (2002) etc. However, her results with MCA verbs showed that unlike the adults (control group), children tend to reject NC construals under zero-result condition. Children in the 2- year- old group accepted these sentences only 10% of the time. As age increases, the “Yes” answer percentage increases. Being more adult like, children at the age of around 6 years old, gave 75% “Yes” answers. In other words, the young children in Chen’s experiment appear to treat MCA verbs as entailing endstate changes.

Chen’s experimental studies shed light on Mandarin children’s early knowledge of state change meaning component encoded in RVCs and in monomorphemic CA verbs. This dissertation aims to follow the steps of Chen’s study, further exploring Mandarin children’s acquisition patterns of the culmination in both RVCs as well as bieventive5 monomorphemic causative accomplishment (MCA) verbs.

1.2.3 Goals & Research Questions

The previous section shows that well-elaborated theoretical and empirical studies of the acceptability of NC construals for perfective statements with Mandarin MCA verbs have not yet been provided in the literature. Especially, there is a lack of experimental study, crucially concerning whether NC construals are available with MCA verbs. In this context, this thesis attempts to test NC construals of MCA experimentally in both adult and children grammar. We focus here on zero-result construals, since it is the critical and most controversial issue, seeking to understand the influence of some parameters, namely gradability of the predicates, agent control, partitive operators (here -le by hypothesis), and also pragmatic abductive reasoning. Since Mandarin is such a perfect language to experimentally probe this issue, and since as demonstrated by Demirdache & Sun (2014), Demirdache & Martin (2015) and Martin et al. (2018b), Mandarin allow zero result as well as partial result NC construals with agent-subject perfective statements, but only partial result NC construals with cause-subjects, we sought to conduct an experiment in Mandarin, to test in particular the influence of agenthood, as well as another critical parameter — the influence of frequency adverbs

5 There are two essential subevents: a causative activity and a change of state event.

(i.e. hǎojǐcì ‘several times’) — over NC construals interpretations under the zero result condition.

Three experiments were thus designed and carried out to investigate (non)- culminating readings of causative accomplishment verbs among Mandarin adults and children, concerning respectively causative accomplishments of three different constructions: (i) MCAs; (ii) RVCs; (iii) MCA verbs + ‘several times’. The design and the materials for these experiments (in particular, the two first ones) were elaborated in a cross-linguistic perspective in collaboration with Angeliek van Hout at the University of Groningen, and with the help of the following other collaborators6: María J. Arche (University of Greenwich), Isabel García del Real and García Sanz (University of the Basque Country); Anna Gavarró and Lucía Gomez Marzo (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) Saar Hommes and Iris M. Strangmann (University of Groningen), Nina Kazanina (University of Bristol), Oana Lungu (University of Nantes), and Fabienne Martin (University of Stuttgart). See van Hout et al. (2017) and Strangmann (2015) for details and discussion. This dissertation has the following main goals:

 It aims to establish that culmination is an inference with MCA verbs in Mandarin, but an entailment in RVCs, providing theoretically, as well as experimental arguments.

 It aims to explore the source of NC construals for MCA verbs, testing the influencing factors, namely gradability of the predicates, partitive operator -le and agent control.

 To illustrate on Mandarin children’s acquisition pattern of CA verbs. To test if they are aware of the implied culmination in MCA verbs, and of the entailed culmination in RVCs. To check if they acquire RVCs more easily than MCA verbs? To see if they can cancel the culmination under zero-result condition and how do the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ help them in canceling the culmination.

6 In the context of the GraMALL, (Grasping Meaning across Languages and Learners) project funded by Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO.

To be specific, this study seeks to contribute theoretical and experimental answers to the following questions:

1. How do Mandarin MCA verbs differ from RVCs in their culmination patterns? 2. What is the source of NC construals for MCA verbs in Mandarin? In particular, what is the role of meaning dimensions such as gradability of the predicates, agent control, the aspectual operator -le in licensing NC construals? 3. Do Mandarin children, as well as adults, yield NC construals more easily when there is modification of a frequency adverb (e.g. hǎojǐcì ‘several times’)? And if so, why? 4. To what extent do Mandarin children allow or enforce NC construals? How do they acquire the culmination meaning components of CA verbs?

1.3 Structure of the Thesis

This dissertation is composed of nine parts as follows:

Chapter 1 outlines the rational and aim of the study, highlighting the originality of this thesis. Moreover, it explains the research questions and gives a roadmap of the whole thesis.

Chapter 2 is devoted to the theoretical background concerning accomplishments. In the first section, it introduces basic notions such as lexical vs. grammatical aspect and telicity. Lexical aspect concerns the classification of verbal predicates according to the temporal structure of the eventuality they denote, while grammatical aspect serves to locate the described event relative to a point of view(reference) time. It moreover discusses the notion of telicity and distinguishes telic predicates from atelic predicates: telic predicates associate the eventualities they describe with an endpoint, while atelic predicates do not. In particular, we review tests to distinguish them, which lay the foundation of our account of (non)-culminating readings of MCA verbs. Section 2.3 assesses previous studies on the semantic structure of accomplishment predicates. The relevant diagnostics for checking their two essential semantic components (causative process + culmination) are discussed. Section 2.4 reviews previous studies on the source of NC construals of CA verbs from three different perspectives: lexical, syntax- semantics interface and pragmatic knowledge.

Chapter 3 centers on causative accomplishment (CA) verbs in Mandarin. Section 3.1 assesses the debate on whether monomorphemic accomplishments are a morphologically underived primitive class in Mandarin. Section 3.2 classifies two types of Mandarin CA verbs, monomorphemic vs. RVC, examining their culmination inference/entailment patterns. It concludes that Mandarin MCA verbs are result-implied bieventive accomplishments. Section 3.3 puts forward our proposal, namely that there are true morphologically primitive (that is, monomorphemic) bieventive accomplishment predicates in Mandarin, which unlike standard accomplishments in English or RVCs in Mandarin, do not entail but rather imply culmination. In Section 3.4, we show that Mandarin has two classes of MCA verbs, namely gradable vs. ungradable, which do not share the same scale structure. We examine their different scale structures, appealing to some diagnostics to tell them apart. We also provide experimental evidence to substantiate this claim.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to the influence of gradability on NC construals of MCA verbs. In section 4.1, we start with a presentation of the different scale structures of two classes of MCA verbs (gradable vs. ungradable). We then explore the interaction between these two types of MCA verbs with the perfective aspect marker -le in section 4.2 and, in particular, how it facilitates zero-result NC construals for gradable MCA verbs (incremental vs. non-incremental). Finally, section 4.3 examines the role of agenthood in licensing zero-result NC construals. With our scale model of the two classes of MCA verbs, we investigate why agent subjects, but not cause subjects, allow zero-result NC construals. Chapter 4 thus seeks to explain how three parameters interact to license NC construals in the adult grammar: 1) the gradable scale structure of the predicate; 2) the perfective operator -le; and 3) the agenthood of the subject.

Chapter 5 starts by introducing previous acquisition studies on the acquisition of state change cross-linguistically: on the one hand, children show early on a sensitivity to state change (conceptualizing and producing CA verbs), while on the other hand, they seem to neglect the endstate change encoded in the meaning of CA verbs, since they accept perfective CA statements to describe NC situations. We then review different hypotheses put forth to explain this learning paradox, namely the Manner Bias Hypothesis, the Weak Endstate Interpretation Hypothesis, the Transparency Principle, the Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis and the Semantic Markedness Hypothesis. It particularly highlights van Hout’s Transparency Principle, and Form-to- Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis, which predict that forms transparently and unambiguously encoding an endstate should be more easily and earlier acquired than

opaque forms. The Invariant Meaning Hypothesis, proposed by Martin et al. (2018a) is emphasized, as it underlies the proposal for Mandarin children’s acquisition of MCA verbs of this thesis. It predicts that children’s interpretation of forms with variable aspectual meaning depends heavily on contextual factors and as such requires sophisticated pragmatic reasoning. Section 5.3 analyses previous studies on Mandarin children’s acquisition of two types of CA verbs: RVC vs. Monomorphemic ones. These studies suggest that children acquire the transparent RVCs early, as expected, but also that they always associate MCA verbs with and endstate change, which is not expected, however.

Chapter 6, 7 and 8 report our three experiments, which use in-between subject design. The participants were exposed to either MCA testing items, or RVC (V1V2) testing items, or testing items with MCA verbs modified by the frequency adverbs. The participants for each experiment were from different groups. So, each group never took two or more experiments.

Chapter 6 reports a truth value judgment task, designed to investigate how Mandarin adults and children allow NC construals for MCA verbs. It first lays out the target hypothesis: Agent Control Hypothesis. Participants were asked to judge perfective sentences with MCA verbs under a zero-result incomplete event, with human beings or pure causers as the action executers. Thirty adults, twenty 5-year-olds and twenty 3- year-olds participated in the experiments.

Chapter 7 discusses a truth value judgment task intended to test whether Mandarin adults and children accept perfective statements with RVCs under the zero-result condition. The experimental setting is the same as the first experiment, except that the predicates in the testing sentences have been replaced by RVCs. As RVCs entail the culmination, thus contrasting with result-implied MCA verbs, we analyze the findings in comparison with those reported for the first experiment in Chapter 6. Twenty adults, twenty 5-year-olds and twenty 3-year-olds participated in the experiments.

Chapter 8 presents our third experiment, which is also a truth value judgment task. Its goal is to check if the acceptance rate of NC construals of MCA verbs increases when MCA verbs combine with the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. Four groups of participants took the task: Twenty adults, twenty 7.5-year-olds, twenty 5.5-year-olds and twenty 3.5-year-olds. The procedure and the setting of the third experiment are almost the same as the first two experiments, except that under the zero-change condition, the

attempted change of state described in the test item is iteratively repeated for both agent- subject and cause-subject.

In Chapter 9, our proposals and our experimental findings are summarized. The final part of Chapter 9 is devoted to the implications of this study. Future studies are proposed.

Chapter 2 Nonculminating Construals of Accomplishments

2.1 Introduction

This chapter reviews the theoretical background on a class of predicates: accomplishments.

Section 2.2 clarifies basic notions. First of all, we introduce notions of aspect: lexical aspect and grammatical aspect. Lexical aspect concerns the classification of verbal predicates according to the temporal structure of the eventuality they denote, while the grammatical aspect locates events relative to a point of view (reference) time. Concerning lexical aspect, in Section 2.2.1 we review Vendler’s (1967) aspectual classification of predicates and Smith’s (1997) binary features that derive five aspectual classes: ±Static, ±Durative and ±Telic. We particularly focus on the definition and diagnostics for the eventuality of accomplishments. Section 2.2.2 concerns the grammatical aspect. In particular, we discuss the distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect, and relate the event time to the Reference Time, a notion proposed by Reichenbach (1947), also termed as Topic Time by Klein’s (1994). In Section 2.2.3, we give an overview of the notion of telicity, which refers to the internal temporal property representing a complete action in some sense. Telic predicates and atelic predicates are distinguished: telic predicates associate the eventualities they describe with an endpoint, while atelic predicates do not. In particular, we review tests to distinguish them, which lay the foundation for our account of (non)-culminating readings of monomorphemic causative accomplishment (MCA) verbs.

Section 2.3 presents the literature on the semantic structure of accomplishment predicates, pointing out the two essential components for accomplishment predicates: process and culmination. In section 2.3.2, we identify the relevant diagnostics for establishing the existence of accomplishment verbs by checking these two semantic components, i.e. process + state change. We point out that accomplishment predicates differ from activity predicates in having an inherent endpoint/ culmination, that has to be reached if the action is to be what it is claimed to be.

Section 2.4 is dedicated to the nonculminating construals (NC construals) of accomplishment predicates. We introduce two types of NC construals for accomplishment verbs: zero-result NC construals and partial-result NC construals. We assess previous studies on NC construals of accomplishments in non-English languages

by reviewing their hypotheses on the source of the NC construals from lexical, syntax- semantics interface as well as pragmatic knowledge perspective.

2.2 Aspect

The term ‘aspect’ encompasses both lexical and grammatical aspect (under various labels, see Dahl 1981, Smith 1991, Olsen 1997, Rothstein 2004 among many others). Lexical aspect concerns the inherent temporal semantic property of verb meaning, while grammatical aspect concerns “different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation” (Comrie 1976:3), often overtly expressed by grammatical morphemes. Smith (1997) terms lexical aspect as ‘situation aspect’, as it refers to the inherent temporal constituency of the event described by the verb in combination with its arguments/adjuncts. In contrast, ‘viewpoint aspect’ (notions such as perfective, habitual, durative, iterative or imperfective) concerns the speaker’s perspective on the event that the predicate describes. This section will look at both lexical and grammatical aspects and consider how lexical aspect and grammatical aspect interact to bring out the culminating reading of a given event.

2.2.1 Lexical Aspect

Lexical aspect, also called ‘situation type’ or ‘inner aspect’ or ‘Aktionsart’, refers to the aspectual properties of a verb. In the literature, these aspectual properties are presented by parameters typically involving binary features [+/- durative], [+/-stages], and [+/- telic]. Linguists have tried to capture the lexical aspect by “classifying verbs into verb classes” (Rothstein 2001: 1).

The idea of classifying verbs into aspectual classes dates back to Aristotle. He noticed the meaning of some verbs involve an ‘end’ or ‘result’ while the meaning of other verbs does not. In Metaphysics, he distinguished actuality (states) from events, and among events, he distinguished action (telic events) that have inherent endpoints from movement (events that do not).

Later on, following Aristotle, many linguists have proposed classification of the predicates according to how eventualities are temporally distributed across classes of a set of events that the predicates respectively denote (Ryle 1949, Kenny 1963, Vendler 1957 1967, Dowty 1979, Carlson 1981, Verkuyl 1993, Smith 1997, Olsen 1997, Rothstein 2004 among many others).

2.2.1.1 Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements and States: Vendler (1967)

Probably the most widely proposed is Vendler’s (1967) four verbal classes: states, activities, accomplishments and achievements. Table 1 below lists some examples of predicates according to Vendler’s classification:

Table 1 Examples of Vendler’s verb classes

States Activities Achievements Accomplishments know run recognize paint a picture believe walk find make a chair have swim lose deliver a sermon desire push a cart reach draw a circle love drive a car die recover from illness

Vendlerian classes can be characterized as follows. “States”, such as be pretty or believe, denote static situations, which have duration and are unbounded, involving no internal changes; “activities” such as run or swim are durative and open-ended events, which unfold dynamically; “achievements” such as arrive or find, are near instantaneous events which are over as soon as they have begun; and “accomplishments” such as write a letter or build a house are non-homogeneous durative events, which extend over a period of time like activities, but, unlike activities, they have a natural endpoint, i.e. inherent culmination.

To clarify the notion of the “natural endpoint” for an eventuality, Vendler states,

…if someone stops running a mile, he did not run a mile…But the man who stops pushing the cart did push it. Thus, we see that while running or pushing a cart has no set terminal point, running a mile and drawing a circle do have a ‘climax’, which has to be reached if the action is to be what it is claimed to be. (Vendler 1967:100)

Therefore, according to Vendler, some (but not all) eventuality descriptions are associated with a “climax” (i.e. natural endpoint) which refers to the moment when the pattern of events described by the predicate has been realized. For example, the event represented by the accomplishment “draw a circle” has a climax, an end point, which

corresponds to the time instant at which one draw the last stroke ensuring that the circle is completed.

Note, however, though Vendler’s objective is to classify the meaning of verbs, he has taken into consideration the aspectual information conveyed by the semantic features of the whole verb phrase (VP), including the core verb and its internal arguments (e.g. run a mile, draw a circle, write a letter) as well as some nonargumental adjuncts (e.g. reach the top). In particular, he emphasizes that some verbs are “activity verbs” on their own, but after combining with quantized objects, they yield accomplishments (e.g. run a mile, draw a circle, write a letter, eat an apple etc.) Take run a mile for example. The verb run is classified as an activity, as it represents a durative and open-ended event, while run a mile is considered an accomplishment VP, since the action of running leads to a natural endpoint, the time instant at which the length of a mile is reached.

Under Vendler’s classification, activities and states both denote temporally unbounded events, while accomplishments and achievements express temporally bounded events, involving a change of state. According to him, the difference between activities and states lies in the dynamicity of the events that these two classes of predicates depict. Activities denote on-going dynamic situations while states denote static situations. Moreover, under Vendler’s explanation, accomplishments differ from achievements in the duration of the events that they depict. Achievements are punctual whereas accomplishments unfold over a period of time.

Vendler illustrates the time schemata for each class with the following examples:

(1) a. Activities A was running at time t means that time instant t is on a time stretch throughout which A was running

b. Accomplishments A was drawing a circle at t means that t is on the time stretch in which A drew that circle.

c. Achievements A won a race between t1 and t2 means that the time instant at which A won that race is between t1 and t2.

d. States A loved somebody from t1 to t2 means that at any instant between t1 and t2 A loved that person.

(Vendler 1976: 106)

2.2.1.2 [±STATIC, ±DURATIVE, ±TELIC]: Smith (1997)

Though Vendler himself did not define the aspectual features discriminating his four classes, a few other linguists, based on his description, categorized for each verb class underlying aspectual properties (cf. Carlson 1981; Andersen, 1990; Smith, 1991 1997; Van Valin and La Polla, 1997) such as dynamicity, telicity, and durativity.

Smith (1997) proposes the following three binary features that derive five aspectual classes:

(2) a. ±STATIC

b. ±DURATIVE

c. ±TELIC

In addition to the Vendlerian four classes, Smith (1991) proposes a fifth lexical verbal class, “semelfactives”. She uses “semelfactives” to refer to the instantaneous single stage events, which result in no change of state. Typical examples are knock at the door, cough and hiccup. According to Smith, most of the time, the event described by a semelfactive predicate occurs repeatedly. Smith distinguish semelfactives from achievements: even though both happen quickly, achievements have the inherent endpoint, while semelfactives are nonculminating.

The three binary features proposed by Smith (1997) to derive the five aspectual classes are shown as follows:

[± static]

[± static] refers to whether the event described by the predicate is stative or dynamically progressing. This feature distinguishes states (+static) from events (-static). As shown in Table 2 below, only states are static, while events are dynamic.

A useful test for the [± static] feature in English is the progressive which asserts that an eventuality of a particular type is “in progress”. Landman (1992) argues that “the meaning of a progressive sentence is that a stage of the eventuality given by the verb occurred, or is in the process of occurring, where e is a stage of e’ if e develops into e’ ”(cited by Rothstein 2004: 12)

According to Smith, the durative [-static] events can combine with the progressive, while for the most part [+static] states cannot. As shown in (3), while event types such as activities and accomplishments are compatible with the progressive, states and achievements (in the general case, since they lack durativity but see (5) below as lacking durativity) are not. In example (3b), Mary was in the middle of a dancing activity, while in (3c), Max is in the middle of building a house. For states as in (3a) and achievements as in (3d), on the other hand, it is odd to mean that the eventualities are progressing or continuing.

(3) a. *John was knowing the answer. state

b. Mary was dancing. activity

c. Max was building a house. accomplishment

d. *Paul was recognizing John. Achievement

Note that, however, some states are compatible with the progressive, but they convey a special meaning (see Carlson 1977, Dowty 1979:173-174, Rothstein 2004).

(4) a. The socks are lying under the bed. b. Peter is being polite.

(4a) does not involve a volitional subject and repeated to be “lying on the bed”. So, lie in (4a) turns out to be predicates over objects instead of over stages. (4b) serves to signal control of the agent. Peter is acting intentionally as if he were polite or he is just engaging in polite behavior.

There are also some achievements compatible with the progressive, but their meaning is again different. Since they refer to the preparatory stage of the instantaneous event described by the achievement verb, just as in (5), Peter is in the middle of the preparatory stage leading to arriving at the top.

(5) Peter is reaching the top.

[± durative]

The binary feature [± durative] relates to whether the event described by the predicate has duration or is instantaneous. So, it distinguishes the instantaneous semelfactives and achievements which are (-durative) from the lasting states, activities and accomplishments which are (+durative).

According to Smith, the durative feature can be checked by durative adverbials, such as for an hour or in an hour. [-durative] predicates (achievements and semelfactives) are incompatible with these kinds of adverbials in (6e) or they yield a special interpretation (an ingressive interpretation) in (6d).

(6) a. Mary walked in the park for an hour. Activity [+Durative]

b. Mary was sick for a week. State [+Durative]

c. Mary built the sandcastle in an hour. Accomplishment [+Durative]

d. She tapped his shoulder in an hour. Semelfactive [-Durative]

e. *The bomb exploded for an hour. Achievement [-Durative]

(Smith 1997: 41-46)

What’s more, Smith points out that the durative feature of the predicates can also be checked by inceptive and terminative morphemes like begin, stop and finish. As [- durative] events (achievements and semelfactives) are punctual, they cannot take these inceptive and terminative morphemes, as shown in (7d).

(7) a. He began/stopped pushing the cart. Activity [+Durative]

b. Sam began/stopped walking to school. Accomplishment [+Durative]

c. She began/stopped tapping his shoulder. Semelfactive [-Durative]

d. *The bomb stopped exploding. Achievement [-Durative]

e. Sam began to be angry. State [+Durative]

(Smith 1997: 42-47)

Semelfactives in (7c) is grammatical, but it takes iterative meaning: multiple events.

[± telic]

Smith’s feature [± telic] refer to whether the event described by the predicate is temporally bounded (i.e. having inherent endpoint) or not. It can distinguish accomplishments and achievements (+telic) from activities, and semelfactives (-telic).

Smith points out that verbs and adverbials of completion, such as finish and in an hour, are useful tests to tell telic events from atelic events. As finish selects both durative and telic event, (8d) with an achievement is also odd as the other atelic events described by the activity in (8a), the semelfactive in (8c) and the state in (8d).

(8) a. ?Mary finished walking in the park. Activity [-Telic]

b. Mary finished walking to school. Accomplishment [+Telic]

c. ?She finished tapping his shoulder. Semelfactive [-Telic]

d. *John finished breaking the glass. Achievement [+Telic]

e. ?John finished being angry. State [-Telic]

(Smith 1997: 43-47)

Therefore, based on these three binary features, Smith (1997) classifies situation types into the 5 classes as shown in Table 2:

Table 2 Smith’s aspectual feature system (1997:20)

Situation ±Static ±Durative ±Telic a. Activity - + - b. Accomplishment - + +

c. Achievement - - + d. State + + - e. Semelfactive - - -

2.2.2 Grammatical Aspect

Grammatical aspect, also called “viewpoint aspect” (Smith 1991, 1997), concern how to locate a given event in time. While lexical aspect defines the event type of a predicate, grammatical aspect (i.e. perfective vs. imperfective) serves to locate events relative to a point of view (reference) time.

Reichenbach (1947:296) distinguishes three points in time: reference time (R), event time/time of the situation (E), and speech time (S). He points out that the temporal location of situations involves a designated “reference time”, in addition to “speech time” and “situation time”. Reichenbach applies these three time points to the English tense system. Take the past perfect in English for an example.

(9) a. I had seen John. Reichenbach (1947:72) b.

According to Reichenbach, for the statement in (9a), the event time E, i.e. the time of “my seeing John” is thus situated with respect to other two time points, directly to the reference time R and indirectly to the speech time S. The use of past perfect in (9a) indicates that E precedes R and that R precedes S, as shown in the figure in (9b).

Klein (1992, 1994) also uses three parameters: time of utterance (TU), topic time (TT), and time of situation (TSit). He replaces the term “reference time” with “topic time” for tense representation, as he takes tense to “expresses a relation between the time of utterance and some time for which the speaker wants to make an assertion, the “topic time’’ (Klein 1992: 24) He further points out that the temporal reference should be a time span (interval) instead of a time point. Klein applies these three parameters on the tense as well as aspect analysis. On this proposal, perfect aspect in (9) locates the time of Tsit before the topic time TT and then locate the TT before speech time TU.

Now we illustrate how the two grammatical aspect forms (perfective vs. imperfective) fit into this approach.

(10) John has buried a duck toy. Perfective (11) John was burying a duck toy. Imperfective

Perfective sentences present the described event/situation as a whole from the outside. Thus, this point of view is achieved by assuming Time of Situation (TSit) is contained in Topic Time (TT). We can illustrate schematically the perfective statement of (10) as in (12) below. Perfective locates the situation time (TSit) within the topic time (TT).

(12) TSit

John bury a duck toy

Bar-el (2005) more formally gives the following semantic representation for perfective in (13):

(13) λQλt∃e [Q(e) ∧ τ(e) ⊆ t] (Bar-el 2005: 51)

On this proposal, the role of grammatical aspect is turned into a property of time by establishing a relationship between a running time and a reference time. A property of events Q is mapped into a property of times and it is true of a time t (the reference time) just in case t includes the running time τ of a Q-event.

On the other hand, imperfective looks inside of an event or a situation. The reference time is included by the time of the event depicted by the predicate. We can illustrate schematically the imperfective statement of (11) as in (14) below. Past tense locates the topic time in the past relative to the speech time. Then imperfective aspect locates the reference time/topic time within the event time.

(14) Reference Time

John bury a duck toy

Event Time

More formally, the semantic representation of the imperfective statement is given by Bar-el (2005) with reference to the reference time as in (15).

(15) λQ λt ∃e [Q(e) ∧ t ⊆ τ(e)] (Bar-el 2005: 52)

A property of events Q is mapped into a property of times and it is true of a time t just in case t is properly included in the running time (τ) of a Q-event.

2.2.3 Telicity

Telicity (from the Greek telos), which means “end” or “goal”, refers to the internal temporal property associated with a complete event in some sense. It refers to an endpoint, which corresponds to the time instant at which the event described by the verb reaches its completion. (Vendler 1967, Comrie, 1976; Dowty, 1979; Klein, 1994; Smith, 1991; Verkuyl, 1993). The notion of telicity is for all purposes equivalent to culmination.

Krifka (1998:207) defines telicity as follows:

If e is in the denotation of X, then all parts of e (subevents of e) which are also in the denotation of X must have the same starting and stopping points.

As discussed in the section 2.2.1, Vendler (1957) highlighted the role of the inherent semantic features of verbs for telicity. He stated that accomplishments hav e a set terminal point (or a natural endpoint) and the event culmination can thus be lexicalized. For example, accomplishment verbs open, untie, kill, destroy, break all have inherent culmination in the lexical semantics, while activity verbs sing, run, sleep are atelic predicates without inherent culmination.

However, the standard classified activity verbs can yield a telic interpretation if it takes a definite quantized object. Jackendoff (1991) claims that the feature of [±bound] is not only determined by verbs or predicates but also by objects and adjunct prepositional phrases. In particular, the quantization properties of the direct object also contribute to the culmination of the event. Verkuyl (1972) points out that the telic or atelic reading of build depends on the properties of their direct objects. Build heads a telic VP when it combines with a bare plural or mass nominal as a direct object as in (16a). A quantized object thus turns it into a telic verb phrase, whereas a non-quantized object (a mass term or bare plural) yields an atelic verb phrase, as in example (16b).

(16) a. Mary built two houses (*for an hour/in an hour).

b. Mary built houses (for a week/*in a week).

Previous studies also identify “satellite phases” as important elements determining culmination of predicates. These “satellite phrases” include directional PPs (“to the store” in “walk to the store”), particles (“up” in “use-up”), and resultative constructions (such as “paint the fence green”, and “wash the cloth clean”) etc. (Talmy 1999)

Smith (1991) proposes that the overall aspectual property of a sentence is decided by the interaction between “situation type aspect” and “viewpoint aspect”. Situation type aspect refers to the lexical classification of verbs, which can be divided into: states, activities, accomplishments, achievements and semelfactives, while the viewpoint aspect is realized through grammatical devices, such as aspect markers and temporal adverbials attached. (Smith 1991)

Note that telicity can be encoded at three different levels: at the level of verb (e.g. write vs. kill), with a combination with verb particles (e.g. write-up), and with a quantized direct object (e.g. write a letter vs. push a cart). So, the telicity of the predicate is decided by the verb core and the verb satellites

While predicate telicity describes one dimension of temporality, perfectivity presents another. As discussed in section 2.2.2, the perfective/imperfective aspect distinction presents a speaker’s perspective on an event. Perfective aspect views an event from the outside and as a whole, including its initial and final boundaries—has happened and the event does no longer continue (Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria, 2000; Kamp & Reyle, 1993; Klein, 1994, among others). In contrast, imperfective aspect only presents parts of the event from inside. It signifies that the event was ongoing at a certain reference

time, but does not make any relevant assertion of the culmination component in the representation of a predicate. The imperfective can bring about non-culminating readings of telic predicates, as shown in (17c)

(17) a. draw atelic predicate b. draw a picture telic c. He is drawing a picture. nonculminating readings

In brief, culmination inference is decided by the interaction between lexical aspects and grammatical aspects. The acquisition challenge for the learner is to sort out the interplay of these lexical and grammatical elements.

In the literature, two diagnostics have been widely used to test the telicity of a verb predicate: for x time and in x time. For x time measures the duration of the eventuality, and thus only combines with atelic predicates, while in x time adverbials, as it associates the event with a temporal bound, should only combine with telic predicates. (Dowty, 1979) We can use these two tests to distinguish telic from the atelic predicates.

(18) a. The child crossed the street *for an hour / in an hour. b. The child slept on the sofa for an hour / * in an hour.

The examples in (18a) shows that, the telic accomplishment “cross the street” can only co-occur with an “in-x-time” adverbial, because the event is bounded, having an inherent endpoint. On the other hand, the example in (18b) shows that, the atelic activity “sleep” having no inherent endpoint is compatible with a “for x time” adverbial, measuring the interval during which the event it describes lasts.

2.3 Event Structure of Accomplishments

2.3.1 Process + Culmination

According to Smith, an accomplishment predicate, such as write a letter or break a plate, describes an event that happens (+dynamic), lasts for some time (+durative), and yield a change of state or result (+telic). Accomplishment eventualities are acknowledged complex events, involving two subevents either as an activity and an achievement/ a goal for Foley and van Valin (1984: 38), an activity and a state change for Grimshaw (1990),

a process and an outcome for Smith (1990, 1997), an activity and a state for Pustejovsky (1991, 1995).

Ramchand (2003, 2008) decomposes accomplishments into three subevents: activity (involving an initiator corresponding to the agent), process (involving an undergoer corresponding to the theme) and result state (involving the holder of result state).

Hale & Keyser (1991, 1993, 1997, and 1999) proposed a syntactic representation of the event type of accomplishment, which they refer to as “Lexical Syntax”. For instance, for an accomplishment such as “The cook thinned the gravy”, (19) shows the event structure and the thematic relations involved. In the event structure of the accomplishment in (19), the outer VP refers to an agentive, dynamic event that is in a causal relation with the inner VP, which also denotes a dynamic event. The AP signifies the state achieved by the inner event the DP. Its specifier the gravy is identified as the theme (the entity undergoing the change of state). Thus, the culmination of the accomplishment is also presented as entailed syntactically by Hale & Keyser.

(19) The cook thinned the gravy.

McCawley (1968) used metalanguage like CAUSE, BECOME, NOT and ALIVE to decompose a typical accomplishment verb “kill”, as shown in the representation in (20) involving participants x and y, with x causing the event and y undergoing the state change in the event. There are four predicates CAUSE, BECOME, NOT and ALIVE. ALIVE is lexicalized on the first cycle, i.e. most deeply embedded clause, then ALIVE raises and attached to NOT, yielding [NOT alive]. Here there is a lexical transformation replacing [ NOT alive] with dead. At the next higher cycle, dead is raised and attached to BECOME, yielding [BECOME dead], which lexically transformed to die. Finally, on the highest cycle, die is raised and attached to CAUSE, giving [CAUSE die], which lexicalizes as kill.

(20) kill: [CAUSE[BECOME[DEAD]]] S CAUSE x S BECOME S NOT S ALIVE y

Based on Dowty (1979) and adopting a neo-Davidsonian theory, Rothstein (2004) proposes the semantic representation of Vendlerian classes as shown in (21). In the templates in (21), the operators BECOME and DO are adapted from Dowty, and P is a variable, representing idiosyncratic content of particular lexical items.

(21) a.States: λe.P(e) b. Activities: λe. (DO(P))(e) c. Achievements: λe. (BECOME(P))(e) s d.Accomplishments λe.∃e1∃e2[e= (e1 e2) ∧ (DO(P))(e1) ∧ (Cul(e)=e2] (Rothstein 2004: 35)

Rothstein states that accomplishments are more complex event predicates, summing a “DO-event” (activity) and a “BECOME-event”. In order, however, to distinguish the become subeventuality in achievement vs. accomplishment, Rothstein further assumes that “the BECOME part of an accomplishment takes place over an extended period of time whereas achievement BECOME events are instantaneous” (Rothstein 2004: 106) She firmly asserts that an accomplishment is represented as summing an activity and a culmination (telic point). Based on a number of diagnostics, Rothstein shows that achievements are punctual while the change of state in accomplishments is gradual : (i) achievements that are felicitous in the progressive are limited (some are never accepted); (ii) a temporal modifier (in futurate progressive) can modify the activity part of an accomplishment, but never the telic point; with achievements, this is the most natural reading. In (22a), the eating dinner event will occur in half an hour, but we have no idea when the dinner will finish (the culmination). By contrast, in (22b), the landing (the culmination) will take place after half an hour.

(22) a. We are eating dinner in half an hour. ACCOMPLISHMENT

b. The plane is landing in half an hour. ACHIEVEMENT

(Rothstein 2004: 43)

Rothstein concludes that culmination of an accomplishment is the final minimal event in an incremental process, and that the accomplishment template consists of an activity and BECOME events. She further points out that traditional accomplishments like “arrive at the station” are derived from achievements via the following shift rule in (23).

(23) SHIFT(VPpunctual): λe.(BECOME)(e) → s λe.∃e1∃e2[e= (e1 e2) ∧ (DO(a))(e1) ∧ (Cul(e)=e2]

Overall, linguists have defined accomplishments as eventuality involving two essential components: a process event brings a change of state, which may come about gradually or instantaneously.

2.3.2 Tests for Accomplishments

Based on Vendler’s (1967) classification of four lexical aspects of verbs, Bar el. (2005) gives the following tests to distinguish activities from accomplishments.

i) Progressive Firstly, Vendler suggests using progressive to distinguish between activities and accomplishments.

…running, writing, and the like are processes going on in time, that is, roughly, that they consist of successive phases following one another in time…But although it can be true of a subject that he knows something at a given moment or for a certain period, knowing and its kin are not processes going on in time. (Vendler 1967:99)

(24) a. John is pushing the cart. (activity) b. John is running a mile. (accomplishment)

In (24a), if John stops performing the action of “pushing the cart”, it will still be true that he did “push the cart”. In contrast, in (24b), if John stops in the middle of his running, it may not be true that he did run a mile, because as Vendler claims, the “climax” in accomplishments “has to be reached if the action is to be what it is claimed to be”. (Vendler 1967:100)

ii) “For how long…” & “How long did it take…” Besides the progressive test, Vendler also suggests questioning “For how long…” and “How long did it take…” to contrast accomplishments with activities.

If it is true that someone has been running for half an hour, then it must be true that he has been running for every period within that half hour. But even if it is true that a runner has run a mile in four minutes, it cannot be true that he has run a mile in any period which is a real part of that time, although it remains true that he was running, or that he was engaged in running a mile, during any substretch of those four minutes. It appears, then that running and it kind go on in time in a homogenous way; any part of the process is of the same nature as the whole. Not so with running a mile or writing a letter; they also go on in time, but they proceed toward a terminus which is logically necessary to their being what they are. (Vendler 1967:101)

Activities go on for a time but do not take definite time, as they do not have a natural endpoint, whereas accomplishments take a definite time to complete, i.e. to proceed toward a terminus.

(25) contrasts with (26) to illustrate such a difference between activities and accomplishments. Question of “for how long x does V” targets the duration of the event which will be appropriate only with the homogeneous activities as in (25a). In contrast, question “how long did it take” asks about the definite time to complete V, thus it is only appropriate with accomplishments as in (26a).

(25) Activity a. For how long did he push the cart? b. *How long did it take to push the cart?

(26) Accomplishment a. How long did it take to draw a circle? b. *For how long did he draw a circle?

(Bar el 2005: 12)

iii) “Almost” Test

Morgan (1969), Dowty (1979), Pustejovsky (1991,1995), Binnick (1991), Smith (1997) and Alsina (1999) point out the difference between accomplishments and non- accomplishments in their interaction with the scalar adverbials such as almost. These predicate types have different entailments when they take the adverb “almost”. Accomplishments, since they encode two semantic components/subevents: process and culmination, “allow two readings” when they combine with the adverb almost, depending on whether the adverb scopes over the second subevent or over both subevents. Adverb “almost” may have different scope-overs with accomplishments. In contrast, for activities with only one semantic component, only one reading is possible.

Pustejovsky (1991,1995) defines three event types: state (a single event which is evaluated relative to no other event), process (a sequence of events identifying the same semantic expression) and transition (an event identifying a semantic expression, which is evaluated relative to its opposition).

Pustejovsky assumes that an accomplishment is a transition(T) with a Process(P) as a first subevent and a resulting state(S) as final subevent, as shown in (27) T [P, S].

(27) Pustejovsky’s basic set of event structure types:

S P T

e e1……....en ¬E E State Process Transition

(28) Mary built a house. (Pustejovsky 1991:43) T

P S

e1……….en

As shown in (30a) where almost modifies the second subevent, the culmination (i.e. the final state, a completed house), it yields a scalar reading: a house is almost completed, preventing the assertion that there exists a complete house. As shown in (30b), by modifying the process associated with the first subevent constituent, almost prevents the assertion that John engages in the activity of building a house. Thus, this counterfactual reading is that John did not initiate the process of building a house.

(29) John almost built a house. (Pustejovsky 1991:51) (30) a.

By contrast, for activities, with modification of almost, there is only one reading. For activities, almost scopes-over the only event constituent, i.e. P. So as with the activity verb “run”, the perfective statement in (31) yields a counterfactual reading. almost prevents the assertion that there exists an activity of Mary’s running. Accordingly, Mary did not even start running.

(31) Mary almost ran. Activity (Pustejovsky 1991:52)

only means ‘Mary did not even start running.’

iv) In-Adverbial What’s more, accomplishments’ culmination is revealed in its compatibility with the frame adverbials “in an hour”, as shown in (32b). See more details of the tests of for- vs. in- adverbials for telicity in Section 2.2.3.

(32) a. I fixed the fence. ACCOMPLISHMENT; TELIC b. I fixed the fence in an hour.

2.4 Nonculminating Construals

2.4.1 Types of Nonculminating Construals In English, a perfective sentence with an accomplishment entails a culmination. That the culmination is an entailment can be seen in (33). Since the sentence asserts the culmination of the event described by “write a letter”, the negation of the completion of the letter is infelicitous.

(33) I wrote a letter yesterday, #but I didn’t finish writing it. (Smith 1991: 107)

However, unlike English, in many other genetically unrelated languages, perfective accomplishments are found to license non-culminating readings. That is to say, a perfective sentence with accomplishment does not entail but merely implies the culmination of the event. This means that the culmination inference is cancelable. See Thai (Koenig & Muansuwan 2000), Korean (Park 1993, van Valin 2005), Japanese (Ikegami 1985, Tsujimura 2003), Hindi (Singh1998, Arunachalam & Kothari 2011, Altshuler 2014), Tamil (Pederson 2008), Salish languages (Bar-el 2005, Gerdts 2008, Jacobs 2011, Kiyota 2008, Matthewson 2004, Turner 2011, Watanabe 2003), Tagalog (Dell 1983) etc. For example, in the following sentences, the negations of the culmination of these accomplishment verbs in the second part are deemed as felicitous.

Karachay-Balkar (Altaic, Turkic) (34) kerim ešik-ni ac-xan-d1, alaj boša-ma-Kan-d1. Kerim door-ACC open-PFCT-3SG but finish-NEG-PFCT-3SG ‘Kerim opened the door, but (he) did not finish.’

(Tatevosov 2008: 396)

Japanese (35) Mado-o aketa-kedo sabituiteite akanakatta. window-ACC opened-but rusty did-not-open ‘I opened the window, but it didn’t open because it was rusty.’

(Tsujimura 2003: 397-398)

Hindi (36) maya-ne biskuT-ko khaa-yaa, par us-e puuraa nahiin khaa-yaa Maya-Erg cookie-ACC eat-PERF but it-ACC full not eat-PERF ‘Maya ate a cookie but not completely.’

(Arunachalam & Kothari, 2011: 27)

The first part of each example above describes an activity performed by the agent attempting to change a state of the theme. However, this activity stops before the change of state is attained, so the agent’s attempt at opening a door, opening a window, eating a whole cookie fails and the theme has not undergone the final state change.

Moreover, as (37)-(38) illustrate, unlike the corresponding English accomplishment verbs, these accomplishment predicates can not only be combined with frame adverbial phrases “in+ a period of time”, a standard diagnostic for telic bounded event, but also can take durative adverbial phrases “for+ a period of time”, a standard diagnostic for atelic event. Thus, these accomplishment predicates yield culminating as well as nonculminating construals.

Karachay-Balkar (Altaic, Turkic) (37) a. kerim eki minut-xa ešik-ni ac-xan-d1. Kerim two minute-DAT door-ACC open-PFCT-3SG ‘Kerim opened the door in two minutes.’

b. kerim eki saKat ešik-ni ac-xan-d1. Kerim two hour door-ACC open-PFCT-3SG ‘Kerim tried to open the door for two hours’

(Tatevosov 2008: 395)

Russian (38) a. Vasja otkry-l dver’ za minut-u. V. open. PERF-PST.M door.ACC in minute-ACC ‘Vasja opened the door in a minute.’

b.Vasja po-otkr-yva-l dver’ pjat’ minut i brosi- l. V. DELIM-open-IPFV-PST.M door. ACC five minutes give.up-PST.M ‘Vasja tried to open the door for five minutes and gave up.’ {Context: The lock on the door is broken.} (Tatevosov and Ivanov 2009)

Linguists recognize two types of NC construals for accomplishment verbs: zero change of state and partial change of state. The former type of construal, also called “failed attempt” in the literature (see Tatevosov 2008), means that the change of state encoded by the predicate does not occur to any positive degree (Tatevosov 2008, Demirdache & Martin 2015). As example (39) shows, the “killing the bear” event ends with zero change of state: the bear didn’t die. (40) and (41) also present zero-result NC construals.

(39) niʔ cәn q̓ a:y-t tᶿә spәʔәθ ʔiʔ ʔәwә niʔ-әs q̓ ay. AUX 1SG1SG.SUB die-CTR DET bear and NEG AUX-3SG.SUB die Intended: ‘ I killed the bear but it didn’t die’.

(Halkomelem, Jacobs 2011)

(40) Wǒ guān-le mén, (dànshì méi guān-shang) I close-PERF door ( but NEG close-up) ‘I closed the door, (but the door was not closed).’ {Context: The door was stuck at the bottom.}

(41) Yuēhàn shāo le tā-de shū, dàn méi shāo-zháo. Yuēhàn burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch

‘Yuēhàn burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all. {Context: The book was wet. Even though it was heated by the fire, it did not flare.} (Demirdache & Martin 2015: 7)

Under the partial result construal, only a proper part of the state change occurs, and the change is at a degree smaller than the maximal one 0hua le yi zhang hua (draw a picture)” has been carried out, however, it doesn't entail that the event of painting was completed, and the picture was finished (i.e. the object of painting).

(42) Tāmén huǐ-le wǒ-de iPhone, dàn méi wánquán huǐ-diào 3PL destroy-PERF 1SG-DE iPhone but NEG completely destroy-DROP ‘They destroyed my iPhone, but not thoroughly.’

(Demirdache & Martin 2015:40)

(43) Wo zuotian hua-le yi-zhang hua, keshi mei hua-wan I yesterday paint- PERF one-CL picture, but NEG paint-complete ‘ I painted a picture yesterday, but I didn’t finish it.’ (Tai 1984: 292)

In this dissertation, the experiments observe the failed attempts events, i.e. zero- result events, as “situations with a zero result constitute the strongest case of Nonculmination” (van Hout et al. 2017:326).

2.4.2 Source of Nonculminating Construals

Besides verifying if there are NC construals of accomplishment verbs, linguists extensively elaborate on the source of NC construals, i.e. what parameters can trigger NC construals (e.g. does the source of NC construals lie in the meaning of verbs? Or does it lie in the meaning of aspectual operators?) They have analyzed the triggering factors for NC construals from semantical, grammatical as well as pragmatic perspective. At the lexical level, they have examined the inherent lexical semantic features of the core MCA verbs as well as in the argument structure, whereas at the syntax-semantics interface level,

they’ve investigated the role of temporal, aspectual, and modal operators, operating on the VP. Finally, at the pragmatic level, they’ve investigated the role of pragmatic reasoning and observed how implicatures arise.

2.4.2.1 Lexical Perspective

We will distinguish two influential theories which attribute NC construals to the lexical properties of verbs: the Scale Hypothesis, according to which, NC construals are imputed to the gradability of the MCA verbs; the Partitive Approach, which suspends the result change occurs in the actual world, not in an inertia world.

2.4.2.1.1 Scale Hypothesis

Gradability in the predicates has been identified as an important factor in licensing NC construals.

Rothstein (2004: 106) asserts that an accomplishment consists of an activity which is incrementally related to a gradual change of state.

Chief (2007) studies how scalar structure of the state change facilitates NC construals. The state-change, according to Chief, could be viewed as “a degree change on the associated scale”. (2007:249) Chief attributes the NC construals to the nature of the scales that predicates are associated with. The scale is classified into simple vs. complex. Simple scale consisting of only two degrees, minimum and maximum, are thus described as binary, like tōu ‘steal’, tóu ‘vote’ and mǎi ‘buy’. The notion of “complex scale” for Chief corresponds to gradable scale, consisting of at least three degrees. Chief claimes that gradable verbs display the NC construals while binary verbs do not.

Chief’s idea on the scale structure of MCA verbs sheds light on the NC readings. Nevertheless, we will disagree with Chief on viewing shā ‘kill’ as gradable, as we suppose it involves only two degrees instead of more than three degrees. We then forward a more standard classification. Moreover, we disagree with Chief’s claim that ungradable MCA verbs do not allow NC construals. We will show that all MCA verbs allow NC construals, however, gradable verbs allow both zero & partial result readings, while ungradable (binary) verbs do not allow partial result readings, but do allow zero result readings when modified by certain types of adverbials, such as frequency adverbs and “for an hour” adverbs.

Fleischhauer also differentiates two types of CA verbs according to their scalar structure: gradable vs. ungradable. According to her, the only difference between these two types of CA verbs lies in “the degree of the attained result state”. She put forward two kinds of telos: a maximum one and a standard one.

A maximum telos can be equated with a maximal scale value and therefore coincides with the endpoint of a scale. A standard telos is a nonmaximal scale value that marks the onset of a result state. Maximum and standard telos are distinct if an accomplishment entails a result state that is not a single value on a scale, but covers a set of values. If the result state is a single scale value, standard and maximum telos coincide. (Fleischhauer 2016: 221)

On her proposal, for gradable accomplishments, the result state holds to a degree which is “equal or larger than the standard telos”. On the other hand, for ungradable CA verbs, the maximum and standard telos are the same. (Fleischhauer 2016:225) This is why ungradable CA verbs reject the degree modification, such as very and a little. Let’s apply her degree gradation hypothesis to illustrate how it could explain on the NC construals of kāi ‘open’ in (44). kāi ‘open’ is a gradable CA verb, so the state change can be at a degree smaller than the maximum telos, but higher than the standard telos, which marks the onset of the standard change. The described “opening the door” event can stop at a degree smaller than the maximal degree “the door is open”. Therefore, the attainment of the maximal degree can be negated without contradiction.

(44) wǒ kāi-le nà shàn mén, (dànshi méi dǎ-kāi) I open-PERF that CL door but NEG make-open ‘I opened the door, (but did not open it).’

Fleischhauer (2016) very nicely explains why (44) is accepted when the door is not completely “open” or even when the state change just starts with very minimal change, however, her hypothesis cannot explain over the zero-result NC construals, as illustrated in (45).

(45) Yuēhàn shāo le tā-de shū, dàn méi shāo-zháo. Yuēhàn burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch ‘Yuēhàn burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all.’

(Demirdache & Martin 2015: 7)

2.4.2.1.2 Partitive Approach

As we shall see, partitive theory comes in two directions, those that suppose NC construals come from the meaning in the verb, and those that suppose NC construals come from the perfective operator or context parameters. In this section we review the first type of partitive approach, while the second type, focusing on partitive aspectual operator, will be discussed in next section when we come to the proposals at the level of syntax- semantics interface.

According to Tatevosov (2008), the partitive approach shares the basic intuition:

Events referred to by non-culminating accomplishments are parts or stages of events from the denotation of culminating ones. Non-culminating predicates, in other words, denote events not ‘developed’ enough to yield culmination. (Tatevosov 2008:400)

They view incomplete events as parts or stages of complete events described by accomplishment verbs. We can illustrate such idea with Mandarin example Yuēhàn shāo- le yī běn shū “John burnt a book”. The complete event of burning a book involves an agent’s activity “John burn”, a corresponding process in the theme “a book”, and a result state of the theme ‘be burnt’. However, if there is an incomplete event, the sentence describes a smaller eventuality that John does not arrive at bringing full change in the theme “a book”, i.e. the book does not undergo sufficient changes to count as “burnt”. So according to the partitive approach, the complete and incomplete eventualities develop in the same way, but the incomplete one stop before arriving at the culmination.

The representatives taking this approach to impute the NC construals are Krifka (1998), Koenig and Muansuwan (2001), Bar-el et al. (2005), and Tatevosov (2008). These authors appeal to the notion of ‘inertia world’, which is introduced by Dowty (1979) to explain over the NC construals of the progressive. ‘Inertia world’ differs from the actual world. The core idea is that the relevant events reach their result state change in ‘inertia world’, but not necessarily in the actual world. So, this group of authors suppose for NC construals events, the result state change occurs in an inertia world but not the actual world, while for culminating events, the result sate change occurs in the actual world.

With data in Thai, Koenig and Muansuwan (2001) claim that the stems of MCA verbs in Thai are imperfective. They used a built-in imperfective operator in the lexical entries of all MCA verbs. They represent the semantic of MCA verbs in Thai as follows:

(46) a. α = Impfv(ev, φ) b. An eventuality ev and an event description φ satisfy condition α iff there is an e’ which (non-necessarily properly) includes ev and satisfies φ in all inertia worlds, i. e. in all worlds compatible with what it would mean to complete ev without being interrupted.

Tatevosov (2008) argues that languages allow NC construals differ from those that do not in possessing a modal operator Op that allow adjoin to the VP or Result Phrase to yield the NC readings.

(47) || Op || = λPλe.IM(P)(e)

Where IM is an inertia modality, a relation between event predicates and events such that || IM(P)(e) || w, g =1 iff in all inertia worlds w’ for w w.r.t. e there is an eventuality (event or state) e’ such that e causes e’ and e’ satisfies the event description P in w’.

For example, according to Tatevosov, the culmination in “destroy the house” in English is an entailment whose semantic representation is shown in (48a), but in certain language, it is just implied, signifying an implicature, because there is a modal Op adjoining VP “destroy the house” in Hindi whose semantic representation is shown in (48b).

(48) a. || [ RP destroy the house] || w, g = λs[destroy S(s) ∧ resultee(the house)(s)] b. || [ RP Op [ RP destroy the house]] || w, g = λe.IM(λs[destroy S(s) ∧ resultee(the house)(s)])(e)

Tatevosov (2008) points out two types of NC construals events: failed attempts and partial success. He further stated that CA verbs consist of complex subevental components: the agent’s activity, process undergone by the theme and the result state of the theme. The failed attempts eventualities (FA) and partially successful eventualities (PS) involve different subevental components, as shown in (49) and (50). Failed attempts eventualities CA verbs merely involve activity related NC construals, meaning that

agent’s activity does occur in the actual world, but the process and the result state do not occur. On the other hand, according to him, partially successful eventualities CA verbs are process-related, with both the agent’s activity and the process existing in the actual world, but the result state does not.

(49) FA-MCA verbs: Activity – Process – Result State ↑ Non-culmination

(50) PS- MCA verbs: Activity – Process – Result State ↑ ↑ Non-culmination Non-culmination

Table 3 Tatevosov’s event structures of nonculminating MCA verbs

Tatevosov (2008) puts forward the two following different semantic representations where Op is the modal operator adjoint to VP, resulting in NC readings for failed attempt and partial success events described by the predicates as shown in (51) vs. (52) respectively.

(51) Activity-related non-culmination (failed attempt): a.[ vP ... v ... [ VP Op [ VP ... V ... [ RP ... R ... ]]] b.

(52) Process-related non-culmination (partial success):

a. [ vP ... v ... [ VP ... V ... [ RP Op [ RP ... R ... ]]]

(Tatevosov 2008:409)

The box constituents in (51b) and (52b) represent the “NC construals parts” (occur in the actual world) of the overall eventualities. In (51b), “the denotation of nonculminating v involves the agent’s activity occurring in the actual world, while the rest of the eventuality only exists in inertia worlds; in this way, the failed attempt interpretation obtains.” (Tatevosov 2008:411) Vinertia in (52b) “introduces the process occurring in the actual world, the result state only being ‘moved’ to inertia worlds”. (Tatevosov 2008:411)

We do not discuss over further proposals worth mentioning, such as Aoki and Nakatani’s (2013) Process Salience Hypothesis, according to which if the inferred process component of the denoted event is strong, the event is possible to stop before reaching the culmination.

2.4.2.2 Aspectual Perspective

Another group of linguists impute NC construals to aspectual parameters and in particular to the meaning of aspectual operator across languages.

Smith (1991) proposes the notion of “neutral aspect”. Her proposal is that besides perfective and imperfective aspectual view point, there is a third viewpoint on event description, namely the neutral aspect.

(53) Aspectual viewpoints Perfectives: events semantically visible as bounded Imperfectives: part of a situation visible, unbounded Neutral viewpoints: partial information allowing inference

Smith goes on to explain that Neutral viewpoints “make visible partial information, so that inferences of boundedness or unboundedness can be made under appropriate conditions.” (Smith 1997: 95) She argues particularly that this neutral viewpoint is flexible, allowing bounded and unbounded interpretations. She particularly points out that “Neutral viewpoint includes the initial claims and at least one stage of a situation.” And she concludes that it is neutral viewpoint aspect that allows a perfective and imperfective like interpretations. Smith develops such claim and points out that the neutral viewpoint appears in clauses “without an overt viewpoint morpheme”, which she refers to as “zero- marked”. She takes “zero marked clauses” in Mandarin to instantiate “the neutral viewpoint”. (2005:14) She gives example (54) to illustrate her notion of “neutral viewpoint”. All the answers in (55) are reasonable for (54), thus (54a) with the accomplishment predicate xiě gōngzuò bàogào ‘write the work report’ have both perfective and imperfective interpretations, thus yielding a ‘neutral viewpoint’.

(54) a. Mǎlì xiě gōngzuò bàogào. Mali write work report b. Ta hai zai xie ma ? she still ZAI write MA? ‘Is she still writing’

(55) a. Hai zai xie. b. Xie-le. c. Xie wan-le. still ZAI write write-PERF write-finish- LE ‘she is still writing.’ ‘She stopped.’ ‘She finished.’ (Smith1997:79)

Similarly, Singh (1991, 1998) develops the concept of ‘neutral perfective’ for Hindi. She proposed an aspectual distinction between (Simple Verbs) SV and (Complex Verbs) CV in Hindi. She invoked a neutral perfective, which is realized in SV form, and which imposes boundedness on events, but not necessarily at their natural telic endpoint. According to Singh, to account for the phenomenon of partial completion interpretations,

the neural perfective requires a homomorphism between the affected theme object and the proceeding of the event, so only the incremental theme SV in Hindi can realize the neutral perfective. On the other hand, CV is like the standard perfective in English, and with a totality operator TOT, it produces the natural endpoint reading.

Based on Singh’s research, Altshuler (2014:735) puts forward a typology of “partitive aspectual operators”. He argues that, these operators, on the one hand function as an imperfective operator, requiring (non)-proper event parts in the extension of the VP it combines with, and on the other hand, they also function as a perfective marker, imposing “maximal stage requirement”, which is satisfied when a VP-event either culminates or ceases to develop further in the actual world. Altshuler points out that the Russian imperfective, the Hindi perfective and the English progressive are such “partitive aspectual operators”. He illustrates the Russian imperfective with example (56), to show that when the accomplishment “read the last line of the letter” combines with this partitive aspectual operator, the culmination inference is cancellable.

(56) a. Ja dočityval poslednie stročki pis’ma. I read.up.IPF.PST last lines letter ‘I (have) read the last lines of the letter.’

b. ...xotja ne dočital ix do konca. even.though not read.up(PERF).PST them until end ‘...even though I did not finish it.’

(Altshuler 2014 :737)

Based on Altshuler and Filip (2014), Martin & Gyarmathy (2018) differentiate between event maximality and event completion. According to them, maximality requirement is satisfied when an eventuality is a complete VP or “ceases to develop further towards a VP-eventuality in the actual world” (Martin & Gyarmathy 2018: 6). Martin & Gyarmathy classify perfective operators into two types: weak vs. strong. Weak perfectives encode only maximality of the event while strong perfectives encode both maximality and completion, as semantically presented in (57). They give a crosslinguistic typology of the perfective operators as shown in Table 4.

(57)

Table 4 Martin & Gyarmathy’s typology of perfective operators

Under this typology, they regard Mandarin perfective marker -le as a weak perfective that only require that there is a proper initial part of a VP-event. They attribute the NC construals of Mandarin MCA verbs to this maximality requirement of the perfective operator.

(58) Wo zuotian xie-le gei Lulu de xin keshi mei xie-wan. I yesterday write-PERF to Lulu DE letter but neg write-finish. ‘Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Lulu, but I didn’t finish (writing it).’ (Martin & Gyarmathy 2018: 10)

Martin & Gyarmathy furthermore pose another independent reason for the NC construals of Mandarin MCA verbs that the perfective marker -le has referential use, marking a specific or definite event, which does not necessarily need to be a culminated event.

2.4.2.3 Agent Control Hypothesis

Another dimension of meaning recently identified as playing an important role in licensing NC construals is the interpretation of the subject argument. In particular, the subject’s referent affects the availability of NC construals of causative accomplishment verbs. NC construals is easier to get when the subject’s referent is an animate agent than when it is a pure causer. Then based on this claim, the correlation between agenthood and NC construals is confirmed in many languages (see e.g. Jacobs 2011 on Salish languages, Tsujimura 2003 on Japanese, Travis 2010 on Malagasy, Demirdache & Martin 2015 on Mandarin Chinese, and Martin & Schafer 2012, 2013 for German and French). In all these

languages, the relevant distinction is between agent vs. pure causer as Kallulli (2007) argues that for a pure causer, there is no intentionality. Folli & Harley (2005), Travis (2005), and Schäfer (2012) suggest that pure causers require a resultative denotation, while neither intentional nor unintentional agents meet this restriction. Later, for languages like Germanic and Romance, Martin and Schäfer (2012) found that NC construals involve in psych verbs and defeasible causative verbs with agentive perfective accomplishment predicates, but not with causer subjects.

French (59) Dr Li m’a soigné, mais je n’ai pas guéri du tout. dr Li me=has treated but I NEG=has NEG cured at all ‘Dr. Li treated me, but I didn’t recover at all.’

(60) Ce séjour chez ma soeur m’a soigné, #mais je n’ai pas guéri du tout. This stay at my sister me=has treated but I NEG=has NEG cured at all Intended ‘This stay at my sister’s ‘treated’ me, but I didn’t recover at all.’ (Martin 2015: 247)

Based on these claims, Demirdache & Martin (2013; 2015) put forward Agent Control Hypothesis (ACH), according to which the “agenthood” property of the subject might be the reason for the observed state change neglect among the speakers. For Demirdache & Martin, there are two types of NC readings for the bieventive accomplishments: zero-result and partial-result readings, corresponding to Tatevosov’s failed attempt events and partially successful events. With zero-result NC construals, there is no state change, even to a minimal positive degree, while with partial result, there is a state change to a certain positive degree, but definitely not the maximal degree. Demirdache & Martin then give two versions of Agent Control Hypothesis:

(61) a. S-ACH (Strong version) Zero result and partial result non-culminating (NC construals) construals require the predicate's external argument to be associated with ‘agenthood’ properties.

b. W-ACH (Weak version) Zero result NC construals only require the predicate's external argument to be associated with ‘agenthood’ properties. (Demirdache & Martin 2015: 201)

In the S-ACH, agent control is required for both zero and partial result construals, while for W-ACH, agent control is required only for zero result construals.

The S-ACH can be verified by Salish’s limited-control predicates which denote spontaneously happening events without intervention of any agent, i.e. unintentional accidental acts. As shown in (62), partial-result NC reading is not available with limited- control predicates which describe events without intervention of agent. So partial result non-culminating (NC construals) construals for Skwxwú7mesh (Salish language) require the predicate's external argument to be associated with ‘agenthood’ properties, verifying the strong version of ACH.

(62) Skwxwú7mesh, Jacobs (2011)

na p’ayak-nexw-Ø-as ta John ta snexwílh-s #welh RL fix-LC.TR-3OBJ-3SUJ DET john DET canoe-3POS but

haw.k’-as. NEG SBJ-CONJ PRES finish-LC.TR-3OBJ-3SUJ Intended ‘John fixed his canoe, but he didn’t finish fixing it.’ (Demirdache & Martin 2015: 38)

On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese, German, and French validate the weak version of ACH, i.e. for zero result NC construals, the subject should be an animate agent. Example (63a) shows that, with agent subject, zero-result NC construals are licensed. On the other hand, with cause subject, zero-result NC construals construal are not available, as shown in the infelicitous sentence in (63b). However, for partial-result condition, no agenthood is required, as shown in the felicitous sentence in (63c). This confirms the W- ACH.

(63) a. Pierre a lavé la vitre, mais elle est aussi sale qu’avant ! ‘Pierre washed the window, but it is as dirty as before!’

b. L’eau ruisselante a lavé la vitre, #mais elle est aussi sale qu’avant ! Intended ‘The running water washed the window, but it is as dirty as before!’

c. L'eau ruisselante a lavé la vitre, quoique pas complètement. ‘The running water washed the window, although not completely.’

(Demirdache & Martin 2015: 49)

Likewise, for Mandarin, in the first clause of (64a), the subject is the inanimate causer huǒ ‘fire’, so that no zero-result NC construals is available. This is why the second clause negating any result contradicts the first clause with perfective statement. On the other hand, in the first clause of another Mandarin example (64b), the human agent Yuēhàn ‘John’ is the subject, controlling over the event. Thus, the first clause of (64b) can refer to a failed attempt, and there is no contradiction between the first clause with perfective MCA verb shāo ‘burn’ and the second clause asserting the absence of any result.

(64) Mandarin Chinese a. Huǒ shāo le tā-de shū, # dàn méi shāo-zháo. fire burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch Intended ‘The fire burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all.’

b. Yuēhàn shāo le tā-de shū, dàn méi shāo-zháo. Yuēhàn burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch ‘Yuēhàn burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all.’ (Demirdache & Martin 2015: 7)

In our experiments reported in Chapter 6, Chapter 7 and Chapter 8, we only designed zero-result stories, since Mandarin, unlike Salish language, agent-control is only relevant in zero-result NC construals, our explanation on the role of agentivity will focus only on zero-result context. This is the weak version of ACH.

Note that at least to our knowledge, there are very few experimental studies discussing the relation between agenthood and NC construals.

Hodgson’s (2010) study does not aim to check the correlation between agent-subject and NC readings, but to test children’s acquisition of two types of sentences: simple telic vs. locatum. She designed a between subject experiment to test the children’s comprehension of telicity in four CA verbs in Spanish: cubrir ‘cover’, llenaer ‘fill’, limpiar ‘clean’ and recoger ‘pick up’, comparing the ‘simple telic’ reading’ (with intentional agent as subject) as in (65a) with the ‘locatum reading’ (with inanimate cause as subject) as in (65b).

(65) a. El niño llenó el cubo. (simple telic) ‘The boy filled the bucket.’

b. El agua de la lluvia llenó el cubo. (locatum) ‘The water from the rain filled the bucket.’

(Hodgson 2010:166)

In all, she has tested two types of predicates: one contains simple telic predicates (agent subject), and the other the locatum predicates (cause subject). There are eight Spanish adult participants in her experiment. A puppet was introduced as someone learning speaking Spanish. After being presented a story with accompanying pictures projected on a laptop (12 partial-results stories in total), each participant was required to judge the puppet’s statement, which is either a simple telic predicate or a locatum predicate in perfective form. The 8 verbs are all presented in incomplete situation, i.e. ‘partial result’ situation, e.g. the bucket ends-up half-filled, or the piano ends up half- covered.

For locatum sentence with pure cause subjects, she expects children to know that telic predicates entail the result change. On the other hand, for simple telic sentence with animate agent subjects, she expects children to ignore that telic predicates entail the result change.

Hodgson’s findings are shown in Table 5 and Table 6 below. With the younger children, Hodgson got results similar to her expectation. For ‘simple telic’ (with agent- subject), children of 3-4-year-old (48% acceptance) and 5-6-year-old (69% acceptance) accept easily the perfective statement in partial-result scenarios, whereas 7-8-year-old children yield a small percentage of acceptance (27% acceptance). In contrast, with condition ‘locatum’ (with cause-subject), the performance of all the three groups of children meets her expectation, generating low percentage of acceptance: 3-4-year-old (27%), 5-6-year-old (20%) and 7-8-year-old (19%). With age increases, the acceptance decreases. The contrast between ‘locatum’ and ‘simple telic’ is significant for children.

Note, however, the goal of Hodgson’s experiment was to check whether the structure covert movement into the theme position, e.g. the locatum structure, which by hypothesis, involve covert movement of the object to check telicity features in the specifier of an aspectual head.

Table 5 Target “No” answers for simple telic predicates (Hodgson 2010:170)

Table 6 Target “No” answers for locatum predicates (Hodgson 2010:170)

Yin & Kaiser (2013) tested the same set of CA verbs as in Hodgson’s experiment: cover, fill, clean and pick up. They checked whether there is a contrast between agent- subject and cause-subject in the culmination interpretation of CA verbs among English learners and sixteen English native speakers. They invited the participants to rate the naturalness of the sentence (1 = Very Unnatural Combination, 5 = Perfectly Natural Combination). There are two variables for each CA verb: Construction and Condition. Construction refers to locatum telicity (cause as the subject) and simple telicity (agent as the subject), while condition refers to incompletion (partial result) and completion (full result). So, this is a 2x2 design. Table 7 below illustrates the conditions, examples and predictions of their experiment. The rating sentence consists of two clauses, linked by but or and. The first clause is a perfective statement with one of the four CA verbs, while the second clause describes the result. The naturalness evaluation concerns the combination of the first clause (perfective) and the second clause (partial result or full result). For the incompletion condition, as the first clause denotes a telic event, if the second clause denotes the half result, native speakers of English are expected to rate the sentence (Simple-Incomplete Condition and Locatum-Incomplete Condition) as unnatural (point 1). On the other hand, under the completion condition, the sentence combining with the first telic clause and the second full result clause should be judged as natural (point 5).

Table 7 Yin and Kaiser’s conditions, examples and predictions (2013: 459).

As Table 7 shows, on the incompletion condition, in the first perfective clause, the verb cover takes either cause-subject the blanket as shown in a), or agent-subject the girl as shown in b), followed by a second clause denoting the incompletion result. If the participants allow NC readings of the perfective CA predicates with cause-subject or agent-subject, there should be no contradiction and the whole sentence in (a) and (b) should be natural.

Again, as was the case with Hodgson’s experiments, the design was not to check the correlation between agenthood and NC construals of accomplishment verbs, but to check L2 learners’ acquisition. However, we can observe how one group of participants, i.e. the English adults, differentiate between agent subject and cause subject for NC construals of the perfective statements under incomplete situation. The naturalness ratings for the four conditions among the English native speakers are shown in Figure 1, from which we can learn that English native speakers rated perfective statements with CA verbs under incompletion condition (white and black bar) as much less natural (about value 2) than under the completion condition (bars with horizontal and vertical stripes). There appears to be no significant between locatum telicity (white bar) and simple telicity (black bar).

So, we wonder if English native speakers are insensitive to the agentivity of the subject under either condition.

Figure 2. Naturalness rating (n refers to the number of participants) (Yin & Kaiser 2013: 460)

To verify the participants’ sensitivity to the two variables (construction and condition), Yin & Kaiser executed a statistical exploration. They perform a two-way analysis for variance (ANOVA) over the ratings of the native speakers with the two types of construction (agent vs. cause subject), and that two result conditions (incompletion vs. completion) as within-subject factors. English native speakers did not distinguish cause subject from agent subject in rejecting more under the incomplete situation. This result is not surprising, since English perfective accomplishments do not allow NC construals, be it with agent subject or cause subject.

Summarizing, the role of agenthood in licensing NC construals in adult language is recognized in the theoretical literature (see Kallulli 2007, Folli & Harley 2005, Travis 2005, Schäfer (2012), Demirdache & Martin (2015). There has been hardly any experimental investigation of NC construals, and in particular, no investigation of zero- result construals and of the agentivity in licensing NC construals. Indeed, as we have just seen, in the experiments done by Hodgson (2010) and Yin & Kaiser (2013), agent vs. causer subject type was only indirectly manipulated as a variable since the tests targeted the comprehension of the covert vs. overt movement of the theme to check telicity features. In sum, there is a lack of experimental study, crucially on whether NC construals is available with cause subjects. Our goal is to test this finding experimentally in both adult and children grammar, and thus understand the influence of agenthood over NC construals condition in zero-result context. Since Mandarin is such a perfect language to experimentally probe this issue, and since as demonstrated by Demirdache & Sun (2014),

by Demirdache & Martin (2015) and Martin et al. (2018), Mandarin allow zero result as well as partial result NC construals with agent-subject perfective statements, but only partial result NC construals with cause-subject, it is worthwhile to conduct an experimental test in Mandarin, checking the influence of agenthood over the NC construals interpretation under zero result condition. Moreover, the children’s results in Hodgson’s experiment were significant under the 2 conditions suggesting that it would be interesting to check crosslinguistically the agent control in child grammar.

2.4.2.4 Pragmatic Knowledge

Linguists have also emphasized the role of pragmatic knowledge in generating NC readings, see Smith (1991), Kothari (2008), Pederson (2007), Arunachalam & Kothari (2011), Gyarmathy & Altshuler (2017) and Martin et al. (2018). Pragmatic competence and context are seen as important factors in triggering NC readings.

Smith (1991) claims that turning an endpoint into an ongoing situation in the case of imperfective and neutral viewpoints, actually is a kind of inference based on contextual and world knowledge. Take (66) for instance, Smith argues that ‘the gazebo was finished’ is an inference if the building action must have begun, and the building action is in progress. (66a) with an imperfective viewpoint is appropriate if the speaker and the listener have mutual knowledge of ‘the gazebo was finished’, but if there is no such mutual knowledge, the sentence may lead to the interpretation that the accomplishment did not reach its natural endpoint. And in this case, it is more appropriate to say (66b).

(66) a. Bill and Sue were building a gazebo last week. b. Bill and Sue built a gazebo last week. (Smith 1991: 87)

Arunachalam and Kothari (2011) carried out their two experiments investigating respectively over Hindi and English speakers’ acceptance of perfective forms of CA verbs for partially vs. fully completed events. Their objective was to test whether Hindi Simple Verb (SV) vs. Complex Verb (CV) distinction can be explained by “Singh’s semantic account”, or whether other factors, namely ‘pragmatic and contextual ones’ do play a role. (Arunachalam and Kothari 2011: 29) In their first experiment, twenty-four adult native speakers of Hindi watched videos and were required to judge perfective statements. There were eight CA predicates tested: close, cover, draw, eat, extinguish, fill, pluck and wake.

Arunachalam and Kothari (2011) viewed cover, draw, eat, and fill as incremental theme CA verbs, while close, extinguish, fill, pluck and wake as non-incremental theme CA verbs. Each participant watched videos of four fully-completed events (for four CA predicates) and four partially-completed events (for another four CA verbs). Participants were randomly assigned to a SV-first or CV-first target sentence and were asked to judge whether it was a true or false description of the scene they had just viewed.

Arunachalam and Kothari (2011) set up two predictions. Firstly, as CVs entail completion while SVs allow partial completion, for partially-completed events, CVs should yield a nearly 0% acceptance rate while SVs should yield a much higher acceptance rate. Secondly, assuming incremental theme CA verbs indicate ‘homomorphism between the measuring out of the event and the theme object’, only incremental theme SVs should be accepted for partially-completed events while other SVs and CVs should be rejected for uncompleted scenarios. (Arunachalam and Kothari 2011: 32) However, if pragmatic factors (namely speaker’s interpretation in the real- world context and the perceived intention) play a role, such difference would disappear.

Table 8 Acceptance by Conditions and Predicates in the 1st Experiment (Arunachalam and Kothari 2011: 33)

They found the results that for partially-completed events, the general acceptance rate of CV sentences (29%) was lower than SV sentences (53%). Their ANOVA analysis also proves morpho-syntax to be a reliable predictor over participants’ responses: speakers are sensitive to the SV/CV distinction. Moreover, as Table 8 suggests, the SV/CV distinction holds with incremental themes CA verbs, while with non-incremental

themes CA verbs, there is no obvious distinction. After performing a beta coefficient statistical analysis, they found incremental theme to be a reliable predictor. However, for the non-incremental theme verb wake, the results did not meet the expected pattern. Unexpectedly, there was a high rate of acceptance of the non-incremental theme CA predicate wake under the partially-completed condition (83% for SV and 17% for CV). The scene set up for wake is as follows:

A man was jostled into waking, opening his eyes, and then closing them again and returning to a sleep state. (Arunachalam and Kothari 2011: 34)

The event reaches its natural endpoint when the man wakes up and opens his eyes, and then returned to its initial state, sleeping. According to Arunachalam and Kothari, the case of wake reveals that besides semantic factor, contextual factor also plays a role in the nonculminating reading, so there is no clear difference between non-incremental theme wake and the other incremental theme CA verbs.

Table 9 Acceptance by conditions and predicates in the 2nd experiment (Arunachalam and Kothari 2011:36)

Their second experiment with twenty-four English participants followed the same procedure except that in the testing probes, there was just one syntactic condition (monomorphemic CA verbs, which resemble Hindi SV in form, but are different from Hindi CV in meaning: the perfective CA verbs in English entails completion). The expectation was that the English participants to yield a low acceptance rate for partially- completed events, paralleling Hindi speakers’ low acceptance of CV sentences. Moreover, for partially-completed events, they expected no difference between incremental and non- incremental theme CA verbs in English, both of them being accepted at a low acceptance rate. Strikingly, they found a high acceptance rate for incremental theme verbs under partial result condition, but a low acceptance rate for non-incremental theme verbs.

Results in Hindi parallel the results in English. Moreover, similar results are found with wake. Unlike other non-incremental theme CA verbs, wake gives rise to a high percentage of acceptance for partial completed events.

This interpretational pattern found in both Hindi and English concern the contextual factor. Arunachalam and Kothari concluded that since Hindi and English speakers were both presented with the same videos, factors such as “contextual information and real- world knowledge” must underline their common interpretational patterns. To support their argument, they point out that verbs that yield the lowest acceptance under incomplete situation is break (Hindi SV: 17 vs. English: 0). Reversely, the verbs that yield the highest acceptance rate are fill (Hindi SV: 75 vs. English: 95) and eat (Hindi SV: 83 vs. English: 67).

We take the similar pattern of behavior found in the incremental & non-incremental theme verbs across Hindi and English speakers to have a semantic explanation. As is broadly discussed7, the source of incomplete interpretations of incremental theme verbs lies in the nonmaximal readings of their quantized noun phrase. One can assert (67), even only some part of the sky is dark. What is denied in the second conjunct of (67) is that all parts of the sky are dark, while the sky in the first half can refer to arbitrary subparts of the sky.

(67) The sky darkened in an hour, but it wasn’t completely dark. (Kennedy and Levin 2008)

On the other hand, we agree that the high acceptance rate of non-incremental theme verb wake under the partially-completed condition may lie in the context set-up of the story, i.e. the waking event reaches its natural endpoint, but then the theme participant returns to its initial state.

More recently, Gyarmathy & Altshuler (2017) argue that the pragmatic abductive reasoning is ideally suited to account for how the result inference of result-implied verbs arises. In particular, they use the abductive inference/ abduction to account for the result inference of result-implied verbs.

7 The NC construals of incremental theme CA verbs will be discussed in detail in Section 4.1 of Chapter 4.

The (abductive) inference is the one exploited by Gyarmathy & Altshuler to account for the result inference of result-implied verbs. We illustrate below how Martin et al. (2017) exploit Gyarmathy & Altshuler’s (2017) pragmatic abductive reasoning to account for how the result inference of result-implied verbs arises.

Assume that Observation is true of the process a result-implied verb describes (e.g. a process of eating), and Explanation is true of the complete causative event which consists of a process and a result state change (e.g. the process of eating and the result “eaten up”). Theory: if there is an Observation, then there is an Explanation (Observation → Explanation). That is to say, if there is a process of eating, then there is a complete causative event leading to a result state change “the apple is eaten up”.

(68) Theory: If there is an actual completed causative event Q of eating y, there is a process subevent P of eating y (i.e. P is a necessary condition for Q)

Observation: There is a process P of eating y

Explanation: There is an actual completed event Q of eating y

Therefore, for listener who has acquired the theory, and have observed the process corresponding to CA verbs, the result is very much indicative of the CA verbs. On the other hand, the result would not be inferred otherwise when the process is not indicative enough of the change.

2.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have introduced the theoretical background on the eventuality of accomplishment, highlighting its telic property. Through reviewing previous studies and applying a set of diagnostics, we underline the two components of accomplishment verbs: process and culmination. At the same time, we’ve pointed out two types of nonculminating readings for accomplishment verbs: zero-result vs. partial-result NC construals. Finally, we’ve reviewed previous hypotheses on the source of NC construals from lexical, syntax-semantics interface as well as pragmatic knowledge perspective.

Chapter 3 Mandarin Causative Accomplishment

The focus of this chapter is causative accomplishment (CA) in Mandarin, which can be encoded either as monomorphemic causative accomplishment (MCA) verbs or Resultative Verb Compounds (RVCs). For example, the concept ‘X close Y’ can be expressed by the monomorphemic verb guān ‘close’ or RVC guān-shàng ‘close-up’.

Through reviewing the literature and applying some standard diagnostics, this chapter argues that Mandarin has MCA verbs as a primitive aspectual class, encoding both process and culmination. In other words, Mandarin has as all languages like (by default hypothesis), primitive morphologically underived accomplishments. As we shall see, this claim is controversial in the literature. We contend, however, that monomorphemic accomplishments in Mandarin are unlike standard accomplishments in English in that there is no entailment of state change. In sum, the position defended here shares the assumption both with authors who deny the existence of monomorphemic accomplishments (see Teng 1974, Chu 1976, Shi 1988, Smith 1991, Tai 1984, Sybesma 1997, 1999, Lin 2004 et al. 2000, Lin 2004, Sun Z. 2013 etc.) and with authors who defend their existence (see Talmy 2000, Soh & Kuo 2005, Chen & Shirai 2010, Lin 2012, Zhang 2014). In accordance with the first camp we assume that monomorphemic accomplishments do not entail but imply culmination of the result (change) state. However, in accordance with the second camp, we assume that they are true as there are monomorphemic accomplishments with a bieventive structure, consisting of two event components: process and result. Crucially, we claim that MCA verbs can be further classified into two types based on their associated scale structure: gradable vs. ungradable. We compare the scale structure of gradable with that of ungradable MCA verbs, and then we explore how these two types of MCA verbs interact with degree and manner adverbial modifiers.

This chapter is organized as follows. Section 3.1 reviews the debate on whether monomorphemic accomplishments are a morphologically underived primitive class in Mandarin. Section 3.2 introduces two types of Mandarin CA verbs, monomorphemic vs. RVC, examining their culmination inference/entailment patterns. Section 3.3 puts forward our proposal, namely that there are bieventive MCA predicates in Mandarin, which unlike standard accomplishments in English or RVCs in Mandarin, do not entail but rather imply culmination. In Section 3.4, we show that Mandarin has two classes of MCA verbs, namely gradable vs. ungradable, which do not share the same scale structure. Finally, Section 3.5

summarizes the main ideas of the chapter and concludes that Mandarin MCA verbs are result-implied bieventive accomplishments.

3.1 Are there Monomorphemic Accomplishment Verbs in Mandarin?

Monomorphemic accomplishment verbs in Mandarin have been widely recognized as allowing nonculminating (NC) construals (see Tai 1984, Talmy 2000, Chief 2007 etc.) as shown in examples (1) and (2).

(1) Tāmén huǐ-le wǒ-de iPhone, dàn méi wánquán huǐ-diào 3PL destroy-PERF 1SG-DE iPhone but NEG completely destroy-DROP ‘They destroyed my iPhone, but not thoroughly.’ (Demirdache & Martin 2015:40)

(2) Wo zuotian hua-le yi-zhang hua, keshi mei hua-wan I yesterday paint-PERF one-CL picture, but NEG paint-complete ‘ I painted a picture yesterday, but I didn’t finish it.’ (Tai 1984: 292)

The existence of non-culminating monomorphemic accomplishment predicates in Mandarin has been the center of heated debate in the literature, since it leads to a fundamental question: are there morphologically underived primitive accomplishments in Mandarin Chinese? This issue is important since it questions the universality of aspectual classes. That is, are the Vendlerian aspectual classes, as extensively discussed in the literature, namely activities, states, accomplishments and achievements, universal categories? Or is there language variation in this area, with some classes attested in some languages, but not all classes in all languages? As would be the case if accomplishment are not primitives in Mandarin?

3.1.1 No, there are no monomorphemic accomplishment verbs in Mandarin Some authors take a negative stand (see Teng 1974, Chu 1976, Shi 1988, Smith 1991, Tai 1984, Sybesma 1997, 1999, Lin 2004 et al. 2000, Lin 2004, Sun Z. 2013 etc.). These authors argue that there are no monomorphemic accomplishment verbs in Mandarin, since

the events described by the so called ‘monomorphemic accomplishment verbs’ imply but do not entail a result endpoint. These authors view such verbs as “activities”.

3.1.1.1 Shi (1988) & Lin (2004)

Shi (1988) argues that in Mandarin, states and activities are the only two primitive verbal categories, while accomplishments and achievements are syntactically derived categories.

Based on Shi, Lin (2004) in his thesis claims that in Mandarin Chinese, no monomorphemic verbs are telic. This means for Lin that accomplishments are derived syntactically. On this proposal, Mandarin has two eventuality types—activities and states, while all change of state verbs (accomplishments as well as achievements) are derived morpho-syntactically. He introduces three verbalizing heads, “conceptual primitives” in his system, which license semantic feature combinations of the VP (± dynamic, ± inchoative): vDo selects VP that are activities, vδ selects VP that are inchoative, and vBe selects VP that are states. Basically, it characterizes 3 cores classes of verb event types (activity, inchoativity and stativity) which select VP with specific combinations as follows:

(3) vDo [+dynamic, −inchoative] = DO (introduce activities) vδ [+dynamic, +inchoative] =BECOME (introduces change of states) vBe [−dynamic] = BE (introduces states)

There are two ontological types of verbal roots: state and activity:

(4) state: [state flat], [state break], [state red], etc.

activity: [activity run], [activity laugh], [activity dance], etc.

On Lin’s (2004) proposal, we can combine these 3 verbalizing heads with 2 verbal roots to yield different event types:

(5) verbalizing heads (vDo, vδ and vBe) + verbal roots (state and activity)

Lin claims that “with very few exceptions, no monomorphemic verbs in Mandarin are telic—no monomorphemic verb encodes a result, a natural end point, an end state, or the

attainment of a goal”, instead, accomplishments in Mandarin are derived via combination of a monomorphemic activity verb and a result (change of state) verb, yielding a RVC. (Lin 2004:53)

3.1.1.2 Sun Z. (2013)

Sun Z. (2013:96) also denies the existence of monomorphemic accomplishments. His proposal is that all monomorphemic verbs denote activities and shift into accomplishments when they combine with perfective aspect markers such as le8, dào and zháo. Sun Z. argues that Mandarin xiě ‘write’ in (6a) and chī ‘eat’ in (6b), just like their English counterparts, are activities when they are ‘on their own’ (i.e. intransitive verb). However, “the aspect marker le shifts the eventuality of activity verbs into accomplishment” (Sun Z. 2013: 134). That is to say the activity verbs xiě ‘write’ in (6a) and chī ‘eat’ in (6b) denote accomplishments when they combine with aspect marker -le.

(6) a. Ta zuotian xie-le san-feng xin. he yesterday write-Perf three-CL letter ‘He wrote three letters yesterday.’

b. Ta chi-le liang-ge pingguo. he eat-Perf two-CL apple ‘He ate two apples.’ (Sun Z. 2013: 134)

We offer two counter arguments to this proposal below.

A. Counter Argument 1

Note that in English, incremental theme verbs such as eat, write, wash, and paint also have double-classifications: they form atelic activities when they are used intransitively as shown in (7a), but form telic accomplishment VPs once they are combined with quantized internal argument, as shown in (7c). As accomplishment with inherent culmination, the VP for ‘write a letter’ is acceptable with a frame (in-) adverbials. Moreover, if the object is a

8 Sun Z. points out that a. adjectives+–le =achievement (achievement) b. activity verbs+–le =accomplishment (accomplishment) c. sentence-final le =perfectivity (perfective)

mass noun, the VP remains atelic, and the resulting sentence encoding the event of ‘write letters’ is not acceptable with a frame (in-) adverbials as shown in (7b). Mandarin incremental theme verbs behave similarly. (8) with xiě ‘write’ is an activity, while (10) with a quantized internal argument yī fēng xìn ‘a letter’, the whole VP denotes an accomplishment event, and can combine with frame (in-) adverbials. In contrast, as shown in (9b), where the object is a bare plural (non-quantized) argument, the frame (in-) adverbial is not acceptable as is the case in (7b), since the event denoted by VP is an unbounded event of letter writing.

English (7) a. He wrote for two hours. b. He wrote letters for a day. /* in an hour. c. He wrote a letter in an hour. /*for an hour.

Mandarin

(8) Tā xiězì9 xiě-le liǎng gè xiǎoshí. He write-character write-PERF two CL hour ‘He wrote for two hours.’

(9) a.Tā xiě xìn xiě-le yī tiān. He write letters write-PERF one day ‘He wrote letters for a day.

b. *Tā zài yī gè xiǎoshǐ nèi xiě xìn. He in one CL hour in write letters Intended ‘He wrote letters in an hour’

(10) a.Tā zài yī gè xiǎoshí nèi xiě-le yī fēng xìn. He in one CL hour in write-PERF one CL letter ‘He wrote a letter in an hour.’

b.Tā xiě yī fēng xìn xiě-le yī gè xiǎoshí.

9 The counterpart of English intransitive verbs like eat, write, walk, run in Mandarin need to take a syntactic dummy object, such as chī-fàn 'eat-rice', pǎo-bù 'run-step, zǒu-lù 'walk-road'. These dummy objects are non-referential in their unspecified object reading. (see Cheng & Sybesma 1998)

He write one CL letter write-PERF one CL hour ‘He wrote a letter for an hour.’

We take the contrast between (8) and (9) on the one hand, and (10a) on the other hand to show that Mandarin xi ‘wash’, xiě ‘write’, chī ‘eat’ pattern like English in that it is the quantized internal argument responsible for shifting the events from activity into accomplishments, see Section 3.2.2.1. Adopting the fine-grained aspectual typology of Mandarin monomorphemic verbs given by Martin et al. (2018b), we will argue monomorphemic incremental theme verbs such as xǐ ‘wash’, xiě ‘write’, and chī ‘eat’, chuī ‘blow’, and cā ‘wipe’ are monoeventive activity verbs, that do not encode any natural endpoint. However, when such verbs combine with quantized objects as internal arguments, they have a natural endpoint, and thus can take a frame time adverbial.

In sum, unlike Sun Z., we conclude that, it is the quantized internal argument, but not the perfective markers that turn the mono-eventive monomorphemic verbs, such as xǐ ‘wash’, xiě ‘write’, and chī ‘eat’, into accomplishment predicates, see Section 3.2.3, where we discuss the typology of monomorphemic mono-eventive vs. bi-eventive.

B. Counterargument 2

The difficulty of assessing Sun Z.’s proposal is that as is established by Sun H10. (2014), sentences with bare predicates (i.e. without aspectual markers), are infelicitous on its episodic readings, as stated below.

(11) To license an episodic reading for a sentence with an eventive predicate, an overt aspect is required. (Sun H. 2014: 55)

Roughly, the idea is as follows, sentences with perfective markers denote complete events, while sentences with imperfective markers denote events in progress. The culmination of the event is thus provided by the perfective marker. The readers should keep in mind, Mandarin is a tenseless language, that overt tense markers are not obligatory.

10 To avoid confusion between Sun Zhaochun (2013) and Sun Hongyuan (2014), we add the first letter of their given name after their surname, namely Sun Z. for Sun Zhaochun, while Sun H. for Sun Hongyuan.

Therefore, going back to Sun Z.’s (2013) proposal11, we would like to explain why we need to add perfective marker -le in (6) to achieve culmination readings for an independent reason: to have a past event episodic reading of verbs like xi ‘wash’, xiě ‘write’, chi ‘eat’ in an independent sentence, we need to add a perfective marker.

Sun H.12 (2014) points out that the independent sentences (12a) and (13a) respectively with bare accomplishment kàn Sān Guó Yǎnyì ‘read Three Kingdom Romance’ and bare accomplishment chī yí-kuài dàngāo ‘eat one cake’ are infelicitous and sound incomplete. If an aspectual perfective marker -le is added in (12a) and (13a) as in (12b) and (13b), these sentences would become grammatical. Moreover, in (12c) and (13c), there are imperfective aspectual markers progressive marker -zài, so these incremental theme verbs can appear in the independent sentence, and lead to episodic readings.

(12) a. ?? Mòyán kàn ‘Sān Guó Yǎnyì’. Moyan read three kingdom romance

b. Mòyán kàn le ‘Sān Guó Yǎnyì’. Moyan read PERF three kingdom romance ‘Moyan (has) read Romance of the Three Kingdoms.’

c. Mòyán zài kàn ‘Sān Guó Yǎnyì’. Moyan PROG read three kingdom romance ‘Moyan is reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms.’

(13) a. ?? Lǐsì chī yí-kuài dàngāo. Lisi eat one-CL cake

b. Lǐsì chī le yí-kuài dàngāo. Lisi eat PERF one-CL cake ‘Lisi ate a piece of cake.’

11 Indeed, Sun Z. goes even further to suggest that even stative verbs such as xihuan “like” are more acceptable with perfective marker -le. They can be shifted to accomplishment if they can combine with a goal denotation PP. 12 In a nutshell, Sun H.’s theoretical proposal is that aspect is obligatory in order to turn a property in time. Consequently, aspect markers are not obligatory in stative sentences, because statives are already properties in time (see Paslawska & von Stechow 2003)

c. Lǐsì zài chī yí-kuài dàngāo. Lisi PROG eat one-CL cake ‘Lisi is eating a piece of cake. (Sun H. 2014: 49)

Note, crucially that Sun’s recognition in (11) holds that for episodic readings in all event denoting (activities, accomplishments and achievements), since grammatical aspect is always obligatory in independent sentences. So, it is hard to evaluate whether it is aspect or the inherent meanings of the verbs that is responsible for completion. There is, however, one possible test case, relative clauses, since Sun H. (2014) has established that if the eventive predicates appear in the relative clause, they are allowed to be in bare form, i.e. without aspectual markers, as shown in (14).

(14) Mǎlì pāishè-guo [NP tiào bāléiwǔ de nǚhái]. Mali film-PERF dance ballet DE girl. ‘Mali filmed a / the girl who dances ballet.’ ‘Mali filmed a / the girl who is dancing / danced / will dance ballet.’ (Sun H. 2015:76)

Similarly, we consider example (15) with the bare accomplishment xiě sān fēng xìn ‘write three letters’ in the relative clause. Sentence (15), where the bare accomplishment xiě sān fēng xìn ‘write three letters’ with the quantized theme, is licensed without perfective marker -le, can allow us to find out the answer: what is the inherent default aspectual meaning of the VP ‘write three letters’? The answer is that the default meaning/viewpoint is perfective, see (17) and (18).

(15) Wǒ yùjiàn zuótiān xiě sān fēng xìn de nánrén. I meet yesterday write three CL letters DE man Default reading: ‘I met the man who wrote three letters yesterday.’

A similar claim was already put forth by Bohemeyer &Swift (2004) and Lin (2006). They propose to use ‘default viewpoint aspect’ to derive temporal readings of ‘tenseless’ VP, as summarized in (16).

(16) Default Viewpoint Aspect (Summarized by Sun H. 2014: 80)

As shown in (16), Lin (2006) takes default aspect of a telic predicate, namely accomplishments and achievements, to be perfective, and thus to give rise to the past reading. This proposal is based on Bohemeyer & Swift’s (2004) assumption that aspectual unmarked sentences with telic predicates have default perfective viewpoint aspect, while those with atelic predicates have default imperfective aspect13.

(17) Wǒ yùjiàn xiě sān fēng xìn de nánrén. I meet write three CL letters DE man ‘I met the man who wrote three letters.’ Default Interpretation

(18) wǒ yùjiàn shā yī zhī hēi māo de nánrén. I meet kill one CL black cat DE man ‘I met the man who killed one black cat.’ Default Interpretation

13 See Sun H (2014) for critical discussion, who argues that independent sentences without aspectual markers only allow generic readings, and that only relative clauses with bare predicates allow not only stative / generic readings but also episodic readings. (Sun 2014: 231)

Sentence (17) and sentence (18) respectively with accomplishment VPs xiě sān fēng xìn ‘write three letters’ and shā yī zhī hēimāo ‘kill a black cat’ in the relative clauses have a default reading, describing a complete event. The atelic imperfective reading is also possible with appropriate context. Based on this default readings, we claim that Mandarin monomorphemic accomplishments are telic. Even without the perfective marker -le, we can obtain culminating readings, contra to Sun Z.’s (2013) argument.

3.1.1.3 Chen (2007)

Chen (2007) in his article ‘‘ ‘He cut-break the rope’: Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in Mandarin”, proposes that ‘Mandarin has few monomorphemic verbs that—like English cut and break—lexicalize both a causal action and a caused state change’. (Chen 2007: 274). He does not deny the existence of accomplishments in Mandarin all together, rather he contends merely that it is difficult to find true monomorphemic accomplishments which lexicalize both a causal action and a caused state change.

On his proposal, verbs such as qiē ‘cut’, bāi ‘blend’, zhé ‘be bent’ are ‘action verb’, while duàn ‘be broken’, kāi ‘be open’, suì ‘be in pieces’, pò ‘be broken’, are ‘result verbs’ which must be used intransitively or appear as the V2 of a RVC. Thus, according to Chen, sentence (19) is ungrammatical since the result verb duan ‘be broken’ is used as a transitive verb alone.

(19) *Wo3 duan4 le gun4zi. I be.broken PERF stick ‘I broke the stick.’ (Chen 2007: 281)

Chen is right in that it is hard to find true monomorphemic accomplishments in Mandarin. However, as pointed out by Martin et al. (2018b), although they are not numerous, they are highly frequent predicates. (Martin et al. 2018a: 1). For example, the transitive concept of ‘break’ can be encoded by Mandarin verbs such as pò, duàn and suì, as illustrated in (20)-(22), which all have a transitive use (see Section 3.2.2 for arguments that such verbs are bieventive CA verbs.).

(20) Xiǎomíng pò-le sān guān, yíng-le nà gè yóuxì. Xiaoming break-PERF three barriers win-PERF that CL game

‘Xiaoming broke three barriers, and won the game.’

(21) Nǐ gǎn zài xiāozhāng, wō jiù duàn nǐ yī tiáo tuǐ. [google] You dare again be rampant I will break your one CL leg ‘If you dare to be rampant again, I will break one of your legs.’

(22) Xiǎochǒu suì-le nà gè diézi. clown break-PER that CL plate ‘The clown broke that plate.’

Indeed, some Mandarin adults show a preference for using RVC qiāo-suì ‘hit-break’, however, suì-le ‘break-PERF’ in (22) was used as a testing probe in our first experiment to test culmination with MCA verbs reported in chapter 6, seldom did the adults (roughly 5 out of 30 participants) and children participants (1 out of 40) viewed sentence (22) 14 as ungrammatical in our experiment.

3.1.2 Yes, there are monomorphemic accomplishment verbs in Mandarin

Another group of authors, however, defend the existence of monomorphemic accomplishment verbs in Mandarin (Talmy 2000, Soh & Kuo 2005, Chen & Shirai 2010, Lin 2012, Zhang 2014). They recognize the two semantic components (process + result state change) in Mandarin monomorphemic accomplishment verbs.

Chen & Shirai (2010) use “almost” to test the two semantic components of Mandarin monomorphemic accomplishments verbs.

(23) Tamen jihu gai-le yi suo fangzi They almost build-PERF a CL house ‘They have started building a house but have not finished it’ or ‘they did not even start building a house’ (Chen&Shirai 2010:6)

14 There is a cross-linguistic dialectal variation regarding the transitive use of suì “break”, some northern speakers reject the transitive use of suì “break”, while southern speakers including myself tend to accept it. The findings of our experimental study confirm this generalization. The relevant contrast is between northern and southern speakers.

They show that we can either have the reading that only the culmination, ‘a completed house’, is not realized (scalar reading) or the reading that, the starting point is not even realized (counterfactual reading). This ambiguity suggests that gài yī zuò fángzi ‘build a house’ is an accomplishment, encoding both a process and an endpoint in its meaning.

Soh & Kuo (2005) focus on the quantized object that contributes to the culmination of the event. They differentiate two types of created objects depending on whether the object that is created by the described activity can be considered ‘the relevant object’: No Partial Object and Allow Partial Object. The former type cannot be considered the relevant object until the process of creation has reached its inherent endpoint or culminated, such as yī-gè quān-quān ‘a circle’ or yī-gè zì ‘a character’. For example, ‘a drawing of a mathematical object cannot be properly called ‘a circle’ until the first point in the drawing of a circle is connected to the last point’. (Soh & Kuo 2005: 202) The latter one concerns objects that can be considered the relevant object before culmination, for instance, such as yī-fú huà ‘a picture’ or yī-fēng xìn ‘a letter’. Soh & Kuo’s generalization is roughly that the completion of the described event is necessary with No Partial Objects or with numeral Allow Partial Objects (e.g. liǎng-fú huà ‘two pictures’). The difference between Mandarin and English does not lie in the perfective marker -le, since ‘-le’ indicates completion of a telic bounded event, or termination of an atelic unbounded event, just like perfective in English. The difference lies in the nominal system of the two languages. Mandarin is a classifier language where all head nouns are mass (see Chierchia 1998, Cheng & Sybesma 1999). As such, nouns in Mandarin can be either + or -bounded (while in English where they are +bounded) and this is ultimately why completion is not always necessary for perfective aspect.

(24) Ta xie le yi-feng xin/ #yi-ge zi, keshi mei xie-wan. he write LE one-Cl letter/one-Cl character but not write-finish ‘He wrote a letter/a character, but he didn’t finish writing it.’

(Soh & Kuo 2005:201)

Talmy (2000) claims that Mandarin is a strongly satellite-framed language to specify state change realization, Mandarin regularly use satellites (V1+V2 compound structure). For example, the verb compound hua-wan ‘draw-finish’ entails the end point ‘a picture is drawn’. He further points out that, English action verbs are predominantly of the fulfilment type, a desired result and the intention executed by an agent over a patient is always fulfilled (i.e. the culmination is realized). Unlike English action verbs, Mandarin monomorphemic action verbs are “the moot-fulfilment” or “the implied-fulfilment types”, i.e. the realization

of the intended result is moot or merely implied and therefore is defeasible. Talmy illustrate his idea with examples (25) and (26). On his proposal, the first clause of (25) with the monomorphemic action verb kāi-mén ‘open door’ only means that I acted on the door in order to open it. The result state “the door left the jamb” is an implicature that can be cancelled (thereof the second clause negating the result is felicitous). To ensures the state change, Mandarin uses RVCs as shown in (26).

(25) Wǒ kāi-le mén (dànshì mén méi kāi) I open-PERF door ( but door not-PST open)

(26) Wǒ kāi-kāi-le mén. I open(V)-open(Sat)-PERF door

(Talmy2000:272)

In sum, Talmy analyzed monomorphemic action verbs in Mandarin as result-implied monomorphemic accomplishment verbs. He imputes the defeasible inference of monomorphemic action verbs to its implicature structure.

Chief’s dissertation (2003) also recognizes the existence of accomplishments in Mandarin and offers another explanation for the interpretation of monomorphemic accomplishment verbs vs. Resultative Verb Compounds in Mandarin. He studies how scalar structure and event structure interact across these two types of Mandarin induced change of state verbs: monomorphemic vs. RVCs. He acknowledges the possible nonculminating interpretations of Mandarin perfective accomplishments, which he refers to as Incompleteness Effect (IE). The state-change, according to Chief, can be viewed as a degree change on an associated scale. Chief attributes the IE to the type of scales that the verbs are associated with. As far as gradability is concerned, scales are classified into simple vs. complex ones. The simple scale, consisting of only two degrees, minimum and maximum, are binary, such as the scales associated with tōu ‘steal’, tóu ‘vote’ and mǎi ‘buy’. The complex scale consists of at least three degrees, and as such are described as gradable. Chief claims that gradable induced change of state verbs displayed the IE while binary induced change of state verbs do not. In contrast, Mandarin VV compounds have a bieventive structure with V2 encoding the result state, and they thus do not describe IE events. The difference between MCAs & RVCs lies in whether the culmination is entailed or implied. Chief further proposes four types of scales for Mandarin induced change of state verbs,

which will be reviewed in section 3.3.2 of this chapter when we talk about the scale properties of two types of change of state verbs: ungradable vs. gradable.

We endorse the proposal shared by the authors reviewed in this Section, namely Mandarin has primitive underived accomplishment verbs. In the next section, we argue that there are causative monomorphemic accomplishment verbs which have bieventive structure, just like English, and provide arguments and diagnostics for this proposal.

3.2 Bieventive Causative Accomplishment Verbs

We adopt the common assumption that causative accomplishment verbs include two semantic components: a causative event and a result event. The initial subevent brings about a resultant subevent. van Valin (2005:42) systematically defined causative accomplishment verbs as involving “a causing eventuality” and “a resulting change of state”, linked by “an operator-connective CAUSE”.

(27) Max broke the window.

[do’ (Max, φ)] CAUSE [BECOME broken’ (window)]

(van Valin 2007: 36)

(27) is quoted from van Valin who systematically defined the lexical representation/logical structure of a causative accomplishment. In this logical structure, all activity predicates contain do’, while accomplishment contain BECOME, and causation is treated as an independent parameter represented by CAUSE. φ means how the activity is performed is not concretely described.

The predicates in (28), involving a durative task, and a final change of state, linked by the causative operator. Max’s activity caused the change of state: the window’s “being broken”. How Max broke the window is not concretely described, for instance, he may break the window via kicking, punching, throwing a stone and so on.

Dowty (1979) has put forward the following semantic decomposition for causative accomplishment verbs:

(28) [[DO(a1,[ πn(α1,…, αn)])]CAUSE [BECOME[πn(α1,…, αn)]]]

According to him, causative accomplishment verbs like wake, fill, break, open and kill involve three primitive components: an activity/process Do(...) performed by the agent, the change of state of theme BECOME(...)., and the linker CAUSE. ( Dowty 1979:91-93)

Talmy (1985), Croft (1990), and Levin (2001) analyze causative accomplishment verbs as describing a complex event as in which an agent acts on and causes the theme to come to be in a state, as example (29) shows.

(29) Sandy loosened the knot. (Koontz-Garboden 2005)

[Sandy does something] CAUSE [BECOME (knot is loose)]

For the meaning of the change of state verb loosen in example (29), three components are distinguished:

(30) a) There is an agent Sandy that does something. Note that the verb “loosen” does not specify a particular action of whether Sandy uses two hands, or some tools, or just one hand. b) There is a theme “the knot” that ends up to a certain state “loose”, that of being LOOSE: [ [BECOME (knot is loose)] c) Finally, there is a causal relationship between (a) and (b): CAUSE

3.2.1 CA Verbs in Mandarin: MCA Verbs vs. RVCs

Causative Accomplishment (CA) in Mandarin can be encoded either as Monomorphic Causative Accomplishment (MCA) verbs or Resultative Verb Compounds (RVCs). For example, the concept ‘pick can be expressed by the monomorphemic CA verb zhāi ‘pick’ or the RVC zhāi-xià ‘pick-descend’, as seen in (31) and (32).

(31) Xiǎohóng zhāi-le nà gè píngguǒ. Xiaohong pick -PERF that CL apple ‘Xiaohong picked the apple.’

(32) Xiǎohóng zhāi-xià-le nà gè píngguǒ. Xiaohong pick -descend-PERF that CL apple ‘Xiaohong picked the apple.’

3.2.1.1Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment Verbs

Mandarin monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment (MCA) verbs do not entail but imply a realization of a state change, i.e. the culmination (see Talmy 1991, 2000, Chen 2008, 2016, Martin et al. 2018). As we have already established, Mandarin MCA verbs allow nonculminating readings, see e.g. guān ‘close’ in (33). We will see more discussion in Section 3.2.2 and Section 3.4 that only gradable MCA verbs allow NC construals without any modification.

(33) Lùlu guān-le nà-shàn mén, dàn méi guān-shàng. Lulu close-PERF that-CL door but neg close-up ‘Lulu closed that door, but it didn’t get closed at all.’ (Demirdache & Sun, 2013)

(34) a. Zhāngsān shā-le Lǐsì，# Lǐsì méi sǐ. Zhangsan kill-PERF Lisi Lisi NEG die Intended ‘Zhangsan killed Lisi, but Lisi didn’t die’

b. Zhāngsān shā-le Lǐsì hǎojǐcì, Lǐsì dōu méi sǐ. Zhangsan kill-PERF Lisi several times Lisi NEG still die ‘Zhangsan killed Lisi several times, but Lisi didn’t die’

We crucially distinguished here 2 classes of MCA verbs since as illustrated in (34a), without adverb modification or appropriate context, not all monomorphemic accomplishment verbs allow NC construals, see thus the first sentence in (34a) with shā ‘kill’, where the culmination of the killing event cannot be canceled. In Section 3.4, we will divide MCA verbs into two classes: gradable and ungradable. When there is no adverb modification, gradable monomorphemic accomplishment verbs (such as shāo ‘burn’, and guān ‘close’) allow nonculminating reading, as example (33) shows, while ungradable monomorphemic accomplishment verbs (such shā ‘kill, and chú ‘get rid of’) normally do not accept nonculminating readings as example (34a) shows. We will explore these two types in Section 3.2.2 and Section 3.4.

3.2.1.2 Resultative Verb Compound

Unlike MCA verbs, RVCs do not imply but entail the occurrence of a state change encoded by V2 that results from the causing action encoded by V1 (See Talmy 2000). In a transparent way, RVCs encode the cause and result meaning components in two separate verbs V1(action)+V2(caused state) (e.g. shā-sǐ ‘kill-die’, dǎ-kāi ‘open-opened’, qiāo-suì ‘strike-broken’, kāi-hǎo ‘open-good’ and suì-diào ‘break-down’). The second verb(V2) thus overtly spells the described state change in RVC.

RVCs in Mandarin, like English CA verbs, entail full state changes. In the first clause of example (35), guān-shàng ‘closed (the window)’ entails the full state change ‘the window is closed’. Thus, the negation of the full state change in the second clause méi guān-hǎo ‘not close-completely’ contradicts the first clause with a RVC in perfective form, yielding ungrammaticity.

(35) Hǎidào guān-shàng-le chuānghù , #dàn méi guān-hǎo Pirate close-up-PERF window, but not close-completely Intended ‘The pirate closed the window, but it didn’t get closed at all.’

Notice, however, unlike corresponding English CA verbs, RVCs in Mandarin cannot take progressive aspect (see the infelicitous examples (36) and (37) which contrast with the English CA in the well-formed progressive form in (36): ‘kill’ in (36) can take progressive aspect –ing which serves to zoom into the process component of the described event. In contrast, the Mandarin examples in (37) and (38) with RVCs are ungrammatical because the RVC guān-shàng ‘closed-up’ is incompatible with the progressive aspect marker –zài.

(36) Peter is killing his cat.

(37) *Hǎidào zài guān-shàng chuānghù. Pirate PRO close-up window Intended‘The pirate is closing the window.’

(38) *Wǒ zài xiū-hǎo nà liàng zìxíngchē I PRO repair-good that CL bicycle Intended ‘I’m having repaired the bicycle.’

Moreover, when modified by with degree adverbial ‘almost’, Mandarin RVC also behaves differently from the English MCA counterpart. As discussed in Section 2.3.2, English accomplishments show ambiguity when they combine with the degree adverb “almost”: either “almost” scopes over the whole bieventive structure associated with verbs (including the initial activity component), yielding counterfactual reading (fail to initiate the activity/event: does not occur at all), or ‘almost’ scope over the culmination, yielding scalar reading (successful initiation of the activity but fail to achieve the culmination). In contrast, for achievements which have a simple event structure, consists of a single change of state event, there is no ambiguity when modified by “almost” (see Dowty 1979): only counterfactual reading is triggered.

(39) a. John almost ran to the store. Accomplishment

b. John almost arrived at the top of the hill. Achievement

In (39 a), there is an ambiguity with the English accomplishment ‘ran to the store’. We can either have the counterfactual reading “John never run”, or the scalar reading “John did some running, but did not make it all the way to the store.” Whereas, in (39b), only one reading is possible: John did climb the hill, but did not make it successfully to reach the top.

We now turn to Mandarin RVCs. In example (40), the RVC xiū-hǎo ‘repair-complete’, modified by jīhū ‘almost’, only yields the scalar reading: ‘not achieving the final result’.

(40) Wǒ jīhū xiū-hǎo-le nà liàng zìxíngchē I almost repair-good-PERF that CL bicycle ‘I have started repairing that bicycle but have not finished it’

To account for the impossibility of collocating with the progressive aspect marker -zài and the only scalar reading in combination with “almost”, some linguists proposed that RVCs in Mandarin are achievements (see Tai 1984, Li 1990, Yang 1995, Tham 2009 etc.).

To counter the achievement analysis of RVC, Chief (2008) analyzes that a RVC describes two-phase events (the process & the result state change), but only V2 representing the result state change (the distinguished phase of a RVC) is available for temporal, aspectual, and model modification. Chief (2007:7) divides VV compounds into two types according to

the temporal relation between the two subevents encoded respectively by V1 and V2 in VV compounds. In the first type, “there is a homomorphic relation between the process and the induced result state”, while in the second type, “the process temporally precedes the result state”. Chief named the first type Coextensive VV compounds, while the second type Non- coextensive VV compounds. According to Chief (2007), only the coextensive VV compounds can combine with -zài.

According to Chief, the difference between English accomplishments and Mandarin RVCs lies in which subevent is aspectual prominent. While in English the initial process is aspectual prominent, and thus follow the scope of progressive, in Mandarin non-extensive RVC, it is the second (state change) that is aspectual prominent, and thus cannot be modified.

Crucially, however, note that non-coextensive RVCs can be modified by modifiers like degree adverbial yidian yīdiǎn de ‘little by little’, showing that the process is durative and can be segmented, see (41). Moreover, as shown in example (42), RVCs also accept adverbials of degree complement (yíbùfen ‘a little’), showing that these verbs are +durative. On the other hand, for achievements which are -durative, they are not compatible with degree adverbials.

(41) Yidian yīdiǎn de, wǒ xiū-hǎo-le nà liàng zìxíngchē A little a little DE I repair-good-PERF that CL bicycle ‘Little by little, I repaired that bicycle’

(42) Nà liàng zìxíngchē, wǒ xiū-hǎo-le yíbùfen that CL bicycle I repair-good-PERF a little ‘I repaired a little that bicycle’

Piñón (1997) suggests using time-span adverbials (i.e., in-adverbials) to distinguish achievements from accomplishments. On his proposal, when an in-adverbial combines with an accomplishment, it measures the interval “during which the described eventuality takes place”, whereas when an in-adverbial combines with an achievement, it refers to the interval at the end of which the described eventuality takes place (Piñón 1997, 3). He further points out that in-adverbials are near synonyms to after-adverbials when they combine with achievement, as shown in (43). But according to Piñón, the close synonymy between in- adverbials and after-adverbials is absent with accomplishments, as shown in (44).

(43) Mary arrived in an hour. = Mary arrived after an hour.

(44) Rebecca wrote a letter to the president in an hour. ≠ Rebecca wrote a letter to the president after an hour.

Now we turn to test Mandarin RVCs in combination with in-adverbials and after- adverbials. ‘in one minute’ in (46) measures the duration of the eventuality described by RVC jiě-kāi ‘untie-open’, while ‘in one minute’ in (45) determines the interval at the end of which the eventuality described by the achievement chū mén ‘go out’ takes place. Therefore, in (45), with achievement, the in-adverbial can be replaced by an after-adverbials, while (46) with an accomplishment, the in-adverbial cannot be replaced by an after-adverbial.

(45) Wǒ yī fēnzhōng nèi chū mén. I one minute in out door. ‘I went out in one minute’ = ‘I went out after one minute’

(46) Xiǎochǒu yī fēnzhōng nèi jiě-kāi nà tiáo sīdài. Clown one minute in untie-open that CL ribbon ‘The clown untied that ribbon in one minute.’ ≠ ‘The clown untied that ribbon after one minute.’

Therefore, Piñón’s test provides a very nice argument for distinguishing RVCs (V1+V2) from achievements. We conclude that RVCs are true bieventive accomplishments. and that in Mandarin Chinese, there are two types of CA, culmination-entailed RVCs and culmination-implied MCA verbs.

3.2.2 Martin et al.’s Typology Martin et al (2018b) give a fine-grained aspectual classification of Mandarin monomorphemic/simple verbs (SV) as shown in Table 10. These verbs are classified under three parameters: (i) whether the result is implied or entailed; (ii) whether the event structure is mono-eventive or bi-eventive. (iii) whether the predicates are gradable or not. In total, there are five classes of SVs: pure monoeventive (activities), result-implied monoeventive (activities), Class1 result-implied gradable bieventive (accomplishments), Class2 result- implied ungradable bieventive (accomplishments) and result-entailed (achievements). We set aside here the first and the last class of verbs since they correspond to traditional activities

and achievements, two aspectual classes, whose existence is not debated in literature. So, we focus on the other three classes of result-implied monomorphemic verbs.

Table 10 Martin et al.’s typology of simple verbs in Mandarin

pure result-implied SVs monoeven result- tive Bieventive (causative) SVs entailed (activity) Monoeventive SVs SVs (activity) SVs Class 1 Class 2 (gradable) (ungradable)

chuí xǐ ‘wash’ shāo 'burn' shā 'kill' dào ‘hammer’ chuī 'blow' sī ‘tear’ chú 'get rid of (the ‘arrive’ mō cā ‘wipe mái ‘bury’ tyrant)' chén ‘sink’ ‘caress’ (dust, water)’ fā ‘leaven’ zhāi 'pick (a flower)' wàng qīn ‘kiss’ zhǔ ‘cook’ kāi ‘open’ suì ‘break (a plate)’ ‘forget’ jiǎn (yìzhī guān ‘close’ xī ‘blow out (a yíng ‘win’ xiǎoniǎo) ‘cut rǎn ‘dye candle)’ with scissors (one’s hair)’ jiù ‘save (a rabbit)’ (a bird)’ zhé ‘cut’ jiě ‘unknot (a cravat)’ xiū 'fix/repair'

for-adverbial ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✗

in-adverbial ✗ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Adverbs of completion ✗ ✔ ✔ ✗ ✗ (e.g. yíbùfen `partly’, wánqián ‘completely’)

Partial-result reading NA ✔ ✔ ✗ ✗

Zero-result reading NA ✔ ✔ ✗ ✗ without x time(s) or for-adverbial

Zero-result reading NA ✔ ✔ ✔ ✗ with x time(s) or for- adverbial

Intransitive use ✗ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Zero-result reading NA ✔ ✗ ✗ ✗ under the intransitive

use

Restitutive reading of ✗ ✗ ✔ ✔ NA again

3.2.2.1 Result-implied Monoeventive vs. Result-implied Bieventive Simple Verbs

The first distinction to be made is between monomorphemic result-implied verbs that have a monoeventive structure and those that have a bieventive (causative) structure. Note, however, result-implied monoeventive SVs are non-causative, and they have just one semantic component (i.e. process), such as xǐ ‘wash’, chuī ‘blow’, cā ‘wipe (dust, water)’. By contrast, result-implied bieventive SVs such as kāi ‘open’ shāo `burn' or shā `kill' are causative accomplishments, encoding two semantic components (process+result). Note that the grammaticality shown in (47) comes from the implied result meaning. So, the traditional telicity test in-adverbial cannot tell result-implied activities from bieventive accomplishments.

Monoeventive (47) Wǒ zài yí gè zhōngtóu nèi chuī le nà gēn làzhú. I at one CL hour in blow PERF that CL candle ‘I blew the candle in an hour.’

Bieventive (48) Tā zài liǎng fēnzhōng nèi shā le nà-zhī zhāngláng. 3SG at two minute in kill PERF that-CL coackroach ‘He killed that coackroach in two minutes.’

Instead, Martin et al. (2018b) propose diagnostics to distinguish the two classes: (i) whether they can have zero-result readings both in transitive and intransitive uses; (ii) whether they yield the restitutive reading when combined with yòu ‘again’.

A. Intransitive constructions (49) a. Wǒ xǐ-le yīfú, dàn gēnběn méi xǐ-gānjìng. I wash-PERF coat but at.all NEG.PERF wash-clean ‘ I washed the coat, but it didn’t get clean at all!’

b. Yīfú xǐ le, dàn gēnběn méi xǐ-gānjìng. coat wash PERF but at.all NEG.PERF wash-clean ‘The coat got washed, but it didn’t get clean at all!’

(50) a. Wǒ guān -le mén, dàn gēnběn méi guān-shàng. I close -PERF door but at.all NEG.PERF close-up ‘ I washed the coat, but it didn’t get closed at all!’

b. Mén guān le, (# dàn gēnběn méi guān-shàng). door close PERF but at.all NEG.PERF close-up Intended: ‘I closed the door, but it didn’t get closed at all.’

Result-implied activity verbs such as xǐ ‘wash’ can yield zero-result readings in both transitive and intransitive use, see (49a)/(49b). By contrast, result-implied accomplishment verbs such as guān ‘close’ allow zero-result readings when they are used transitively as shown in (50a), but when they are used intransitively, zero-result readings are impossible, as shown in (50b). Therefore, (49b) vs. (50b) distinguish between result-implied monoeventive SVs vs. result-implied bieventive SVs.

Notice, that this subdivision is not specific in Mandarin. Since in English and other languages, activity verbs which have also transitive use such as ‘wash’, ‘eat’ and ‘build’, are also classified as mono-eventive predicates. Therefore, in Mandarin, incremental theme verbs like xiě ‘write’, chi ‘eat’ and xǐ ‘wash’ are classified as result-implied monoeventive activities. They can form accomplishment VPs with quantized objects.

B. yòu ‘again’

Based on previous studies (Dowty 1976, von Stechow 1995, 1996, Pedersen 2014, Lechner et al. 2015 a.o.), Martin et al. point out that only accomplishment VPs with a bieventive structure (process + result) will yield 2 readings when they combine with the adverb yòu ‘again’, as shown in (51) vs. (52). (51) with result-implied bieventive accomplishment verb kāi ‘open’, just like its counterpart in English, will yield 2 readings: either presupposes that the door was previously opened by Sally before (repetitive reading) or presupposes that the door was in a previous state of being open (restitutive reading). In contrast, (52) with monoeventive activities (without a state component), the restitutive reading is not available.

(51) Sally yòu kāi le mén. Sally again open PERF door ‘Sally opened the door again.’ a. Presupposition on the repetitive reading: Sally has opened the door before.

b. Presupposition on the restitutive reading: The door had been open before.

(52) Lulu yòu lā-le nà-shàn mén. Lulu again pull-PERF that CL door ‘Lulu pulled the door again.’ Presupposition on the repetitive reading: Lulu had pulled the door before.

3.2.2.2 Gradable vs. Ungradable Result-implied Bieventive MCA Verbs

Martin et al. (2018) also provide 2 diagnostics for distinguishing two types of bieventive MCAs depending on whether they are gradable or not. Gradable bieventive (e.g. kāi ‘open’ and shāo ‘burn’) allow partial result readings while ungradable bieventive SVs (e.g. shā `kill' and zhāi ‘pick’) do not allow partial result readings.

Gradable bieventive MCAs can be modified by degree adverbials (yíbùfen/yìdiǎn ‘partly, a little’ see (53a) and (54a)) or adverbials of completion (wánquán/quán ‘completely’ see (53b) and (54b)), while ungradable bieventive MCAs cannot be modified either by degree adverbs (see (55a) and (56a)) or completion adverbials (see (55b) and (56b)).

Gradable (53) a. Nèi-běn shū Lùlu zhǐ shāo le yíbùfen/yìdiǎn. that-CL book Lulu only burn PERF a.part/a.little ‘Lulu only partly burned the book.’

b. Nèi-běn shū Lùlu quán shāo le that-CL book Lulu completely burn PERF ‘Lulu completely burned the book.’

(54) a. Nèi zhi tuōxié Xiǎochǒu mái-le yìdiǎn . that CL slipper clown bury-PERF a little ‘The clown partly buried the slipper.’

b. Nèi zhi tuōxié Xiǎochǒu quán mái-le. that CL slipper clown completely bury-PERF ‘The clown completely buried the slipper.’

Ungradable

(55) a. Nèi-zhī yāzi Lùlù zhǐ shā -le (#yìdiǎn). that-CL duck Lulu only kill-PERF a.little Intended ‘Lulu killed (a little) that duck.’

b. Nèi-zhī yāzi Lùlù (#quán) shā-le. that-CL duck Lulu completely kill-PERF Intended: ‘Lulu (completely) killed that duck.’

(56) a. Nèi-zhī xiǎoniǎo Lùlù zhǐ jiù-le (#yìdiǎn). that-CL bird Lulu only save-PERF a little Intended ‘Lulu saved (a little) that bird.’

b. Nèi-zhī xiǎoniǎo Lùlù (#quán) jiù-le. that-CL bird Lulu completely save-PERF Intended: ‘Lulu (completely) saved that bird.’

3.2.3 Diagnostic: Subordinate Imperfective Temporal Modifider -zhe

Besides intransitive construction and adverb yòu ‘again’, I propose a third diagnostic to distinguish bieventive accomplishments from monoeventive accomplishments. (developed in Liu 2011). We can use–zhe, a post-verbal durative imperfective marker in Mandarin to tell apart accomplishments from activities.

–zhe, an aspectual marker, indicates the durativity of a continued dynamic or static situation as shown in the independent clause in (57).

(57) Qiángshàng guà-zhe huà (State) wall on hang-DUR painting Intended: ‘There is a painting hanging on the wall.’

-zhe cannot combine with either an activity (58a) or an accomplishment (58b) in a root clause.

(58) a.*Tā chàng zhe gē b. * Tā shā zhe nà tóu niú He sing DUR song He kill DUR that CL cow Intended: ‘He was singing.’ Intended: ‘He was killing that cow.’

There is however, another use of -zhe in adverbial/adjunct clauses: it heads a temporal clause, modifying the VP of the root clause, and expressing temporal overlap between the 2 clauses, as well as providing the background information of the clause (i.e. VP2 -zhe VP1), as illustrated in (59) where VP1 denotes the main event/clause, serves as the figure, assuming

Talmy’s (2000) Figure Ground Model while VP2 serves as the subordinate event/clause.

(59) Agent (VP2-zhe) VP1

Subordinate Main

Ground Figure

The Figure event describes a more striking occurrence while the Ground event offers a stationary setting. Therefore, in terms of temporality, the Figure event is more a “point-like” event while the Ground event is ‘an extent event’. In other words, Ground events tend to be atelic (see Liu 2011).

Therefore, crucially, atelic activities can appear in the VP2 subordinate VP, succeeding by -zhe, serving as the ground event while telic accomplishments can’t, as shown in the contrast between (60), (61) vs. (62), (63). This is the case because VP2 serves as a ground event, providing a temporal background and as such must be durative and homogeneous.

As shown in (60), the activity xiào ‘laugh’ combines with –zhe to serve as the background for the main verb shuō ‘talk’, while in sentence (59), the activity chàng ‘sing’ combines with –zhe to provide the background information for the main predicate zǒujìn jiàoshì ‘walk into the classroom’. In contrast, a telic accomplishment cannot serve as a ground event, so both (62) and (63) are ungrammatical.

A. VP2 is an activity

a. [VP2 Activity (Atelic) + [VP1 Activity (Atelic)]] (60) Tā xiào zhe shuō. He Laugh DUR talk ‘He talks while langhing.’ (Asher and Lascarides 2003: 207)

b. [VP2 Activity (Atelic) + [VP1 Accomplishment (Telic)]] (61) Tā chàng zhe gē zǒujìn jiàoshì. he/she sing PROG song walk-into classroom He/She walked into the classroom while singing. (Asher and Lascarides 2003 : 207)

B. * VP2 is an Accomplishment

a. *[VP2 Accomplishment (Telic) + [VP1 Activity (Atelic) ]]

(62) *Tā [VP2 kai zhe yí shàn men] [VP1 gēn wǒ liáotiān] He open DUR one CL door with me chat Intended: ‘He chatted with me while opening a door’

b. *[VP2 Accomplishment (Telic) + [VP1Accomplishment (Telic) ]]

(63) *Tā [VP2 jiě zhe yí gè húdiéjié ] [VP1 zǒujìn jiàoshì] he/she untie DUR one CL knot walk-into classroom Intended: ‘He/She walked into the classroom while untying the knot’.

Therefore, -zhe functions as a diagnostic for telling apart bieventive accomplishments from monoeventive activities.

3.3 Gradable vs. Ungradable MCA Verbs

3.3.1 Gradation & Gradability

Recall Chief’s proposal we’ve discussed in Section 3.1.2, gradable verbs are associated with multiple scales, while ungradable verbs are associated with binary scales, we further elaborate on this distinction in this Section. We start by reviewing the relevant basic notions.

Kennedy & McNally (2005) specifically defined “scales” as consisting of three parameters: a set of degrees (D), a linear ordering relation (R) (“less than” or “more than”), and a dimension (∆). Dimension is classified into two types: scalar vs. non-scalar.

Gärdenfors (2000) states that the scalar dimension is inherently linearly ordered (e.g. price or size), while non-scalar dimension is not linearly ordered, but rather consist of

different values (e.g. colour). Rappaport and Levin (2010) also define scalar change as a linearly ordered set of degrees along a dimension (e.g. temperature and size), while non- scalar change must be undirected, i.e. the changes are in multiple dimensions. Fleischhauer (2016) also assumes a scale is ‘a linearly ordered set of values of a measurement dimension’. (2016:3) For example, she proposes that ‘widen’ is a scalar predicate of a linearly ordered set of increasing size values along a dimension of width (∆: Width, D: size values, R:<).

Scales are further classified into two types according to the number of degrees involved: gradable vs. ungradable. Gradable scales involve at least three degrees: “the minimum degree the maximal degree and some degree(s) in between”. We assume, a property is gradable if it holds to some degrees, two of which must satisfy the condition that one is less/more than the other.

(64) ∃dmin, di, (di’, di’’...), dmax (dmin < di (

di: intermediate degree

(Adapted from Chief 2008: 11)

On the other hand, ungradable scales involve only two degrees: “the minimum degree” and “the maximal degree”. In other words, they are “binary scales”.

(65) ∃ dmin, dmax (dmin < dmax) ∧ ∀dj (dj= dmin) ∨ (dj= dmax)

(Adapted from Chief 2008: 11)

Fleischhauer defines gradation as establishing a relation between two or more degrees on the scale. For example, the gradation of “widen” involves establishing a relation between two or more degrees of width size on such a scale. For predicates of gradable property, gradation is the linguistic process of comparing two (or possibly more) degree. (Fleischhauer 2016:16)

Gradability was originally mostly discussed in relation to adjectives in various comparative (such as (66a)) and superlative constructions (such as (66c)) by authors such as Kamp (1975), Jackendoff (1977), Bierwisch (1989), Croft (1991), and Larson & Segal (1995). The adjective ‘tall’ in examples (66) is such a gradable adjective: (65a) is a comparative construction, (65b) an equative one, (65c) the superlative construction, (65d) a

measured construction while (65e) a degree expression modified by the degree modifiers such as “very”.

(66) a. John is taller than his brother.

b. John is as tall as his brother.

c. John is the tallest boy in his class.

d. John is 180 cm tall.

e. John is very tall. (Bierwisch 1989: 71)

Gradability is often conceived as a semantically relevant property that distinguishes predicates that admit degree modifier from that do not. The crucial difference between predicate like “tall” and “dead” is that “tall” is gradable, whereas “dead” is not. Kennedy (2004) defines gradable adjectives as mapping their arguments on a scale (an abstract representation of measurement). As the example (67) shows, the gradable adjective tall can take the comparative suffix -er as well as the superlative suffix -est, while ungradable adjective dead rejects degree morphemes.

(67) a. tall, taller, tallest b. dead, *deader, *deadest

For Mandarin, the comparative meaning is conveyed by the adverbial modifiers such as gèng ‘more’, whereas the superlative meanings are conveyed by adverbial modifiers such as zuì ‘most’. As shown in example (68), gradable adjectives can take degree modifiers while ungradable adjective can’t.

(68) a. gāo, gèng gāo, zuì gāo tall more tall most tall

b. sǐ, *gèng sǐ, *zuì sǐ dead more dead most dead

Gradability/gradable property is found not only in adjectives, but also in adverbs and verbs. As seen in example (69), state gāo ‘tall’ is associated with a scale measuring the property of HEIGHT, involving a set of degrees ordered by an increasing relation <.

(69) Xiǎohóng hěn gāo. Xiaohong very tall ‘Xiaohong is very tall.’

Linguists have further argued that scalarity are relevant property for defining telicity. Caudal & Nicolas (2005, 294) defined telic verbs as follows:

(70) A predicate is telic if and only if, (a) it has an associated set of degrees, (b) a specified maximal degree, and (c) its verbal predicate satisfies the axiom Become.

Beavers (2008: 690) proposes an event-to-scale homomorphism model according to which there is a correlation between the durativity of an event and the gradability of the scale measuring the state change, as shown in Table 2 below. Summarizing, durative events require gradable scales while punctual events require ungradable scales. Minimally complex events which have only two subparts and which are of non-gradable scale, can only denote punctual events. In contrast, ‘complex events’, which have at least three subparts and which are of a gradable scale, can describe gradable events. Beavers argues that this model can be generalized to cover a wide range of predicates, associating with two types of scale: gradable (71a) vs. non-gradable (71b).

Table 11 Relation between durativity and gradability

(71) a. John walked to the store. b. John shot the sheriff dead. (Beavers 2008: 259)

Note that by hypothesis, the homomorphic mapping between the progress of the event and the degree on the scale of state change in Beavers’ event scale should be universal. However, the event to which this correlation between gradability and durativity holds across languages is questioned by Mandarin ungradable MCA verbs, such as shā ‘kill’ in (72) and (73). In (72), the combination with the progressive marker -zài as well as for adverbial indicate the durative feature of the MCA verb shā ‘kill’. However, the fact that shā ‘kill’ cannot take a degree modifier such as a little or completely indicates that it is ungradable as shown in (73). We will discuss this issue in Section 3.4.2, which elaborates on the durative and ungradable features of Mandarin ungradable MCA verbs.

(72) Zhāngsān yī gè xiàwǔ dōu zài shā nà zhī zhū, Zhāngsān one CL afternoon all PRO kill that CL pig

dànshì méi shā-sǐ. but not kill-dead ‘Zhāngsān spent a whole afternoon in killing the pig, but didn’t succeed.’

(73) Nèi-zhī yāzi Lùlù zhǐ shā -le (#yìdiǎn). that-CL duck Lulu only kill-PERF a little Intended ‘Lulu killed (a little) that duck.’

3.3.2 Chief’s Classification of Mandarin MCA Verbs

Recall our discussion in Section 3.1.2, Chief (2007) studies how scalar structure and event structure interact in Mandarin monomorphemic induced change of state verbs. He terms the nonculminating interpretations of Mandarin perfective MCA verbs as Incompleteness Effect (IE). State-change is a degree change on an associated scale. Chief attributes the IE to the nature of the scales that predicates are associated with. The scale is classified into simple vs. complex. Simple scale consisting of only two degrees, minimum and maximum, are thus described as binary, like tōu ‘steal’, tóu ‘vote’ and mái ‘buy’. The notion of “complex scale” for Chief corresponds to gradable scale, consisting of at least three degrees. Chief claims that gradable verbs display the IE while binary verbs do not.

In conclusion, Chief classifies Mandarin MCA verbs into four different types depending on their scales:

Figure 3 Chief’s four types of induced change of state verbs

(i) Group I: Non-gradable MCA Verbs

On Chief’s proposal, for Group I non-gradable MCA verbs, the state-change is binary, and the result is not a matter of degree, i.e. not gradable. There is no intermediate degree. This class includes tóu ‘vote’, mǎi ‘buy’, tōu ‘steal’ and zū ‘rent’.

(ii) Group II : Object-Part Incremental MCA verbs

He distinguishes two types of incremental gradable changes: object-part vs. degree. The incremental scale can concern either the object part or the scale of the property, yielding 2 classes of gradable incremental MCA verbs, as illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Chief’s gradable incremental scale

The object-part involves a homomorphism between the part-whole structure of the object and the progression of the event described by the verbs. Thus, take events encoded

by chī ‘eat’, xiě ‘write’, jiàn ‘build’ for example, the described event progresses with the change of state in the parts of the objects. The amount of the change in the part-whole structure of the theme is in parallel to the progress of the event. For example, in the event described by chī yí gè píngguǒ ‘eat an apple’, the amount of apple consumed increases as the event progresses.

(iii) Group III: Degree Incremental MCA Verbs

For Degree Incremental MCA verbs, namely zhǔ ‘cook’ and xǐ ‘wash’, there is a homomorphism between the gradual change in the degree to which the theme/patient reaches the standard threshold require and the progress of the event. Take zhǔ (niúpái) ‘cook (the steak)’ for an example, the progress of the cooking event corresponds to the degree of cookedness that the steak reaches. The event is completed once the steak reaches the standard degree of cookedness. In sum, for Group III verbs, there is a homomorphism between the scale measuring the degrees in the incremental theme state change and the event’s part-whole structure.

(iv) Group IV: Non-incremental Gradable MCA Verbs

Chief claims that gradable change is a set of degrees on a property scale, and that not all gradable changes, however, are incremental. This leads Chief to distinguish gradable verbs into 2 types: incremental vs. non-incremental.

Figure 5 Chief's two types of gradable scales

For Group IV non-incremental gradable verbs, the process is of a gradable property, but there is no homomorphism between the theme’s part-whole structure or the degree of change in the scale property of the patient and the event’s progress. For instance, in a bike’s repairing event, there is a process that is gradable, but the degree of the bike’s being repaired does not necessarily increase with the progress of the event, i.e. there is no definitely a

homomorphic mapping between the degrees on the scale measuring the change in the incremental theme state change and the event’s part-whole structure.

Chief illustrates this category of non-incremental gradable MCA verbs with shā ‘killing’ that “there is no homomorphism relation between the degree of damage done to a victim and the progress of the event”, but “The state-change induced by shā ‘kill’ is gradable in that it can be construed as a degeneration of a victim’s vital signs induced by a killing activity”.(Chief 2007: 86)

shā ‘kill’ is very hard to define. If one dies suddenly, what is the relevant gradable property that would be involved. Even babies can die suddenly of a heart attack when they sleep. Moreover, the linguistics evidences given by Chief to illustrate the gradability of shā ‘kill’ are ungrammatical for native speakers such as myself and other speakers including my co-author H. Sun.

(74) qingshaonian (…) ba duifan sha de tou po xie liu Google Attested teenager (…) BA rival kill DE head break blood flow

‘The teenagers seriously injured their rivals.’

(75) nazi (…) chi dao jiang qizi sha cheng zhong shan Google Attested man (…) take knife BA wife kill become serious injury

‘The man seriously injured his wife with a knife.’

(Chief 2007: 86)

In (74)-(75), on the relevant readings, once shā ‘kill’ is replaced by the manner action verbs such as kǎn ‘hack’, the sentences become grammatical.

We conclude that verbs like shā ‘kill’, chú ‘get rid of’ and jiù ‘save’ are classified as ungradable MCA. We thus propose 3 ways of classification according to their associated scale structure, as shown in Figure 6. Ungradable MCA verbs involve a binary scale structure while gradable MCA verbs involve a complex scale structure with intermediate degrees. We will give diagnostics for distinguishing these 2 classes in Section 3.4. In next section, we will come to the diagnostics proposed by Fleischhauer (2016) to distinguish gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs.

Figure 6 Modified classification of MCA verbs

3.3.3 Fleischhauer’s Gradable vs. Ungradable CA Verbs

Fleischhauer (2016) studies the gradation of change of state verbs, differentiating two types of CA verbs, gradable and ungradable. The claim that accomplishments can be gradable is ‘unexpected’ since it is generally assumed that accomplishments do not allow gradation, but she gives the following examples in (76) to illustrate gradable CA verbs:

(76) a. In der Sonne trocknen Nacktschnecken sehr aus. in the sun dry slugs very out ‘Slugs dry out a lot in the sun.’

b. Die Verhältnisse haben sich wieder sehr normalisiert. the circumstances have REFL again very normalized ‘The circumstances have very much normalized again.’

c. Man könnte die beiden Gruppen noch sehr vereinheitlichen one could the both groups still very standardize ‘One could still standardize both groups very much.

To derive these 2 classes, Fleischhauer first makes a distinction between the two kinds of telos of the events. As was first proposed by Kearns (2007) for deadjectival verbs, such as ‘cool’: a standard telos vs. a maximal telos, as diagrammed in (77). A standard telos as a transition which qualifies as ‘become A’, while a maximal telos is a transition which qualifies as ‘become maximally A’. As represented in (77a), the standard telos is the lower

bound of the given property, which can be seen as an onset, while the maximal telos is a maximal scale value of the relevant property as represented in (77b).

(77) a. Standard telos d = lower bound (onset) of property; <<------|------>> ● = standard telos

b. Maximal telos d = upper bound of scale; | maximal degree of property <<------| ● = maximal telos

(Kearns 2007: 38)

Fleischhauer relates these two kinds of telos to the degree gradation of the accomplishment verbs. Accomplishment verbs that admit degree gradation would be those that do not involve a maximal telos. She claims that the maximal/maximum and the standard telos are distinct for an accomplishment verb entailing a result which covers a set of values, but coincide for an accomplishment verb entailing a result which is of a single scale value. For instance, ‘close’ covers a set of values, in which the standard telos and the maximal telos are distinct. While ‘kill’ as associated with two values, the minimal and the maximal degree, so the standard telos and the maximal telos coincide. On Fleischhauer’s proposal, only those CA verbs that relate to a non-maximal standard telos admit degree gradation, while those related to a maximum telos do not. In this way, depending on which type of telos encoding the meaning of the verbs, Fleischhauer differentiate ungradable accomplishment from gradable accomplishment. Ungradable accomplishments are associated with maximum telos while gradable accomplishments are associated with an entailed standard telos and an implicated maximum telos. (Fleischhauer 2016: 224)

To find out which telos the verb is related to, Fleischhauer proposes using two test criteria:

(i) Whether the verb can be modified by a degree adverb sehr (e.g. very, very much in English, sehr in German).

(ii) The “more” test: whether the result state is achieved, but higher degrees can still be reached.

Concerning the first test, only gradable verbs can take degree adverbs like “very”. Association of gradable predicates with degree modifiers is extensively discussed (see Bolinger (1972), Kennedy (1999), Caudal & Nicolas (2005), Beavers (2006,2008), Kearns (2007), Kennedy & Levin (2008), Piñón (2008), Choi (2015) a.o.). Bolinger (1972) classifies two types of verb gradation: extent and degree. Extent gradation evaluates the quantity of the event, modifying the duration or frequency, such as ‘several times’ and ‘for+duration’. What’s is strictly related to gradable property of the verb is degree gradation, which is realized by degree adverbials. They specify the degree of the gradable property. For example, ‘completely’ and ‘halfway’ restrict the degree to a concrete value of the scale, i.e. the maximal or middle value respectively. ‘very’, the intensifier, even though do not require a concrete value to which the gradable property holds, would set a standard value that ‘specifies a lower bound to which the degree of the gradable property holds at least’. (Fleischhauer 2013:3) In the literature, (see Kennedy and McNally 1999, Choi 2015, Fleischhauer 2016), predicates depicting gradable eventuality which has proper parts, are found to be compatible with the proportional adverbs conveying partial realization, like partially, a little, half. What’s more, as their subparts are in comparative degree, they felicitously collocate with the adverbs showing the comparison in-between or with a specific degree, like ‘more’ ‘less’ and ‘very’. So, in general, gradable predicates are possible to be modified by degree adverbs.

(78) Rebecca partly solved the problem. (Fleischhauer 2013: 3)

In contrast, ungradable predicates, due to the lack of proper parts in the degree mapping on the scale of property, are incompatible with adverbs denoting partial completion, like partially, a little, and half, see (79) (Piñón 1997, Miguel 1999).

(79) *Rebecca partly (partially, half, partway, halfway) reached the summit.

(Piñón 1997: 5)

Fleischhauer’s second test can also tell gradable from ungradable verbs, since the attainment of higher degrees is only possible with verbs for which the standard telos does

not coincide with the maximal telos, as is the case with gradable CA verbs. So, only gradable predicates achieve a result state can attain still higher degree, while ungradable CA verbs whose standard telos and maximal telos coincide cannot pass the ‘more’ test. Fleischhauer classifies ‘close’ in Germany as an ungradable CA verb, and she gives example (80) to show its incompatibility with a degree adverb and example (81) to show its impossibility to pass the ‘more’ test.

(80) * Peter hat die Tür sehr geschlossen Peter has the door very closed ‘Peter has the door very closed.’

(Fleischhauer 2016:223)

(81) Peter hat die Tür geschlossen, #sie könnte aber noch geschlossener sein Peter has the door closed she could but still more closed be Intended ‘Peter has closed the door, but it could still be more closed.’

(Fleischhauer 2016:224)

Fleischhauer gives the following two different semantic representations for gradable (82a) and ungradable (82b) accomplishments:

(82) a. Gradable accomplishments: λφλxλe. φ (x, begin(e)) < φ (x, end(e)) ∧ φ (x, end(e)) ≥dStandardTelos

b. Ungradable accomplishments:

λφλxλe. φ (x, begin(e)) < φ (x, end(e)) ∧ φ (x, end(e)) =dMaxTelos

(Fleischhauer 2016:225)

d refers to a degree, φ refers to the relevant property, the degree of x is different between the beginning and the end. For a gradable accomplishment predicate, according to (82a), the property that holds at x at the end of the event is bigger than the degree of x at the beginning of the event. For an ungradable accomplishment predicate, according to (82b), the property

that holds at x at the end of the event, must be equal to the degree d that is defined by the maximal telos.

According to Fleischhauer, the only difference between these two types of accomplishments lies in the degree of the attained result state. In particular, for gradable accomplishments, the result state reaches a degree which is equal or larger than the standard telos. By contrast, for ungradable accomplishments, the result state is associated with the maximal degree on the scale (Fleischhauer 2016:225)

We now adopt Fleischhauer’s criteria for distinguishing gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs in Mandarin. Only gradable accomplishments can take degree modifiers and pass the ‘more’ test, guan ‘close’ in Mandarin not only can take a degree modifier (see (83)), but also can pass the ‘more’ test (see (84)), unlike its German counterpart.

(83) Peter guān nà shàn mén guān de hěn yán. Peter close that CL door close DE very tight Intended ‘Peter has the door very closed.’

(84) Peter guān -le nà shàn mén, dànshì kěyǐ guān de gèng yán. Peter close-PERF that CL door but can close DE more tight Intended ‘Peter has the door very closed, it could still be more closed.’

Following Fleischhauer’s line of argument, we assume that guan ‘close’ relates to a standard telos, (corresponding to the onset of the event), and is thus classified as a gradable MCA verb, as proposed by Martin et al. (2018b).

3.4 Mandarin Gradable vs. Ungradable MCA Verbs In keeping with Fleischhauer’s classification of accomplishments, we assumed that Mandarin MCA verbs can also be divided into two types: gradable vs. ungradable, which differ in the degree of the attained result state. For an ungradable accomplishment, the event culminates when the maximum telos is attained. On the other hand, a gradable accomplishment does not necessarily reach the maximum telos. The result holds to a degree equal or larger than the standard telos.

3.4.1 Diagnostics to Distinguish the Two Classes

Following Martin et al.’s (2018b) typology, the classification and the three possible diagnostics for distinguishing the two classes are shown in Table 12 and illustrated below.

Table 12 Classification of MCA verbs (Adapted from Martin et al. 2018b)

MCA verbs

Diagnostics Gradable Ungradable

kāi ‘open’, xiū ‘repair’, qiē ‘cut’, shāo 'burn' shā 'kill' sī ‘tear’ chú 'get rid of (the mái ‘bury’ cockroach)' kāi ‘open’ zhāi 'pick (an apple)' guān ‘close suì ‘break (a plate)’ rǎn ‘dye (one’s hair)’ xī ‘blow out (a candle)’ zhé ‘cut’ jiù ‘save’ jiě ‘unknot (a cravat)’ xiū 'fix/repair'

Zero-Change of State (CoS) ✓ # reading without adv.

Partial-result ✓ # Reading

Gradability tests: degree modifiers, ✓ # the ‘more’ test

A. Zero-CoS readings without adverbials (85) Tā mái-le nà zhī tuōxié, dànshì yì diǎn dōu méi mái-shàng 3SG bury-PERF that CL slipper but one little all not bury-up ‘He buried that slipper, but didn’t bury it at all.’

(86) Tā shā-le nà zhī zhū, #dàn gēnběn méi shā-sǐ 3SG kill-PERF that CL pig but at all not kill-die Intended ‘He killed that pig, but the pig didn’t die at all’

100

The first diagnostic is the availability of zero-result NC readings. (85) with the gradable MCA verb mái ‘bury’ can yield a zero-result NC reading, while (86) with the ungradable MCA verb shā ‘kill’ does not license a zero-result NC reading.

Crucially, only after combining frequency adverbs such as hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, Ungradable MCA verbs do allow zero-result NC construals, as shown in (87).

(87) Xiǎoxīng zhāi-le nà gè píngguǒ hǎojǐcì, (dōu méi Xiǎoxīng pick-PERF that CL apple several times DOU NEG. PERF zhāi-xiàlái.) pick-down ‘Xiaoxin picked that apple several times, (but failed in picking it)’

B. Partial-result Readings:

(88) Nà zhī tuōxié, tā mái-le yí bàn. that CL slipper 3SG bury-PERF one half ‘He buried one half that slipper.’

(89) Nà zhī zhū, * tā shā-le yí bàn . that CL pig He kill-PERF one half Intended ‘He killed one half that pig.’

The second diagnostic is the availability of partial-result readings. As shown in (88)/ (89), the gradable MCA verb mái ‘bury’ licenses a partial reading while with the ungradable MCA verb shā ‘kill’, the partial result reading is impossible. Even when there is modification by frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, partial-result readings are unavailable for ungradable MCA verbs, such as the infelicity of the sentence (90) shows.

(90) Xiǎoxīng zhāi-le nà gè píngguǒ hǎojǐcì, * cai zhāi-le Xiǎoxīng pick-PERF that CL apple several times only pick- PERF yi-ban. one-half Intended ‘Xiaoxin picked that apple several times, and only picked a half.

101

C. Gradability tests

i) Degree adverbials

Mandarin gradable MCA verbs can take degree adverbs such as “little by little”, which describe the internal development of the event.

(91) Yìdiǎner yìdiǎner de, Xiǎochǒu mái-le nèi gè tuōxié. a little a little DE Clown bury-PERF that CL slipper ‘The clown gradually buried the slipper.’

(92) Yīdiǎner yīdiǎner de Lùlù chāi-le nà gè lǐwù a little a little DE Lulu unpack-PERF that CL present ‘Lulu gradually unpacked that present.’

By contrast, ungradable MCA verbs are incompatible with manner adverbs such as “little by little”, since they involve scales with binary but no intermediate degree, as illustrated by the ungrammatical sentences in (93) and (94).

(93) * Yìdiǎner yìdiǎner de, wǒ jiù-le nèi-zhī xiǎoniǎo. a little a little DE I save-PERF that-CLF bird Intended ‘I saved that bird bit by bit.’

(94) *Yīdiǎn yīdiǎn de, Lùlù shā-le nà zhī yāzi a little a little DE Lulu kill-PERF that CL duck Intended ‘Lulu gradually killed that duck.’

As expected, Mandarin gradable MCA verbs can be modified by degree modifiers, namely yìdiǎn ‘a little’. For instance, the gradable MCA verbs shāo ‘burn’ and mái ‘bury’ are compatible with the degree modifier yìdiǎn ‘a little’, as shown in (95) and (96).

(95) Wǒ shāo-le yì diǎn nèi-běn shū. I burn-PERF a little that-CLF book Intended ‘I burnt a bit the book.’

(96) Xiǎochǒu mái-le yìdiǎn nèi zhi tuōxié. Clown bury-PERF a little that CL slipper

102

Intended ‘The clown buried a bit the slipper.’

On the contrary, ungradable MCA verbs cannot take degree modifiers, as shown by the infelicity in sentences (97) and (98).

(97) *Yuēhàn shā-le yìdiǎn nèi tóu zhū. Yuehan kil-PERF a little that CL pig Intended ‘John killed a bit the pig.’

(98) *Wǒ zuótiān jiù-le yì diǎn nèi-zhi xiǎoniǎo. I yesterday save-PERF a little that-CLF bird Intended ‘I saved a bit that bird yesterday.’

ii) The ‘more’ test

As we can see, in (99) and (100), gradable MCA verbs pass the more test, since even when the result state (at a smaller degree than the maximal degree) is already achieved, it can progress to higher degrees. On the contrary, the perfective statements in (101) and (102) fail to pass the ‘more’ test. The second clause in (100) and (101) are perceived as ungrammatical.

(99) Peter guān -le nà shàn mén, dànshì kěyǐ guān de gèng yán. Peter close-PERF that CL door but can close DE more tight Intended ‘Peter closed the door, and it could still be more closed.’

(100) Tā mái-le nà zhī tuōxié, dànshì kěyǐ mái de gèng yánshi. 3SG bury-PERF that CL slipper but can bury DE more tight ‘He buried that slipper, and it could still be more buried.’

(101) Peter shā -le nà tou zhu, *dànshì kěyǐ shā de gèng si. Peter kill-PERF that CL pig but can kill DE more dead Intended ‘Peter killed that pig, and it could still be more dead.’

(102) Tā jiù-le nèi-zhi xiǎoniǎo, *dànshì kěyǐ jiù de gèng chèdǐ. 3SG save-PERF that CL bird but can save DE more complete Intended ‘He saved that bird, and it could still be more saved.’

103

In a word, Mandarin gradable MCA verbs allow both zero-result readings and partial- result readings, can take degree and manner modifiers, while ungradable MCA verbs neither allow zero-result nor partial-result NC readings without a modifier, and they do not pass standard gradability test. In section 3.4.2 we provide novel experimental evidence.

3.4.2 Gradability Experiment

3.4.2.1 Research Questions and Hypotheses

We have argued in the previous section that there are two classes of MCA verbs in Mandarin: gradable vs. ungradable. Moreover, we have offered 3 diagnostics to distinguish between the two classes. We now offer experimental evidence to confirm the existence of these 2 classes. In particular, we design an experimental study targeting the property that distinguishes these classes, i.e. gradability, precisely, in particular, in respect to degree adverbials.

The experiment attempts to find out the answers to the following two questions: 1) Do Mandarin adults infer the gradability involved in gradable MCA verbs? 2) Do they distinguish gradable MCA verbs from ungradable MCA verbs in terms of gradability?

This experiment focuses on the adults’ grammar. We expect that if adults distinguish gradable MCA verbs from ungradable MCA verbs in terms of gradability, then they will accept the co-occurrence of degree adverbials with gradable MCA verbs. Also, if they know that an ungradable MCA verb describes state change of binary scale, then they will reject the co-occurrence of degree adverbials with ungradable MCA verbs. However, if they do not recognize that gradable MCA verbs are associated with the gradability, while ungradable MCA verb are not associated with this property, then they will not accept degree modification with gradable MCA verbs and reject it with ungradable MCA verbs.

These predictions are summarized in Table 13 below.

Table 13 Predictions for Mandarin adults on two types of MCA verbs

Gradable Ungradable

MCA MCA Degree Yes No Modification

104

3.4.2.2 Method

3.4.2.2.1 Participants

Thirty (n=30) Mandarin adults (from 22 to 40) were tested. All adults were native speakers of Mandarin, from southern as well as northern China, were all literate, and had received higher education.

3.4.2.2.2 Procedure & Materials

Firstly, we assess the adults’ acceptance of perfective gradable MCA verbs modified by the degree adverb ‘a little’ with a 4-point Likert-scale: 1 Totally unacceptable, 2 Unacceptable, 3 Acceptable, 4 Perfectly Acceptable. The acceptability increases from 1 to 4.

The participants were given a questionnaire on line. The experiment started with an instruction introducing the task. In the questionnaire, there are 8 stories. Each story consists of three pictures and four sentences which describe the occurrence. In each story, the animate agent manipulated an object in a certain way. After the description of each story, there is one filler question and one testing probe (a perfective statement with a gradable/ungradable MCA verb). After reading the story description and going through the photos of the story, participants were required to rate the filler questions and testing probes on line, evaluating how acceptable they are in corresponding to the story. Following each filler question, a testing probe was asked. MCA verbs precedes the degree modifier yīdiǎn.

8 fillers were added to keep participants from getting the purpose of the experiment. Moreover, to hand in the questionnaire, participants should give answers to all the questions.

The introduction is given in the beginning of the questionnaire that “The sentences in red describe what happens in each story, please select an acceptability level for each sentence.”

E.g.

105

A cartoon character Qibao is under an apple tree. He wanted to take the apple off the tree. He jumped several times, trying to catch the apple, but failed. Then he picked up a stone, and threw it at the apple, aiming to make it fall.

(103) #Qibao zhāi -le yī diǎn nà gè píngguǒ Qibao pick -PERF a little that CL apple Intended ‘ Qibao picked a little that apple.’

Please evaluate the acceptability of the sentence: 1 Totally unacceptable 2 Unacceptable 3 Acceptable 4 Perfectly acceptable

The 8 testing probes concern 4 gradable MCA verbs (qiē ‘cut’, xiū ‘repair’, chāi ‘unpack’, and qīng ‘clear’) and 4 ungradable MCA verbs (diǎn ‘light on’, chú ‘get rid of’, jiù ‘save’, and zhāi ‘pick), as shown in Table 14.

Table 14 Gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs

Gradable Ungradable 1 qiē ‘cut’ diǎn ‘light on’ 2 xiū ‘repair’ chú ‘get rid of’ 3 chāi ‘unpack’ jiù ‘save’ 4 qīng ‘clear’ zhāi ‘pick’

106

Two experimental conditions were constructed with predicate type (gradable vs. ungradable) as a factor. A degree adverbial yìdiǎn ‘a little’ was used in each predicate type condition. The experimental conditions are summarized in Table 15.

Table 15: Testing probes’ conditions Condition 1 –Gradable+Degree Condition 2 –Ungradable+Degree

Therefore, each participant was given 4 testing probes with gradable MCA verbs modified by degree adverbial yìdiǎn ‘a little’, and 4 testing probes with ungradable MCA verbs modified by degree adverbial yìdiǎn ‘a little’.

Recall our predictions that if adults recognize that gradable MCA verbs describe eventualities whose process is associated with the gradable changing property, then they will accept the co-occurrence of degree modifiers with gradable MCA verbs and evaluate test sentences with “4” or “3”. On the other hand, if they know that ungradable MCA verbs are not associated with gradability, then they will regard the testing probes with degree modifiers combined with ungradable MCA verbs as ungrammatical, and evaluate test sentences with “1” or “2”.

Each participant was presented with 8 test sentences interspersed with 8 filler questions, for a total of 16 items. The 8 testing probes including 4 gradable MCA verbs and 4 ungradable MCA verbs are listed in Table 16.

Table 16: 8 testing items in order

1. pick an apple_ Ungradable Degree Modifier *

2. repaire a toilette _ Gradable Degree Modifier 3 get rid of a cockroach _Ungradable Degree Modifier*

4. cut a watermelon_ Gradable Degree Modifier

5.unpack a present_Gradable Degree Modifier

6. clear the refrigerator _Gradable Degree Modifier

7. save a bird_Ungradable Degree Modifier * 8. light a candle_ Ungradable Degree Modifier

107

The testing probes are given subsequently after the stories with either gradable or ungradable verbs, see the following examples.

Figure 7 Gradable+ degree adverbial modifier ‘a little’

The toilet in Qibao’s house is clogged. He fetched a plunger to drain the toilet bowl and plunged it again and again with great efforts. The toilet drained a little, but remained clogged.

(104) Qibao xiū -le yī diǎn nà gè cèsuǒ Qibao repair-PERF a little that CL toilet ‘Qibao repaired a little that toilet.’

Please evaluate the acceptability of the sentence:

1 Totally unacceptable 2 Unacceptable 3 Acceptable 4 Perfectly acceptable

Figure 8 Ungradable+ degree adverbial modifier ‘a little’

108

Qibao is under an apple tree. He wanted to pick off the apple in the tree. He jumped several times, trying to catch the apple, but failed. Then he picked up a stone, threw it at the apple, aiming to make it fall.

(105) *Qibao zhāi -le yī diǎn nà gè píngguǒ Qibao pick -PERF a little that CL apple Intended ‘Qibao picked a little that apple.’

Please evaluate the acceptability of the sentence: 1.Totally unacceptable 2. Unacceptable 3.Acceptable 4. Perfectly acceptable

3.4.2.3 Results

The dependent variable in the analyses was the acceptance of degree modifiers (i.e. yīdiǎn ‘a little/slightly’). All participants performed well on the control items; no participant was thus excluded from the analysis. Our findings are presented below. We conflate “1” and “2” answers into unacceptable and “3” and “4” answers into acceptable. No “I don’t know” option was provided.

As Figure 9 shows, Mandarin adults differentiate the two classes of MCA verbs according to their associated scale property. Gradable MCA verbs modified by degree adverbial yield a high percentage of acceptance (71% acceptance), while ungradable MCA verbs yield a low percentage of acceptance (9% acceptance). Therefore, co-occurrence with degree modifiers, gradable MCA verbs are thus much more easily accepted than ungradable MCA verbs. The statistical analysis reveals that the adult group differentiate ungradable MCA verbs from gradable MCA verbs with respect to degree adverbial modification (F (1, 238) =156.12, p< 0.001). For degree modifier adverbial construction, there is a significant influence of gradable scale effect.

109

Figure 9 Average acceptance of degree modification by Mandarin adults (n=30), 0 equals unacceptable, while 1 equals acceptable.

Table 17 Acceptability of MCA verbs modified by degree adverbial ‘a little’ 95% Confidence Interval Modifier Gradable Mean Std. Error Lower Bound Upper Bound ungradable 1.325 .085 1.158 1.492 Degree gradable 2.908 .085 2.742 3.075 *1 = Not at all acceptable, 4 = Perfectly acceptable

The mean acceptance of the perfective statement with gradable and ungradable MCA verbs is also calculated. As shown in Table 17, when MCA verbs are of gradable type, the adults tend to accept the modification of the degree adverbial ‘a little’ (mean acceptability value is 2.9/4 Acceptable). However, when MCA verbs are of ungradable type, they would view the perfective sentence as Totally unacceptable (mean acceptability value is 1.3/4).

As shown in Figure 10 below, adults accept degree modification for the gradable MCA verbs (xiū ‘repair’, chāi ‘unpack’, qiē ‘cut’ and qīng ‘clear’) with the mean acceptance ranging from 0.53 to 0.9, while they tend to reject degree modification for the ungradable MCA verbs (zhāi ‘pick’, chú ‘get rid of’, jiù ‘save’, and diǎn ‘light’) with the mean acceptance ranging from 0 to 0.17.

110

Figure 10 Average acceptance of degree modification across verbs

3.4.2.4 Discussion

The current study has examined the results of Likert Scale task investigating whether gradable and ungradable MCA verbs can be distinguished with respect to degree adverbs in Mandarin adult’s language. The overall results show that the adult participants knew the gradability of gradable MCA verbs, allowing them to take degree modifier yīdiǎn ‘a little’ (acceptability value is around “3” acceptable), while they assume the ungradable MCA verbs without gradability cannot combine with degree modifiers (acceptability value is around “1” totally unacceptable).

On the basis of the results in this experiment, we conclude that Mandarin adults draw a significant distinction between gradable and ungradable MCA verbs with regard to their gradability, as we claimed in Section 3.4.1.

3.4.3 Ungradable MCA Verbs Are not Achievements There still rests an issue to clarify. Since state changes of ungradable MCA verbs are of binary degrees and do not allow partial-result NC readings, are these ungradable MCA verbs achievements rather than accomplishments?

First of all, we can use durative time adverbials such as ‘for x time’ to prove a process component in their semantic structure.

111

As (106) and (107) show, ungradable MCA verbs can be modified by a durative time adverbial. Thus, we infer that an ungradable MCA verb contains a process component.

(106) Xiǎoxīng zhāi nà gè píngguǒ zhāi -le hǎo yí huì, (dou mei Xiǎoxīng pick that CL apple pick-PERF good a while DOU NEG. PERF zhai-xialai.) pick-down ‘Xiaoxing picked that apple for a while, (but failed in picking it)’

(107) Xiǎoxīng chú nà zhī zhāngláng, chú-le yī xiàwǔ Xiǎoxīng get rid of that CL cockroach get rid of-PERF one afternoon ‘Xiaoxing cleared away that cockroach for a whole afternoon.’

Moreover, we can also use modification by ‘almost’ to distinguish ungradable MCA verbs from achievement verbs in Mandarin. As discussed in Section 2.3.2, being composed of process and result components, accomplishments show ambiguity when they combine with ‘almost’, depending on whether ‘almost’ modifies the whole event, yielding a counterfactual reading (the event did not occur at all), or the result, yielding a scalar reading (successful initiation of the activity, but failure in achieving the culmination). In contrast, for achievement which consists of only ‘culmination’ semantic component, there is no ambiguity when modified by ‘almost’: only counterfactual reading is triggered, see (111)

(108) Tā chàdiǎn jiù-le nà-gè xiǎohái. 3SG almost save-PERF that CL child ‘He did not even perform the action to save the kid.’ (counterfactual) Or ‘He did endeavor, but failed to save the kid.’ (scalar)

(109) Tā chàdiǎn zhāi-le nà gè píngguǒ. 3SG almost pick-PERF that CL apple ‘He didn’t even perform the action to pick the apple.’ (counterfactual) Or ‘He did endeavor, but failed to pick the apple.’ (scalar)

(110) Lǐsì chàdiǎn dào-dá-le shāndǐng Lisi almost arrive-reached-PERF top of hill

112

‘Lisi never arrivd at the top of the hill.’ (counterfactual)

(111) Lǐsì chàdiǎn fānù-le. Lisi almost become-angry-PERF ‘Lisi never became angry.’ (counterfactual)

Due to their bieventive structure, when the ungradable MCA verbs jiù ‘save’ and zhāi ‘pick’ combine with jīhū ‘almost’ in (108) and (109), both the counterfactual and the scalar interpretations are available. By contrast, due to its monoeventive structure, achievement in (110) and (111) only license counterfactual readings (the event never occurs at all).

With these tests, ungradable MCA verbs in Mandarin are shown not to be achievements, but causative accomplishments, encoding both a process and a result (change of state).

3.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have reviewed the literature and proved MCA verbs in Mandarin is a primitive aspectual class, encoding both process and culmination.

At the same time, we’ve pointed out that there are two types of Mandarin CA verbs, MCA vs. RVC with different culmination inference/entailment patterns. Culmination in Mandarin MCA verbs is implied instead of entailed, while culmination in RVC is entailed. So only MCA verbs allow nonculminating construals in an appropriate context.

Moreover, we have shown that Mandarin has two classes of MCA verbs, namely gradable vs. ungradable, which do not share the same scale structure. We’ve examined their different scale structures and used some diagnostics to tell them apart. We’ve also provided experimental evidence to substantiate this claim.

113

Chapter 4 On the Source of Nonculminating Construals for Mandarin Perfective Accomplishments

This chapter aims to find out the source of Nonculminating (NC) Construals for monomorphemic causative accomplishments (MCA) verbs in perfective form. It is dedicated to an analysis of the scale structure of the events denoted by two types of MCA verbs (gradable vs. ungradable), defining their possibility of licensing partial-result NC construals. We also examine how the perfective aspect marker -le returns subevent, and thus facilitates zero-result NC construals for gradable MCA verbs (incremental vs. nonincremental). Moreover, we will investigate why agent subjects, but not cause subjects, allow zero-result NC construals. In total, we investigate how the three parameters interact to license NC construals: 1) gradable scale structure of the predicate; 2) the perfective operator -le; 3) agentive subject.

In section 4.1, we start with a presentation of our scale structure hypothesis, specifically concerning the two types of MCAs verbs (gradable vs. ungradable). We distinguish the different scale structures associated with the events denoted by these two classes of predicates. We then explore the interaction between these two types of MCA verbs with perfective aspect marker -le in section 4.2. Finally, section 4.3 examines the role of agenthood in licensing zero-result NC construals.

4.1 Gradable vs. Ungradable MCA Verbs: Partial Result Readings

As discussed in Chapter 3, Mandarin MCA verbs involve two subevents, a causing eventuality and a resulting change of state, linked by ‘an operator-connective CAUSE’ (van Valin 2005: 42). However, unlike prototypical MCA verbs in Romance and Germanic languages, and unlike RVCs in Mandarin, MCA verbs do not entail but rather imply culmination. We have furthered distinguished two types of MCA verbs in Section 3.4 of Chapter 3: gradable vs. ungradable. We now turn to different scale structures associated with these two types of MCA verbs.

Recall our discussion in section 3.3 of Chapter 3 that all the two types of MCAs reflect a linearly ordered set of values of a measurement dimension. The difference lies in the number of degrees involved: a gradable MCA verb involves at least three degrees (zero

114

degree ‘d0’, full degree ‘df’ and some degree(s) in between ‘d’, d’’, d’’’ ….’), while an ungradable MCA only involves two degrees (zero degree ‘d0’and full degree ‘df’).

Gradable MCA verbs consist of two types: incremental theme vs. nonincremental theme. For incremental theme gradable MCA verbs, such as jiàn (fángzi) ‘build (a house)’, and chī (píngguǒ) ‘eat (an apple)’, there is a homomorphic mapping between the degrees on the scale measuring the incremental theme state change and the event’s part-whole structure. So, each subevent e’ is mapped onto a unique d’, and each degree is mapped onto a unique subevent. As Figure 11 shows, for incremental theme gradable verbs, the more the event progresses, the more the degree on this scale increases. The event is upper bound oriented. The complete event readings depend on the maximal readings of the quantized DP15.

Figure 11 Degree of state change with incremental theme gradable MCA verbs

d0< d’< d’’< d’’’…< dm

On the other hand, for nonincremental theme gradable MCAs verbs, such as sī ‘tear’, jiě ‘untie’, and kāi ‘open’, their scales are not incremental (see Urrizelki 2017). There is no homomorphic relation holding between the progress of the event and the degree measuring the change. Fleischhauer (2016:308) points out that for nonincremental event. The scale can even ‘return the same degree of any subeventuality’, as shown in Figure 12. The complete event interpretations do not depend on the maximal reading of the quantized DP, but on the maximal/endstate change.

15 As discussed in Martin et al. (2017), the source of incomplete interpretations of incremental theme verbs lies in the nonmaximal readings of their quantized noun phrase. The following quotation nicely explains this point. (1) The sky darkened in an hour, but it wasn’t completely dark. (Kennedy and Levin 2008) What is denied in the second conjunct of (1) is that all parts of the sky are dark, while the sky in the first half can refer to arbitrary subparts of the sky. Nonmaximal readings of quantized noun phrase have been extensive discussed crosslinguistically (see Soh & Kuo (2005) for Mandarin, Demirdache (2018) for Salish, Strangmann (2015) for Dutch and Martin et al. (2017) for a crosslinguistic study). They have found that speakers often use singular counts nouns to denote not only whole objects, but also their arbitrary parts. For instance, speakers have been found to count parts of an apple, when they say, “I ate an apple, but didn’t finish”.

115

So, for nonincremental theme gradable MCA verbs, the degrees between d0 and dm do not necessarily involve an increase in values along the scale. As Figure 12 shows, d’’’ may be at the same degree along the scale as d’’.

Figure 12 Degree of state change: nonincremental theme gradable MCA verbs

d0 d’ d’’ d’’’… dm

Figure 13 below schematizes the scale structure associated with agentive gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs.

Figure 13 Scale structure of events denoted by gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs

a. Agentive Gradable

d0 d’ d’’ d’’’… df e0 e’ e’’ e’’’ e

ts tm onset of the state change/lower bound initiation of the action

b. Agentive Ungradable

d0 df

e ts=tm

initiation of the action upper bound of the state change

d0= 0 degree, original state df= full degree, full change of state d’, d’’, d’’’=intermediate degrees

116

ts=standard telos, onset/lower bound of the state change tm= maximal telos, upper bound of the state change

Based on Kearns (2007), we distinguish two types of telos that both relate to the internal temporal structure of the event: minimal and maximal (see section 3.3.3 of chapter 3). The standard telos ts represents the onset of an extended state change. It is the lower bound (the standard degree) that must be attained, for the causative accomplishment event to be judged true. The maximal telos tm represents the upper bound of the change of state. It is the maximal degree on the scale that the change of state reaches.

Unlike accomplishment verbs in English, which describe events relating to the maximal degree of state change, the events denoted by Mandarin gradable MCA verbs relate to both the onset of state change and the maximal degree of state change. And this is why ultimately one of the reasons Mandarin gradable MCAs can be true of subevents (e’, e’’, e’’’ …) of the described event (that is true of the whole event). These subevents are mapped onto a degree on the scale of state changes. There are at least three degrees (zero degree ‘d0’, full degree ‘df’ and some degree(s) in between ‘d’, d’’, d’’’ …’) for gradable verbs. In contrast, for ungradable MCA verbs, the state change is binary and involves only two degrees (zero degree ‘d0’and full degree ‘df’). Therefore, in Mandarin, gradable MCA verbs, rather than ungradable MCA verbs, have subevents, and thus allow partial-result NC readings. Only gradable MCAs allow partitive interpretation in perfective sentences.

Recall one of our diagnostics for distinguishing gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs. The former but not the latter allow partial result readings (see Chapter 3, Section 3.3). Gradable MCAs, e.g. shāo 'burn' and jiě ‘untie’, accept adverbials of degree modifiers, such as yíbùfen/ yìdiǎn ‘partly, a little’), as they allow partial-result readings, see (1)-(2) respectively. On the other hand, ungradable MCAs, e.g. shā ‘kill’ and chú ‘get rid of’ are incompatible with adverbials of degree modifiers, as they do not allow partial-result readings, see (3)-(4).

(1) Nèi-běn shū Lùlu zhǐ shāo le yíbùfen/ yìdiǎn. that-CL book Lulu only burn PERF a.part/a.little ‘Lulu only partly burned the book.’

117

(2) Nèi-gè lǐngjié Lùlu zhǐ jiě le yíbùfen/ yìdiǎn. that-CL knot Lulu only untie PERF a.part/a.little ‘Lulu only partly untied the knot.’

(3) Nèi- gè èbà tāmén zhǐ chú -le (#yìdiǎn). that-CL tyrant they only get rid of-PERF a.little Intended `They got rid of (a little) that tyrant.’

(4) Nèi-zhī yāzi Lùlù zhǐ shā -le (#yìdiǎn). that-CL duck Lulu only kill-PERF a little Intended `Lulu killed (a little) that duck.’

4.2 Perfective Marker -le: Partitive Operator

Depending on the aspectual class of the predicate, verbal -le requires the described event either to culminate or to terminate. In particular, when verbal -le applies to a verb that encodes in its meaning an endstate ( culmination), it yields a full completion reading; when verbal -le applies to a verb that does not encode in its meaning an endstate ( culmination), it yields a termination/cessation reading, i.e. a completion of proper event parts in the extension of the VP it combines with. The proper event ceases to develop further towards a full completion (see Tai (1984), Smith (1997), Koenig & Muansuwan (2000), Soh and Kuo (2005), Soh and Gao (2007) a.o.).

To illustrate, Lin (2003) states that in (5), where -le applies to a RVC encoding a result state component, it yields a completed interpretation of the event, i.e. the event reaches its culmination “the door was broken”. On the other hand, in (6), where -le applies to an activity predicate with no endstate component in its meaning, the event is just meant to have taken place, and terminated at some indefinite point.

(5) Ta ti-po-le men. (accomplishment) He kick-break-PERF door. ‘He broke the door by kicking.’

(6) Ta pao-le bu. (activity) He run PERF steps. ‘He did run.’

118

More recently, as has been discussed in Section 2.4.2.2 of Chapter 2, Altshuler has proposed a partitive aspectual operator theory that allows us to capture more formally and precisely these insights -- a proposal that we will adopt here. Recall however, that we have argued extensively in Section 3.2 of Chapter 3 that MCA verbs in Mandarin are true accomplishments in that they have a bieventive structure with result inference that comes from the core of the meaning of the accomplishment itself. See examples (17) and (18) in section 3.1.1 of Chapter 3 to establish the default interpretation of MCAs (e.g. ‘write three letters’ or ‘kill a black cat’): the completion of the event. We moreover have just shown how the scale structures associated with MCA verbs, as proposed in section 4.1.1, explain why gradable predicates but not ungradable predicates allow partial-result readings. But we need Altshuler’s Partitive Operator Theory to explain why a perfective accomplishment does not necessarily describe the whole event e (including the maximal telos), but can describe any event stage of e.

As discussed in Section of Chapter 2, on Altshuler’s proposal, perfective, just like imperfective, is a partitive operator, which allows the VP that they combine with to refer to stages of an event, thus allowing for explicit denial of an event completion. The crucial point is however that perfective cannot perform as imperfective in that it cannot refer to an event that is ongoing in a speech time (i.e. reference time). Even though Hindi SVPFV does not entail the completion of an event, it is neither possible to use it to describe events presented as still ‘ongoing’. This is also the case in Mandarin. Examples (7) and (8), which contain gradable and ungradable MCA verbs respectively, show that ongoing imperfective interpretations are excluded with the perfective -le for both sentences.

(7) Lùlu kāi le nèi-shàn mén, # érqiě hái zài kāi. Lulu open PERF that-CL door and still PROG open Intended: ‘Lulu opened that door, and she is still opening it.’

(8) Nóngfū shā le nèi-tóu niú, # érqiě hái zài shā Farmer kill PERF that-CL ox and still PROG kill Intended: ‘The farmer killed that ox, and is still killing it.’

119

The core of Altshuler’s proposal is that perfectivity amounts to a maximality stage requirement16 that is satisfied when event stages either ‘culminate’ or ‘cease to develop’ in the world of evaluation. This requirement is needed to account for predicates that don’t describe an event’s culmination, but are formally perfective (Hindi, Russian). Two important consequences of our analysis are: (a) there is a typology of distinct perfective operators that all encode the MAXIMAL STAGE requirement (MSR), and (b) the ‘stage-of’ relation underlies the semantics of different members of grammatical aspect. However, when the event culminates, the perfective marker cannot pick a subpart. The notion of maximal stages is illustrated by Altshuler with Hindi SVPFV in (9):

(9) SVPFV ⇒ λP λe’ ∃e ∃w [MAXSTAGE (e’, e, w*, w, P)] [[ [MAXSTAGE (e’, e, w*, w, P)]]] M, g = 1 iff (i)-(v) holds: (i) the history of g(w) is the same as the history of g(w*) up to an including τ (g(e’)) (ii) g(w) is a reasonable option for g(e’) in g(w*) (iii) [[P]]M, g (e, w) = 1 (iv) g (e’) ⊆ g(e) (v) ∀e’’ [ (g(e’) ⊂ e’’ & e’’ ⊆ g(e)) → [[P]]M, g (e’’, w*) = 0 (Altshuler 2014: 26)

The important clause is clause (v), which distinguish atelic predicates like activities and states, from telic predicates, like accomplishments. Achievements by hypothesis don’t have subeventual structures, so they are excluded from the discussion. With an atelic predicate, like ‘run’, the subpart that the perfective operator picks out in the denotation of “run” has to be a maximal event of ‘running’ in the actual world. Because if it is not the maximal event, it is going to violate the clause (v) (because there would be at least a P-event stage e’’ such that e’’ contains e’, in other words, e’’ is a more developed version of the P-event. That would violate the MSR). So, we have to pick up the “biggest” actual event for atelic predicates. On the other hand, for an accomplishment like ‘build a house’, we can pick up a ‘smaller’

16 Maximality stage requirement: for all events e’’ if e’’ properly contains the CP-event part denoted by e’ and is at least a sub-part of the VP-event denoted by e, then e’’ does not satisfy the description denoted by the VP in w∗. In other words, (77b.v) is satisfied in one of two ways: an event part denoted by e’ culminates or ceases to develop in w∗. In both cases, there could not be an event that is more developed than e’ in w∗ that has the property P (though there would be a more developed version of e′ in some possible world (w)).

120

subinterval e’, that is a subinterval of e, and e’ does not contain the culmination. It does not violate (v), as e’ does not contain another subevent e’’, that can count as an event of “building a house”, which has a culmination. Therefore, for a house building event, perfective can pick out any subevent of the process of “building a house”.

4.3 MCA Verbs Combined with -le: Zero-result Readings

Telos is the internal temporal property representing a complete action in some sense. We propose that there are two types of telicity: ‘predicate telicity’ versus ‘compositional telicity’. At the lexical level, the verbal predicate encodes a result state, and there is a predicate telicity. Whereas when the predicate combines with some grammatical features such as aspectual markers and adverbials, compositional telicity is composed. In our study in this section, we concern perfective marker -le. In the figures below, tm and ts relate to the internal telicity of the predicate, while tc refers to the compositional telicity.

4.3.1 Incremental Theme Gradable MCA Verbs + -le

As Figure 14 below shows, with agentive gradable MCA verbs, there can be an interval between the initiation of the action and the onset of the change of state (i.e. the standard telos), during which there is no mapping between the progress of the event and the change of state. This might seem problematic or even in conflict with the common assumption (we endorse here also) that there is a homomorphic mapping between the part-whole structure of the theme and the progress of the event. However, as Krifka (1992:45) himself pointed out, a verbal predicate like build a house should be truthfully applied to aspects of house- building that do not involve changes in the part-whole structure of the house, such as drawing up plans, getting permits, erecting scaffolding. Krifka and others have pointed out that these problems can be handled by appealing to some sort of contextual restriction to ‘relevant’ parts of the event.

The incremental theme gradable MCA verbs have the incremental theme scale (d0

121

Figure 14 Agentive incremental theme gradable MCA verbs -le

interval

d0 d’ d’’ d’’’ … df e0 e’ e’’ e

tc= ts

start of the action tc’ tc’’ tc’’’ tc’’’’=tm

For instance, for the event of ‘building a house’ in (10), perfective -le can pick up the first subevent, that ‘relevant’ preparatory phase of the event and that ends/culminates at the onset of the state change. However, it won’t be true if the minimal relevant part is not initiated. In the same way, the perfective statement of ‘eat an apple’ in (11) is judged true, when there is minimally a bite on the apple. On the contrary, if the apple hasn’t been bitten, (11) will mot be judged true. That is, (11) does not yield zero-result NC construals.

(10) Xiǎomíng jiàn-le yí zuò fángzi，dànshì méi jiàn-chéng. Xiaoming build-PERF one CL house but NEG build-succeed ‘Xiaoming built a house but did not have a house successfully built.’

(11) Xiǎomíng chī-le yí gè píngguǒ，dànshì méi chī-diào. Xiaoming eat-PERF one CL apple but NEG eat-drop ‘Xiaoming ate an apple but did not have an apple completely eaten.’

4.3.2 Nonincremental Theme Gradable MCA Verbs + -le

Now we turn to nonincremental theme gradable MCA verbs. Crucially in the scale ’ ’’ ’’’ structure shown in Figure 12, each subevent (e0, e , e , e …em) is mapped onto a degree d ’ ’’ ’’’ (d0, d , d , d …dm), but the degrees in-between d0 and dm do not necessarily involve an increase in values along the scale.

Similar to incremental theme gradable MCA verbs, the events described by nonincremental theme MCAs start from the initiation of the action. After a set of

122

‘preparatory’ performance/ restricted ‘relevant’ parts, the event culminates to the onset of the state change. Crucially, perfective marker ‘-le’ can return any subevent, including the first event that culminates at the standard telos. Therefore, nonincremental theme MCAs also allow zero-result NC construals.

For instance, (12) is true, because the first subevent is initiated, getting the fire going to burn the book, but ends when the standard telos starts. Even if the book doesn’t flare up, once the fire touches the book and the book becomes hot, the perfective sentence in (12) is true.

(12) Wǒ shāo-le nèi-běn shū, dànshì méi shāo-zháo. 1SG burn-PERF that-CL book but NEG.PERF burn-reach ‘I burnt the book, but the book didn’t burn at all.’

(13) Fàxíngshī gěi tā rǎn le tóufa, (kěshì méi rǎn-shang). hair.dresser for 3SG dye PERF hair but NEG.PERF dye-up ‘The hairdresser dyed her hair (but didn’t manage to dye it).’

Similarly, (13) is true in a context where a hairdresser prepared his client for the dying procedure: he puts a towel on her shoulder, mixes the dying materials, and prepares the machine. On the moment of touching her hair with the dying materials, he discovers that he doesn’t make the right color, and therefore goes away. Since his preparatory phase arrives at the onset of the event, i.e. the dying materials touches minimally the hair, the perfective statement of (13) above is judged true.

(14) Tā jiě-le nà gè lǐngjié, dàn méi jiě-kāi. 3PL untie-PERF that CL knot but NEG.PERF untie-open ‘He untied that knot, but did not succeed.’

For (14), even though the agent only pulls the band of the knot, and even though it is only a zero-result state change, as -le return the subevent, the statement is judged true.

Another nonincremental Gradable MCA verb mái ‘bury’, after combining with -le, can pick up any subevent smaller or equal than the maximal full result, such as (15) with partial-

123

result nonculminating reading, (16) with zero-result nonculminating reading, and (17) with full result reading.

(15) Xiǎochǒu mái-le nèi zhi tuōxié，dànshì méiyǒu mái-hǎo. Clown bury-PERF that CL slipper but not bury-complete ‘The clown buried the slipper, but did not buried it.’

(16) Xiǎochǒu mái-le nèi zhi tuōxié，dànshì méiyǒu mái-shàng. Clown bury-PERF that CL slipper but not bury-up ‘The clown buried the slipper, but did not buried it at all.’

(17) Xiǎochǒu mái-le nèi zhi tuōxié， wanquan mái-hǎo le . Clown bury-PERF that CL slipper completely bury-complete LE ‘The clown buried the slipper, but did bury it completely.’

We assume that there are three essential parameters for the zero-result NC construals of gradable MCAs (incremental & non-incremental): 1) the gradable scale structure of the predicates; 2) perfective marker -le as a partitive operator; 3) the agenthood.

4.3.3 Ungradable MCA Verbs + -le

On the other hand, for ungradable ones, like shā 'kill', chú ‘get rid of (cockroach)’and zhāi ‘pick (an apple)’, of only two degrees (d0 and df), there are no subevents which are ‘small’ (without culmination). So according to Figure 15, perfective marker ‘-le’ cannot pick up any subevent, but only the whole event. The maximum telos tm and compositional telos tc coincide.

Figure 15 Agentive ungradable MCA verbs combined with -le

d0 df Time of utterance

onset of the event tc=tm

initiation of the action

124

Therefore, the full state change in the event denoted by ungradable MCA verbs in perfective form cannot be denied, zero-result or partial-result NC construals is not allowed. In the first part of example (18), perfective ungradable MCA verb shā-le ‘kill-PERF’ signifies the attainment of the maximal result that Lǐsì is dead. As the second part claims that the patient Lǐsì is still alive, there is contradiction. Similarly, in example (19), the first part with perfective ungradable MCA verb chú-le ‘get rid of-PERF’ already asserts the maximal telos is achieved that the tyrant is cleared away, while the second part contradicts it. (20) with zero-result NC construals is impossible, while only (21) with full result is accepted.

(18) Zhāngsān shā-le Lǐsì, # Lǐsì hái huó zhe. Zhāngsān kill PERF Lǐsì, Lǐsì still live DUR Intended `Zhangsan killed Lǐsì, but Lǐsì is still alive.'

(19) Dàhuǒer chú-le nèi gè èbà, # èbà hái wéifēizuòdǎi. We get rid of- PERF that CL tyrant tyrant still do evil Intended ‘We cleared away that tyrant, but he still does evil.’

(20) Zhāngsān shā le Lǐsì，# Lǐsì méi wanquan sǐ. Zhāngsān kill PERF Lǐsì Lǐsì not completely die Intended ‘Zhangsan killed Lǐsì, but Lǐsì did not completely die.'

(21) Zhāngsān shā le Lǐsì, Lǐsì sǐ le. Zhāngsān kill PERF Lǐsì Lǐsì die PERF ‘Zhangsan killed Lǐsì, and Lǐsì died.'

4.4 Agent Control over Nonculminating Readings

The nonculminating construals of MCA verbs that we have discussed so far involve intentional agent subjects. We now turn to the issue of nonculminating construals with pure causer subjects.

4.4.1 Weak Version of Agent Control Hypothesis

125

Recall from Section 2.4.2.3 of Chapter 2, the weak version of Agent Control Hypothesis (ACH for short) put forth by Demirdache & Martin (2015) explains that the agenthood of the subject plays an essential role in licensing the perfective accomplishment predicates under zero-result conditions, crucially but not under partial-result conditions, see (22 a) and (22 b) for more discussion. (22 a) and (22 b), where the subjects are animate, and have willful control over the described burning events, allow both partial-result and zero-result NC construals.

(22) a. Yuēhàn shāo le tā-de shū, dàn méi quán shāo-huǐ. Yuēhàn burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG completely burn-destroy ‘Yuēhàn burned his book, but it didn’t burn completely.’

b. Yuēhàn shāo le tā-de shū, dàn méi shāo-zháo. Yuēhàn burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch ‘Yuēhàn burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all.’

Demirdache & Sun (2015:41)

In contrast, when the subject is an inanimate cause, as example (23a) and (23b) show, partial result NC construals is possible, while zero result NC construals is unacceptable.

(23) a. Huǒ shāo le tā-de shū, dàn méi quán shāo-huǐ. Fire burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG completely burn-destroy ‘The fire burned his book, but it didn’t burn completely.’

b. Huǒ shāo le tā-de shū, #dàn méi shāo-zháo. Fire burn PERF 3SG-DE book but NEG burn-touch Intended ‘The fire burned his book, but it didn’t get burnt at all.’

4.4.2 Agent vs. Cause Subject and Scale Structure for Gradable Verbs

There is one reason for which pure causer subjects don’t license zero-result NC construals, but do allow partial-result NC construals. Recall that with gradable MCA verbs, it has the scale structure as shown in Figure 14, that we repeat it below in Figure 16. The zero NC construals arise when the subevent denoted by the perfective accomplishment is the initial subevent, which starts when the action is initiated and ends with the onset of the change of the state. This interval, i.e. the initial subevent with gradable MCA verbs like

126

build does not involve incremental change in the part-whole structure of the house, but the aspect of ‘build the house’ can nonetheless be true, e.g. drawing up plans, getting permits, erecting scaffolding etc. Let’s call it a preliminary preparatory phase in the described event.

This interval as a subevent is only possible with agentive predicates, but impossible with non-agentive predicates. Example (24a) with agent subject contrasts with (24b) with causer subject. The subject of (24a) is an agent, thus there can be a preparatory phase included in the event described by the MCA predicate “close (the door)”: “the pirate” holds tight the door handle, keeps a distance, gathers strength and pulls hard, but the door gets stuck and does not move an inch. Then combined with the perfective marker “-le” which can return any subevent, the first subevent (i.e. the preparatory phase) is picked up and there is a zero-result reading. However, (24b) with pure causer subject, has no preparatory phase. When it combines with -le, we can only pick up a subevent starting from the standard telos, whose scale mapping degree is superior than zero. In this case, (24b) with causer subject, does not allow zero-result NC construals.

(24) a. Hǎidào guān-le nà shàn mén, dàn mén méi dòng pirate close-PERF that CL door but door not move ‘The pirate closed that door , but the door didn’t move.’

b. Nà-zhèn fēng guān-le nà-shàn mén , #dàn mén méi dòng. That –CLF wind close-PERF that CL door but door not move Intended ‘The wind closed that door , but the door didn’t move.’

As Figure 16 below shows, the intentional agent subject permits a definite left interval, beyond which the change of state is initiated.

127

Figure 16 Agent vs. cause subject with gradable MCA verbs

Agent subject-Gradable MCA

Therefore, in Mandarin Chinese, cause-subject gradable MCA verbs allow only partial- result nonculminating readings. So, for (25) with agent subject and (26) with cause subject, parital-result readings are possible. The second parts do not contradict the first parts.

(25) Hǎidào guān-le nà shàn mén, dàn méi quán guān-shàng. pirate close-PERF that CL door but not completely close-up ‘The pirate closed that door, but not completely.’

(26) Nà-zhèn fēng guān-le nà-shàn mén, dàn méi quán guān-shàng. That –CLF wind close-PERF that CL door but not completely close-up ‘The wind closed that door, but not completely.’

4.5 Summary

In this chapter, we have discussed the scale structures of two types of MCA verbs: gradable vs. ungradable. A gradable MCA verb involves at least three degrees while an ungradable MCA verb only involves two degrees. For incremental theme gradable MCAs verbs, such as jiàn (fángzi) ‘build (a house)’ and chī (píngguǒ) ‘eat (an apple)’, there is a homomorphic mapping between the part-whole structure of the theme and the degree on an associated scale representing the progress of the event. For non-incremental theme gradable ’ ’’ ’’’ ’ ’’ ’’’ MCA verbs, each subevent (e0, e , e , e …em) is mapped onto a degree d(d0, d , d , d …dm), but the degrees in-between d0 and dm do not necessarily involve an increase in values along the scale. Moreover, we’ve proved that, combined with -le, a partitive operator, only

128

gradable MCAs (having subevents), allow partial-result NC readings, while ungradable MCAs (lacking subevents) do not accept partial-result NC readings.

In addition, we’ve shown that an agentive gradable MCA verb has an interval between the initiation of the action and the onset of the change of state (i.e. the standard telos), during which there is no mapping between the progress of the event and the change of state. Perfective -le can pick up this interval, which is the first subevent, denoting the ‘relevant’ preparatory phase of the event. As there is no mapping on the degree of change of state, this first subevent is zero-result. Thus, we can have zero-result NC construals with agentive gradable MCA verbs. On the other hand, for agentive ungradable MCA verbs and non- agentive gradable MCA verbs, there is no such left interval, providing the first subevent. So, no zero-result NC construals is allowed.

In all, we’ve proposed the role the 3 parameters play in facilitating NC readings of MCA verbs in the adult grammar: 1. Gradable scale structure of the predicates; 2. Perfective marker -le as a partitive operator; 3. Agent control.

129

Chapter 5 Children’s Acquisition of Event Culmination

This chapter reviews the literature on young children’s ability to perceive, conceptualize and express state change, examines the existing hypotheses, and in particular, reports the relevant studies on Mandarin children’s interpretation of CA verbs.

5.1 Children’s Early Sensitivity to Endstate Change in Production

Children have been found to comprehend and produce the endstate change component in CA verbs at an early stage.

When children reach the second stage of language acquisition (after the babbling/preproduction stage), that is, the one-word stage, they have been found to use particles to encode the completion of an event, such as so in English, alle ‘finished’ in German, and acabou ‘finished’ in Portuguese (de Lemos 1981, Gopnik and Melzoff 1986, Behrens 1993). Their ability to encode event completion with one word indicates their early sensitivity towards endstate change. Besides particles, children are found to comprehend and produce motion verbs more readily than state verbs, showing their attentiveness to motion.

Later, in languages that encode endstate change with verbal particles, such as pick-off, tear-down, bury-up in English, and knopf zu ‘button close’ in German, children before age two are found to use particles (like off, down, up, and zu ‘close’) to express endstate change (Mills 1985; Tomasello 1992; Behren 1993; Bowerman 1994; Clark, Carpenter and Deutsch 1995). Therefore, children show preference for using verbal particles over verbs (such as using off instead of using pick-off and using down instead of tear down) to express endstate change.

At about the age of three, children are found to pay more attention to the endstate change meaning component than to the action/ manner component. They use CA verbs such as mix more frequently than manner verbs such as shake (Greenfield and Smith 1976, Farwell 1976, Behrens 1993). Huttenlocher, Smiley and Charney (1983) found that children, ranging in age between 2; 0 and 2; 4, used mostly causative accomplishment verbs. Clark (1996) reported that, activity verbs are the largest category of verbs used by children between 1; 7 and 3; 0, but soon after 3, they begin to use verbs referring to endstate change stably and frequently.

130

Not only do children use CA verbs at an early stage, around 2 or 3, but they have also been found to use early on grammatical means to conceptualize causal state changes. In order to investigate children’s use of case markers (namely, accusative and ergative), Slobin (1985) devised an experimental paradigm, the “Manipulative Activity Scene”, in which an agent brings a physical and perceptible change of state to a patient via a manipulation. And the results of his experiment showed that children used grammatical means to mark the agent and the affected object in the change of state event, and, in particular, used case markers appropriately (namely, accusative and ergative). Gvozdev (1949) reported his son’s consistent use of accusative marking in Russian only on direct objects that can be considered patients of the action encoded by the CA verbs, like throw or put, but not on the objects of other transitive verbs such as read or draw. What’s more, Schlieffen (discussed in Slobin 1985:1176) pointed out that children speaking Kaluli are found to use the ergative inflection predominantly on causative verbs. These findings indicate that children from early on are able to describe appropriately the causative event in the context of manipulating scenes.

It has been noticed that children’s use of certain tense-aspect inflections correlates with certain semantic classes of verbs. For example, English, French and Italian children are found to use past tense markers predominantly with verbs specifying inherently bounded events, in particular, specifying change of states (such as ‘open’), while present or progressive markers are used with verbs specifying unbounded events (such as ‘dance’) (Bronckart and Sinclair 1973, Antinucci and Miller 1976). Finally, in many studies, children have been shown to have a preference for past tense markers on resultative verbs (McShane and Whittaker 1988; Bloom and Hamer 1989).

For Mandarin Chinese, a language without overt grammatical tense, children have also been found to use the perfective aspect marker (-le) with verbs referring to state change events. Li and Bowerman (1998) carried out three experiments to explore the knowledge that children (ranging in age from 2; 9 to 6; 4) have of aspect markers with verbs of six different categories of lexical aspect: states, activities, accomplishments, achievements, semelfactives, and mixed telic-statives. Their findings across all three experiments show that children of all ages associate the perfective aspect marker -le more frequently with telic verbs (achievement and accomplishment verbs) than with atelic verbs (activity and semelfactive verbs), whereas they associate the progressive aspect marker -zài predominantly with atelic verbs. Chen and Shirai’s (2010) survey the effect of lexical aspect

131

on the development of tense-aspect marking in Mandarin Chinese. They examined the longitudinal speech data of four children, (ranging in age from 1; 4 to 3; 5) in order to explore the emergence and development of grammatical aspect markers, including perfective -le. The results obtained also show that perfective –le predominantly appears with telic verbs (i.e. achievement and accomplishment verbs). Erbaugh (1982, 1992) analyzed the longitudinal speech data of four Taiwan Mandarin-speaking children (ranging in age from 1; 9 to 3; 9). She found that the perfective aspect marker -le was the first acquired and most often used aspect marker, while imperfective aspect markers -zài and -zhe appeared later and less often: children produced up to 2,300 -le in contrast to the total for -zài (108), for – zhe (50), and for experiential –guò (34). This experiment showed that Mandarin children were also sensitive to state change from an early age. Similarly, van Hout (2008) showed that Dutch, Italian and Polish children acquired perfective aspect earlier than imperfective aspect. By the age of 3, Dutch and Polish children were found to have already acquired the respective completion entailments of the Present Perfect and Perfective aspect, while 3-year- old Italian children sometimes used the present perfect to mark completion (van Hout 2008: 1741).

Summarizing, children have been found to be attentive to endstate change, using verbal particles, change of state verbs, perfective aspect markers and accusative case markers to conceptualize causal state changes at a small age. Such phenomena reveal children’s sensitivity to the semantic features of verbs and, in particular, their sensitivity to the endstate change meaning components. What’s more, in certain languages, children are found to mark the patient with accusative case, indicating that they pay attention/are sensitive to the affected object.

Given that children show early on sensitivity to change of state, are able to conceptualize and produce CA verbs and the relevant components, we could expect that they can comprehend and use the endstate change component /culmination of CA verbs easily. But is this indeed the case? How can we ascertain that they interpret the implied or entailed endstate change component/culmination in these accomplishment verbs correctly?

5.2 Children’s Neglect of Endstate Change in Comprehension

132

As our review of the literature in the previous section has shown, children from very early on are sensitive to the endstate change encoded by CA verbs (being able to conceptualize and produce CA verbs). On the other hand, the literature that we now turn to in this section shows that children tend to neglect the state-change in CA predicates (accepting perfective CA statement under zero-result condition). Such paradox has been at the center of acquisition research.

5.2.1 Manner Bias Hypothesis

Gentner (1978b) postulated that word meanings were acquired componentially, and he made two specific proposals: (1) word meanings should be learnt according to semantic complexity; (2) early errors should be indicative of incomplete semantic representation. In order to test if children are able to interpret the bieventive CAs, involving a causal manner/action component and a change of state component (Dowty 1979, Smith 1997, Van Valin 2005), Gentner carried out an experiment aiming to test the impact of perceptual information (manner of action) and that of functional information (endstate change) on the acquisition of verbs by (5 to 9 or 10-year-old) children. He used a verification task to assess children’s and adults’ acceptance of two kinds of verbs: verbs specifying a state change (such as mix) and verbs specifying a manner (such as stir/beat/shake17).

The experimental design was the following. The experimenter carries out actions of stirring/beating/ shaking two kinds of substances: mixable substances (salt + water) vs. nonmixable substances (cream + water), and then asks the testing probes in (1) and (2).

1) Am I stirring/beating/shaking it? 2) Am I mixing it?

Gentner expected participants to accept mixing if the substance was mixable. His findings show that both adults and children could distinguish appropriate manners of verbs. In particular, while older children (7 to 9-year old) and adults did correctly apply mix more often to mixable substance than nonmixable ones, younger children (5 to 7-year-old) did not show a difference between mixable substances and non-mixable ones, but rather accepted

17 Stir, beat, and shake specify a certain kind of motion, such as hand-and spoon motion for stir, rapid, more or less elliptical motion for beat.

133

mix frequently under both conditions. Younger children always correctly interpreted stir beat and shake, which are manner verbs, but they had problems with the state change meaning with ‘mix’. Moreover, the younger children allow ‘mix’ 46% of the time for the scenes involving no state change. Gentner concluded that the problem, however, could not come from children’s unfamiliarity with the meaning of the verb mix, since his earlier experimental work (1978a) had already shown that children as young as 3.5 have learned the meaning of mix. Based on these results, Gentner asserts that young children learn the action components of the mixing verbs before they learn the change of state components, i.e. they would include perceptual information (e.g. about manner of action) rather than functional information (e.g. about endstate change) in their semantic representations of verbs. Gentner refer to this hypothesis as the “Manner Bias Hypothesis”.

Responding to Gentner’s (1978b) findings, Gropen, Pinker, Hollander & Goldberg (1991) put forward two studies. The results of their first experiment showed that children (aged 2;6 to 5;11) misinterpret more often the CA verbs fill and empty than the manner verbs pour and dump. The children appeared to take fill to denote pouring rather than achieving the result state of being full/filled. Similarly, for empty, children appeared to regard it as denoting a manner action, like dumping, but without achieving the result state of being empty. This first experiment thus confirms Gentner’s hypothesis that children sometimes neglect the endstate change of CA verbs.

Their second experiment focused on ‘fill’, seeking to specify children’s acquisition of its causual manner/action as well as endstate change components. The children, ranging in age from 3;5 to 8;9, were divided into three age groups: group 1 (aged 3;5 to 4;6), group 2 (aged 4;9 to 6;6), and group 3 (6;10 to 8;9). They were shown 12 picture pairs. Each picture contains three panels: the beginning, middle and endstate change of a given action (either pouring or dripping) is shown. With each pair of drawings (fully reached or ¾ reached vs. not reached endstate) placed in front of them and being exposed to the question in (3), they were asked to choose one picture among each pair.

3) “Which of these is filling?”

These pictures were designed to assess children’s knowledge of two semantic components of the verb fill: causal manner/action and endstate change. For example, in one

134

of the test pairs of pictures, the third panel of one picture shows a glass fully filled, while the third panel of another picture shows a glass remaining completely empty, with water spilled. This pair of pictures assess children’s sensitivity to the endstate change of the event, i.e. whether they require that the glass end up completely full in order to appropriately use fill. For the reached condition, the glass may end up only partially filled (3/4 filled).

Gropen et al.’s (1991) experiment showed that a great number of children were sensitive to the endstate change component of fill, behaving like adults in choosing the fully- filled glass over the empty one, as well as over the three-quarters-full one, and as adults, they would also choose the three-quarters-full one over the empty one. This preference increased with age, with 37.5% selection of the fuller glass among the youngest children (3;5- 4;6), 62.5% and selection of the fuller glass among the oldest children (6;10-8;9). However, there was still a significant difference between the oldest children and the adults who chose the fuller glass 94% of time. Gropen et al. concluded that though children may know that the CA verb fill relates to a container being made FULL (by an action of filling), they nonetheless don’t assume reaching the endstate change necessary.

Gropen et al.’s two experiments shed light on the paradox of children’s acquiring the telicity of CA verbs: children are indeed sensitive to the endstate, but do not require the endstate to be reached.

Likewise, Tamasello (1992) reported his daughter’s (before 2 years old) first verbs in his diary record. In that diary, there were many early errors (adults’ response as a standard), e.g. CA predicates like clean, cook and fix were used to designate only actions carried out in certain manners, (respectively) wiping with a cloth, stirring in a pot and hammering something, but did not assign these CA predicates to making objects go from dirty to clean, or from uncooked to cooked, or from unfixed to fixed.

Recall from Section 5.1 of this chapter, children have been found to be able to perceive and conceptualize the change of state in CA predicates, like using -off, -up, -down etc. to express state change before the age of 2, applying case markers on the patient undergoing the change of state around 2 or 3 year of age, and to be sensitive to the grammatical encoding of the concepts involved in causative accomplishment verbs by the age of 3, e.g. marking the patient with accusative case undergoer and attaching perfective aspect markers to telic state change events. Nevertheless, in this section, in the experiments of Gentner (1978b),

135

Gropen et al. (1991) and Tamasello (1992) children have been found to neglect the endstate meaning components of causative accomplishment predicates. To explain why children, overgeneralize the manner action component while ignoring the endstate change component in accomplishment predicates, Gentner (1978b) and Gropen et al. (1991) put forward Manner Bias Hypothesis, attributing such error pattern to the hypothesis that children learn the manner action components before the change of state component, and have preference for component of manner over endstate change component in their semantic representations of verbs.

5.2.2 Wittek’s Hypotheses: Transparent Endstate & Weak Endstate Interpretation

Wittek (2002) questions the theoretical conclusions that Gropen et al. draw from their experimental results., arguing that the so-called ‘manner bias’ is not due to a bias towards encoding the manner component (over the endstate change component) in the semantic representation of CA predicates, but rather to a problem in the mapping between form and meaning in the derivation of (semantic representations for) CA verbs.

In particular, Wittek imputes children’s ‘neglect’ of the endstate change component of CA predicates to how meaning components are lexicalized, spelled out, across languages: in a nutshell, meaning components that are ‘conflated’ in the meaning of a verb will be harder to acquire a meaning components that are lexicalized independently, spelled out (typically) as affixes, particles or prepositional phrases.

Based on Talmy’s (1991) typological categories, Wittek classifies predicates across languages, as well as languages themselves, according to whether the endstate change of a CA predicate is transparently vs. opaquely expressed in the linguistic structure. She points out that the change-of state verbs tested by Gentner (1978) and Gropen et al. (1991a) were all monomorphemic (e.g. fill) and, thus, classified as “opaque CA verbs”. English, however, also has verb-particle constructions (e.g. fill up) which lexicalize the CAs by means of an independent particle and, as such, are classified as “transparent CA verbs”. She further distinguishes two classes of languages: satellite-framed languages (adopting Talmy’s terminology) such as English, or Dutch, where CA events are characteristically expressed with complex predicates, transparently mapping the endstate change on the satellite (e.g.

136

verb-particle constructions) vs. verb-framed languages, where change-of-state events are characteristically expressed by verbal roots, such as Spanish. But in one particular language, there may be both verbs satellite and verb frame construction. For example, in English, to mean making become filled, we can use both the verb satellite construction fill up or the verb frame construction fill.

Based on this reasoning, Wittek (2002) formulates the Transparent Endstate Hypothesis:

4) Children learning a language that typically expresses causal state changes with complex predicates - like English and German – should pay more attention to the endstate when interpreting complex predicates that display the endstate on the linguistic surface than when interpreting verbs that do not. (Wittek 2002:9)

To verify her hypothesis, Wittek carried out a set of experiments, testing German- speaking children. Her design of the experiment is exquisite. She used as stimuli, short video clips showing “an agent performing a manner of motion that is typically associated with the verbs being tested.” (Wittek 2002:36) While previous studies of children’s acquisition of CA verbs focused on incremental theme verbs (e.g. mix, Gentner 1978; fill, Gropen et al. 1991a), Wittek included some ungradable CA verbs, involving a punctual change of state like kill, pick, break and wake as shown in (5).

5) Stimmt das? Hat das Mädchen den Mann wachgemacht/geweckt? is.right that has the girl the man awake-made or: woken ‘Is that right? Did the girl make the man awake/wake the man?’

(Wittek, 2002:53)

Wittek’s first experiment compared German children’s and adults’ understanding of two kinds of CA predicates: transparent verb-particle constructions, such as washmachen ‘awake-make’) vs. opaque MCA monomorphemic verbs, such as wecken ‘wake’). Twenty children (aged 4;1- 5;9) and four adults participated in the experiment. The children were

137

further divided into two age groups: group 1 (aged 4;1-4;11) and group 2 (aged 5;1-5;9). The experimental set up was a 2×2 design having two variables: result (change vs. no-change condition) & construction (transparent CA vs. opaque CA). As Table 18 shows, each participant was given 8 testing probes involving 8 CAs: close(door), crack(nut), pick(apple), extinguish(candle), fill(glass), kill(animal), wake(man) and break(plate). Each participant watched 4 films of change condition, and 4 films of No-change condition.

Table 18 Design of Wittek’s experiment (Wittek 2002: 50)

Film type Verb type Number per subject Opaque endstate verb 2 Change condition Transparent endstate verb 2 Opaque endstate verb 2 No-change condition Transparent endstate verb 2

After watching a film either with or without an endstate change, a puppet who was learning to talk, would ask a question involving a statement with either a monomorphemic CA (opaque endstate verb) or a verb-particle CA (transparent endstate verb), as illustrated in example (5): geweckt ‘wake’ (opaque endstate verb) vs. wachgemacht ‘make awake’ (transparent endstate verb).

Wittek expected the children to answer more often “No” to questions involving a transparent CA verb, than to those involving an opaque CA verb.

Table 19 Wittek’s experiment 1: percentage of “No” answers under the NEC condition, broken down by verb type and age group (Wittek 2002: 52)

138

She did not, however, get the expected results. As Table 19 shows, under the No Endstate change condition (NEC for short), 4-year-old children rejected perfective statements 75 % of the time with opaque CA verbs vs. 60 % of the time with transparent CA verbs. 5-year-old children were more adult like, rejecting more often perfective statements under the NEC --be it with opaque CA (90 %) or transparent CA (75 %). Crucially, however, they still rejected opaque CA more often than transparent CA, contrary to Wittek’s predictions.

Summarizingly, not only do children, unlike adults, accept perfective statement with transparent CA verbs under the NEC condition (ranging from 40% for the 4-year old to 25% for 5-year-old). Moreover, for each group of children, on the NEC condition, opaque CA verbs yield more negative responses than transparent CA verbs. Both findings are contrary to Wittek’s predictions. In other words, children participants show a better performance on (opaque) monomorphemic verbs (higher percentage of rejection) than (transparent) verb+particle. To explain this unexpected pattern of responses, Wittek hypothesized that children did not pay attention to satellite verb particles.

Table 20 below breaks down the % of responses under the NEC verb by verb (for children participants). Overall more non-adult responses (“Yes” answers with the perfective sentence on the NEC condition) are made with transparent CA verbs (32% total vs. 17% total for opaque CAs). Except for crack(nut), pick(apple), extinguish(candle), the other 5 CA verbs yield more “Yes” answers for transparent constructions than for opaque ones.

Table 20 Wittek’s Experiment 1, NEC: Percentage of “No” answers among children participants (Wittek 2002: 53)

139

Among the 8 CA predicates, fill (glass) yields most “Yes” answers both for opaque (40% “Yes”) and transparent alternants (100% “Yes”). Wittek suggested that children’s acceptance under zero-result conditions might be due to the video, where ‘the liquid disappeared through a hole in the bottom of the glass’, but where the liquid had gone was ‘not visible’ to the children. (Wittek 2002: 59) Since, moreover, German fill (glass) was the only test item with an incremental theme -- precisely the verb class that Gentner’s mix and Gropen et al.’s fill focused on and which led them to put forth to Endstate neglect hypothesis, Wittek conjectures that it could also be that incremental theme verbs are particularly hard to acquire for children.

But neither of these explanations can account for why children do better with opaque CA verbs than transparent CA verbs. Why do the children in Wittek’s experiment acquire opaque CA verbs earlier than transparent CA verbs, in contrary to her Transparent Endstate Hypothesis? As English and German children have been found to use particles at an early age, we would expect that they are familiar with the particles, and attend more to the semantic information provided by the particles. However, from the angle of semantic complexity, a transparent CA verb consists of a causal activity V1 and a V2 or a particle referring to the endstate change. Transparent CA verb is thus semantically complex. Could the semantic complexity be playing a role?

To answer this question, Wittek ran a further study (Experiment 3 18 ) to test the Transparent Endstate Hypothesis that children attend more easily to CAs with transparent CA (verb+particle) verbs, than with opaque MCA verb(monomorphemic), using the same procedure with an improved experimental design. In particular, Wittek adopted the ‘operating principles’ proposed by Slobin (1985), according to which, in processing sentences, children tend to pay special attention to the beginning and to the end of unit, but not to the middle segment. She modified the test items to ensure that the verb satellite (preposition/adjective encoding the CA) appeared at the end of the sentence, separated from the base verb, i.e. as shown in example (7), the particle wach ‘awake’ was placed in a ‘salient’ sentence-final position.

18 As Wittek’s 2nd experiment observed only transparent construction using the same procedure and design as the 1st experiment and the results in the 2nd experiment were similar with the 1st one, having not either proved her Transparent MCA, we would go straight to her 3rd experiment.

140

6) Stimmt das? Hat das Mädchen den Mann wachgemacht? is.right that has the girl the man awake-made ‘Is that right? Did the girl make the man awake?’

(Wittek, 2002:53)

7) Und stimmt das? Machte das Miidchen den Mann wach? and is.right that made the girl the man awake 'And is that right? Did the girl make the man awake?'

(Wittek, 2002:70)

One test item in Experiment 1 is shown in (6), contrasting with (7) which is the test item in Experiment 3. Their difference lies in whether the particle /adjective is adjacent to their base verbs. The test item in Experiment 3 is shown in (7), where the particle/adjective wach ‘awake’ encoding transparently the endstate change is not adjacent to the base verb, but appears by itself in the sentence final position.

With this modification of the testing probes, Wittek expected more adult-like “No” answers with transparent verbs, than with opaque verbs.

Table 21 Wittek’s Experiment 3 vs. Experiment 1: percentage of “No” answers in the NEC condition. (Wittek, 2002:76)

This time, as shown in Table 21, under the zero-result condition, the rejection rate by L1 learners of German was higher with transparent CA verbs (75%) than with opaque CA verbs (50%), overall across both age groups (and the difference was statistically significant).

141

This finding verifies Wittek’s hypothesis that we should get more adult-like “No” answers with transparent CA verbs.

The core difference concerning transparent CA verbs in the experimental design is that in Experiment 3, the verb particle appears separated from its base verb in a salient sentence final position, satisfying Slobbin’s operating principles, while in Experiment 1, verb particles are attached to the base verb. This modification of the experimental design thus had the intended effect of focusing the children’s attention on the sentence final satellite particle. As the children are more attentive to the CA information conveyed by the particle (given its salient positioning in the sentence from an information structure perspective), they consequently reject the sentence with transparent CA verbs more often under the No State change result condition in Experiment 3.

The problem, however, is that the results for opaque CA verbs are much worse in Experiment 3, than they were in Experiment 1 (respectively, 83% for Experiment 1 and 50% for Experiment 3 across both age groups). This result is unexpected: why would children do considerably worse with opaque CA under Experiment 3. As Wittek points out, there is another difference between the test items used in the two experiments plausibly responsible for this surprising result: in Experiment 3, the past tense form was used, while in Experiment one, the present perfect form was used. These two tense/aspect forms morphologically differ, since the present perfect involves the past participial form of the verb combining with an auxiliary, as shown below. Wittek suggest that the morphological form of the present perfect had an impact on the results under experiment 3 if children interpreted the discontinuous ge-…-t participial as a marker for endstate change.

Test item for an opaque CA verb in Experiment 3 8) Stimmt es, dass das Madchen den Mann weckte? is.right it that the girl the man woke.pst 'Is it right that the girl woke the man?'

(Wittek, 2002:70)

Test item for an opaque CA verb in Experiment 1 9) Stimmt das? Hat das Mädchen den Mann ge-weck-t? is.right that have-pst the girl the man participial-woken-participial

142

‘Is that right? Did the girl wake the man?’

(Wittek, 2002:53)

Wittek concludes that with transparent CA verbs, children pay more attention to the MCA when the verb satellite appears in salient sentence final position, while with opaque CA verbs, children pay more attention to the endstate change when the verb is in the present perfect form (the participial affix being a cue for endstate change interpretations)

Based on the results of these experiments whose objective was to determine why children neglect the endstate change with CA verbs, Wittek concludes that we can rule out Gentner and Gropen et al.’s manner bias hypothesis since children pay attention to the endstate change when it is mapped to a morpheme in salient position from an information structure perspective.

In Wittek’s Experiment 1, children were found to accept perfective CA under the NEC condition for transparent CA verbs (40% for 4-year-olds vs. 25% for 5-year-olds), and for opaque CA verbs (25% for 4-year-olds vs. 10% for 5-year-olds). In Experiment 3, there is still acceptance of perfective MCA under the NEC condition for transparent CA verbs (30% for 4-year-olds vs. 20% for 5-year-olds), and for opaque CA verbs (55% for 4-year-olds vs. 45% for 5-year-olds). Her result demonstrates that children often incorrectly said “Yes” in the NEC condition. However, according to their comments, children did notice the NEC end of the clip: “the man did not wake up” or “did not stand up” or “he did not hear the alarm”. (Wittek 2002: 87) At the same time, they comprehend that the action is intentional. They comment with explanation such as es nicht schaffen ‘not manage’, es nicht konnen ‘not be able to’, or nicht klappen ‘not work’. (Wittek 2002: 88) These explanations show that children understood that the agent intended to bring about an action, but didn’t succeed in doing so.

Wittek viewed these occasional “Yes” answers as proof that even though children do not “have an adult understanding of change-of state verbs”, they “do not completely neglect the endstate”. Rather, they interpret change-of-state verbs as if an endstate is optional, i.e. might well come about, but need not. This leads Wittek to propose the Weak Endstate Interpretation Hypothesis:

143

10) Children interpret change-of-state verbs as if a particular endstate might be expected to come about, but need not. (Wittek 2002: 118)

Wittek’s investigation of the acquisition of CA verbs is stimulating and, in particular, the distinction she makes between opaque and transparent CA verbs can easily carry over to the contrast found in Mandarin between monomorphemic CA verbs (which allow nonculminating construals) and resultative VV compounds (which do not), as discussed in Chapter 3. Her Weak Endstate Interpretation Hypothesis offers an explanation for young children’s occasional “Yes” answers under the NEC condition. We should, however, point out that Transparent Endstate Hypothesis and Weak Endstate Interpretation Hypothesis fail to explain perhaps the most striking of Wittek’s experimental results –namely, that with the sole incremental theme verb (i.e. ‘fill’/’make full’), all the children’s answers were non- target for transparent endstate version of ‘fill’ (100% “Yes” responses) under the NEC condition across both experiments. Moreover, for opaque MCA verbs, the results which were already not good in Experiment 1 (60% of non-target “Yes” responses) drastically worsened in Experiment 3, since the percentage of “Yes” responses went up to 100%. We take this significant result to show that the scale structure of MCA verbs (and related concepts such as incremental theme or gradability) have a critical impact on the acquisition of telicity and change of state verb meanings. We return to these issues when we conclude the chapter.

5.2.3 van Hout’s Studies: Form to Meaning Mapping

We now turn to the work on the acquisition of telicity entailments cross-linguistically carried out by van Hout (1998a, 1998b, 2007, 2008, 2010), who seeks to understand the learning strategies at play in the acquisition of telicity, and who explores the factors leading to children’s neglect of endstate change in a perfective telic sentence.

van Hout’ proposal is that the learning of telicity is guided by principles mapping form to meaning, such as the Transparency Principle (van Hout 1998a), or the Morphological Salience Hypothesis (van Hout 2008), or the Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis (van Hout 2008), or the Semantic Markedness Hypothesis (van Hout 2010;2014).

144

These proposals share with Wittek the core idea that children show non-adult pattern interpretations when the mapping between the morpho-syntax and the semantics is not transparent – that is, when meaning components are conflated in the same lexical item (cf. Wittek’s Transparent Endstate Hypothesis), or when the mapping between form and meaning is not one to one (i.e. when the given lexical/grammatical item is ambiguous, associated with more than one meaning), as stated under van hout’s Transparency Principle Hypothesis in (11).

11) Transparency Principle as a general learning theory:

If acquisition involves finding the mappings between particular cognitive notions and their linguistic encodings, possibly mediated by UG defined morpho-syntactic features, then learning should be easier for overt and unambiguous mappings (one-to-one) than for covert and/or conflated ones (many-to-one).

(van Hout 1998a)

van Hout (1998b) carried an experimental study of the role of the direct object for telicity with quantity sensitive verbs such as eat and drink in child (vs. adult) Dutch and English. The experimental task was a Truth Value Judgment involving on the Dutch side, forty-five children (3, 4 and 5-year-olds, with fifteen children per age group) and sixteen adults, and on the English side, forty-six children (nineteen 3-year-olds, seventeen 4-year- olds and eleven 5-year-olds) and sixteen adults. The experimental set up involved stories depicting eating and drinking events under two contexts: a telic context where the character fully completes the drinking/eating event vs. an atelic context where the character only partially completes the drinking/eating event. The participant’s task was to answer a yes/no- question asked by experimenter under each of these two conditions and relating to whether the character had completed the event or not. There were four sentence types: intransitive, transitive with a bare mass term in object position, transitive with the same object preceded by a possessive pronoun, and transitive with a resultative particle, like op in Dutch and up in English. The testing probes were presented in a perfective tense form: the present perfect in Dutch and the simple past in English as the examples (12) show.

12) a. intransitive: Heeft de rode/witte muis gegeten?

145

Did the red/white mouse eat?

b. bare transitive: Heeft de rode/witte muis kaas gegeten? Did the red/white mouse eat cheese?

c. full transitive: Heeft de rode/witte muis zijn kaasje gegeten? Did the red/white mouse eat his cheese?

d. particle verb : Heeft de rode/witte muis zijn kaasje opgegeten ? Did the red/white mouse eat up his cheese?

(van Hout 1998b: 10)

Both intransitives ((12a)) and transitives with non-quantized (mass term) objects ((12b)) are atelic for adults, while transitives verbs combining either with a possessive pronoun “type-lifting to a count term” the mass term object ((12c)) or particles, which van Hout takes to be an “overt and transparent indicators of telicity”((12d)) are telic for adults. Note, however, as pointed out by Judy Bernstein (and reported in van Hout 1998) that possessive pronouns do not enforce a quantized interpretation of the object, to which van Hout replied that for the purpose of her study, a possessive pronoun could be taken as quantizing the object since the story and pictures made it explicitly clear that the object involved in these cases denoted a bounded and specific quantity.

With these four sentence types, van Hout sought to test the Transparency principle as a general learning theory in (11) and, in particular, three concrete predications that it leads to. van Hout’s predictions were as follows. Since resultative particles such as op/up are understood by the children as telicity markers from early on, target aspectual interpretations are expected for (12). Indeed, children were expected to treat the particle verbs in (12d) as different from any of the other three sentence types on the assumption that “learning should be easier for overt and unambiguous mappings (one-to-one) than for covert and/or conflated ones (many-to-one)” and that “the more indirect and subtle aspectual effects of transitive versus intransitive verb frames and bare versus bounded objects” are learned much later. As pointed out above, however, a mass term with a possessive pronoun (e.g. his cheese) is not a very good choice for testing knowledge of the role of quantized direct objects in calculating

146

telicity. The experimental results, summarized below in Table 22 and 23, confirm van Hout’s predictions for both Dutch and English children.

Table 22: Mean percentage of telic interpretation of different sentence types in Dutch. (van Hout 1998b: 12)

Table 23: Mean percentage of telic interpretation of different sentence types in English. (van Hout 1998b: 13)

For each age group, the V+particle sentences were statistically distinguished from the other three types, yielding significantly more telic reading. In sum, as expected, since the aspectual role of particles as telicity markers is acquired from early on, both English and Dutch learners distinguish particle verbs sentences, correctly restricting them to telic contexts, while the other sentence types are not distinguished.

Note that in sharp contrast to children, both Dutch and English adults did differentiate transitive sentences with a full object DP from the atelic sentence types (intransitive and bare object sentences). Unexpectedly, however, Dutch and English adults differ markedly in their interpretation of transitive with a full DP object: while Dutch participants preferred accepting them on a telic interpretation (78%), English participants preferred accepting them on an atelic interpretation (only 25% of acceptance in the telic context).

To summarize, van Hout’s experiment sheds light on children’s acquisition of “telicity in terms of the amount of the transparency of its morpho-syntactic encoding” (van Hout

147

1998:11), confirming Wittek’s Transparent Endstate Hypothesis as well. Children reject the perfective CA statements in the NEC condition easily with transparent (overt and unambiguous) endstate change encoding (such as verb particles). However, 3-year-old children nonetheless accept atelic readings of MCA with a full object in the perfective form in Dutch (83%), as well as in English (55%), showing that they have not mastered the role direct objects play in measuring out and as such bounding the event described by a VP.

To pursue children’s neglect of endstate change, van Hout (2007) investigated children’s learning strategies in mapping form into meaning when acquiring telicity. She reviews previous studies of children’s acquisition of telicity across three language families: Germanic, Finno-Ugric and Slavic, which encode telicity in different ways. Polish and Russian have ‘predicate telicity’ while English and Dutch show “compositional telicity”. In Polish and Russian, verbs themselves encode telicity: “the perfective paradigm of the verb carries telicity entailments” (van Hout 2007: 18). There is an overt marker on the verbal predicate which indicates telicity (e.g. pro- in example (13)), and there are no determiners on the object noun marking the count/mass distinction.

13) Kto pro-ital knigu? who Perf-read book ‘Who read a book? (van Hout 2007: 16)

In contrast, in Dutch and English, telicity is computed on the basis of the joint syntactic- semantic effects of both “the verbal syntax of argument realization” and “the quantificational semantics” of the direct object noun phrase (van Hout 2007: 6). The countable determiners ‘a, one’ in English examples such as “write a film script, perform a play and bake a cheese cake” and the definite determiner de ‘the’ in Dutch (e.g. example (14)) mark quantification of the direct object and thus decides the telicity of the verb phrase.

14) Elena heeft de review *urenlang / in een uur opgeschreven. E. has the review *hours-long / in an hour up-written ‘E. wrote the review *for hours / in an hour.’ (van Hout 2007: 6)

Reviewing the literature, van Hout points out that children speaking Polish and Russian were found to acquire telicity entailments earlier than Dutch, English, and Finnish speaking

148

children. Specifically, Polish and Russian speaking children aged 2; 6 or 3 were already able to differentiate the situation a perfective statement can be applied to from those to which it cannot (i.e. ongoing situations). To shed light on English and Dutch speaking children’s comparatively late acquisition of telicity, van Hout suggests that even though children, before the age of 3, can identify the verb particle (for example, up in eat-up and off in pick- off) as a marker of telicity in the verb phrase, they fail to recognize/identify telicity marking on the object (i.e. determiner, number etc.) even at 5 years of age. This would be the source of difficulty they show in understanding the full aspectual notion of telicity.

Based on these conclusions, van Hout (2008) carried out a cross-linguistic experimental study on the acquisition of perfective aspect and telicity, to examine how telic predicates interact with two different aspects (perfective and imperfective) among Dutch, Italian and Polish speaking children (2 and 3- year-old). The experimental set up is roughly as follows. After being told a story, thirty Dutch children (mean age 3; 2), seventeen Italian children (mean age 3; 7) and thirty-five Polish children (mean age 3; 0) were invited to choose a corresponding picture (representing either a complete or an ongoing situation) to match the statement (either in a perfect or imperfect form) as shown in example (15), (16) and (17).

15) a. Mickey heeft een kasteel gebouwd Present Perfect (Dutch)

Mickey has a castle buildParticiple

b. Mickey bouwde een kasteel Imperfect Past

Mickey buildImperfPst a castle

16) a. Mickey ha costruito un castello Present Perfect (Italian)

Mickey has buildParticiple a castle

b. Mickey costruiva un castello Imperfect Past

Mickey buildImperfPst a castle

17) a. Mickey zbudował zamek. Perfective (Polish)

Mickey buildPerfPst castle

b. Mickey budował zamek. Imperfective

Mickey buildImperfPst castle

149

In (15a), (16a) and (17a), Dutch and Italian Present Perfect and Polish Perfective Past combining with the telic predicate ‘build a castle’ entail completion, while in (15b), (16b), and (17b), Dutch and Italian Imperfect Past and Polish Imperfective Past do not entail completion.

With this experiment, van Hout sought to explore the 4 hypotheses given in (18), (19), (20) and (21).

What’s more, van Hout aimed to test the Uniform Acquisition of Aspect Hypothesis in (18), to see if aspectual meanings are acquired uniformly across (the three) languages independently of their morpho-syntactic encoding, or if the different ways of encoding telicity across different languages would affect children’s acquisition.

Underlying the Semantic Complexity Hypothesis in (21) is the question of whether there are different stages at which children acquire the two core aspectual meanings: perfective vs. imperfective. This hypothesis predicts that it is easier for children to acquire the perfective aspectual forms of a telic predicate (as opposed to its imperfective aspectual form), on the assumption that the perfective is less semantically complex, as it does not involve aspectual coercion while the imperfective does.

18) Uniform Acquisition of Aspect hypothesis (van Hout 2008: 1752) Aspect meanings are acquired around the same age across languages, independent of their morpho-syntactic encoding.

19) Morphological Salience hypothesis (van Hout 2008: 1753) The semantics of morphologically salient paradigms is acquired early.

20) Form-to-Meaning Correspondence hypothesis (van Hout 2008: 1754) One-to-one correspondences between form and meaning are acquired earlier than one-to-many relations.

21) Semantic Complexity hypothesis (van Hout 2008: 1753) The semantics of simple semantic operations is acquired early.

150

The predictions under the Morphological Salience Hypothesis in (19) are that the Dutch perfect and the Polish perfective are acquired earlier than the Italian perfect, since Dutch and Polish have morphologically salient perfect participle prefixes: ge- and z- which are on the left side of the verb stem (in Dutch and Polish, inflections occur normally on the right side of the verb stem, i.e. suffixes), thus ge- and z- are marked morphological salient paradigms, easier to acquire and good candidates as such to test form-to-meaning correspondence. In contrast, the present perfect is formed with a less salient suffix –to, which is one of the many suffixes in the verb paradigms, and as such does not favor early discovery of form-to- meaning mappings. (van Hout 2008: 1753)

On the other hand, the Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis emphasizes the one-to-one correspondence between the form and the meaning. If it is applied from a form perspective (dedicated for one meaning), the prediction is that Polish children acquire the perfective form with a PERFECTIVE meaning earlier than Dutch and Italian children, since Polish has a dedicated synthetic aspectual form for a specific aspectual meaning, whereas Dutch and Italian tenses conflate aspectual and temporal meanings. In particular, in Polish, the overt marker on the verbal predicate indicates perfective aspect (e.g. z- in example (17)), while in Dutch and Italian, perfective aspect is compositionally determined by an analytical present perfect (auxiliary plus participle). For instance, in the Dutch/Italian example (15a)/ (16a), we have two forms, the auxiliary heeft/ha ‘have’ and the participle gebouwd/ costruito ‘built’, mapping onto a single perfective of meaning.

On the other hand, if this hypothesis is applied from a meaning perspective, then the prediction is that Dutch and Italian children will have an advantage over the Polish children, since the perfective form in Polish maps onto different aspectual meanings (perfective, delimitative, inchoative or culminating aspect), while Dutch’s and Italian’s perfect tenses only have one meaning: adding a temporal bound.

As we can see, van Hout’s Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis may lead to contrasting predictions. van Hout’s experiment (2008) provides evidence for determining the relevant perspective for applying this hypothesis.

151

Figure 17: van Hout’s results for Polish Dutch and Italian children: proportion of correct answers by tense/aspect (van Hout 2008 :1757)

The experimental results are summarized in Figure 17. Firstly, an analysis of variance among the three groups of children over the percentage of correct answers with perfective vs. imperfective tense/aspect combinations as a within-subjects factor and of language as a between-subjects factor was carried out showing that there is a main effect of aspect, but not of language. These findings prove the Uniform Acquisition of Aspect Hypothesis to be right since aspectual meanings were acquired uniformly across the three languages independently of their morpho-syntactic encoding.

Secondly, the Semantic Complexity Hypothesis is validated for Dutch and Polish child language. Both Dutch and Polish children preferred completed situations for statements in the Present Perfect (Dutch: 63%), as well as in the Perfective Past (Polish: 80%), signifying their early acquisition of the perfective aspectual form of telic predicates. In contrast, for the imperfective aspectual form, the percentages of correct answers are of small amount (18% and 36 %), thus suggesting that for children speaking Dutch and Polish, perfective aspectual forms are acquired earlier than imperfective forms, in accordance with the predictions of the Semantic Complexity Hypothesis (recall that, on van Hout’s account, the perfective does not involve aspectual coercion, unlike the imperfective).

Child Italian, however, did not confirm the predictions of this hypothesis, since Italian children did not produce more correct answers for perfective aspectual forms (Perfective 54% vs. Imperfective 62%). van Hout (2008) concludes that this contrast between child Italian on the one hand, and child Dutch and Polish on the other, can be imputed to the Morphological Salience Hypothesis, since in Dutch and Polish, the present perfect and

152

perfective are marked with a salient prefix (ge- and z- respectively), instead of the common suffixal inflections verb, and do favor early discovery of form-to-meaning mappings. In contrast, in Italian, present perfect is formed with a less salient suffix –to, which is one of the many suffixes in the verb paradigms, and thus do not favor early discovery of form-to- meaning mappings. (van Hout 2008: 1753)

Finally, the Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis was also validated from a form perspective (that is, as mapping one-meaning-to-one-form). Polish children performed better on the perfective than Dutch and Italian children (mean of correct responses for Polish 80% vs. Dutch 63%, Italian 54%). This is expected by van Hout as Polish has a dedicated grammatical perfective, whereas in Dutch and Italian, perfective aspect is compositionally determined by an analytical present perfect (auxiliary plus participle), thus the one form for perfective in Polish facilitates the discovery of form-to-meaning correspondences. (van Hout 2008, 1741)

van Hout (2010, 2014) continued exploring the correspondence between form and meaning in the acquisition of telicity, but the focus was on the role of semantic markedness in the interpretation and production across 12 languages.

Marked forms, in the field of language study, are often viewed as those more distinctively identified than another (unmarked) element, which is more frequently used. The terms marked and unmarked were introduced firstly by Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1931) in the area of phonology. Leech (2006) extends the conception to morphological markedness. He proposes that, “where there is a contrast between two or more members of a category such as a number, case or tense, one of them is called ‘marked’ if it contains some extra affix, as opposed to the “unmarked’ member which does not”. (Leech 2006: 62) He takes the plural form ‘tables’ as a marked form, in contrast to the unmarked singular ‘table’. Here the definition of Leech is more morphological. But morphology need not be the relevant criteria for deciding which form (when we have an opposition involving 2 different forms) is the marked form, but we can define the marked form as the form with the more specific meaning, while the unmarked form the one with the less specific meaning (the broader meaning). E.g. the pronoun ‘I’ is marked for number since it is singular whereas ‘you’ is unmarked since it can be either singular or plural.

van Hout (2010) puts forth the Semantic Markedness Hypothesis in (22)：

153

22) Marked form: X carries specific meaning P Unmarked form: Y is compatible with meanings P and I Meaning marked form >> Unmarked form

(van Hout 2010: 17)

The marked form in van Hout et al.’s (2010; 2014) definition is the one with a specific meaning while the unmarked form has conflated meanings (using one-to-one correspondence as a criteria), see (22). To avoid confusion with the traditional semantic markedness, van Hout’s Semantic Markedness can therefore reformulated as in (23):

23) Unambiguous form: X carries specific meaning P Ambiguous form: Y is compatible with meanings P and I Unambiguous form >> Ambiguous form

(van Hout 2010: 17)

The proposal is that ambiguous forms are difficult to acquire, and children acquire the meaning of the unambiguous form (with the specialized meaning) earlier than the ambiguous form (with conflated meanings).

For example, Slavic (Russian, Polish, Croatian, and Serbian), Romance (Spanish and Italian), Greek and Basque have perfective as an unambiguous form for completion (meaning), while English, Dutch, Danish and Estonian do not have perfective as an ambiguous form for completion (but rather imperfective as an unambiguous form for ongoingness). Thus, under van Hout’s unambiguous form hypothesis, the prediction is that children speaking Slavic, Romance, Greek and Basque would acquire perfective for completion earlier than children speaking English, Dutch, Danish and Estonian. We thus expect better rejection of perfective telic statement as description of incomplete event in Greek, Slavic, Romance and Basque than English, Danish, Dutch and Estonian.

To test their hypothesis, van Hout et al. (2010; 2014) carried out cross-linguistic studies on 12 languages19, investigating how the aspectual ambiguity of two types of CA verbs

19 Danish, Russian, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Basque, Spanish, Greek, Estonian, Italian, Dutch and English.

154

would impact children’s acquisition: 3 incremental theme verbs (make, build and draw) vs. 3 change of state verbs (open, close and blow out). For incremental theme verbs, there is a homomorphic mapping between the course of the event described by the verb and some property of its internal argument, see section 4.3.1 of Chapter 4 for more discussion. So, the scale’s degree corresponds to the quantity of the theme object or the degree on one of the object’s properties. The 3 incremental theme verbs observed in van Hout’s experiment concern the homomorphism between the part-whole structure of the theme and the progress of the event (e.g. half of a circle is drawn halfway through the drawing event). On the other hand, for the 3 nonincremental CA verbs examined in van Hout’s experiment, there is no such homomorphism between the theme’s part-whole structure (or degree structure) and the event’s part-whole structure. The gradable change in the progress leads to a threshold, but the change of the patient is not necessarily incremental.

In van Hout et al’s studies, for each language group, twenty 5-year-olds children and ten adults watched a series of movies in which a clown performed a set of actions over an object, causing it to change. The movie was stopped after a complete action (e.g. a full star is drawn) or a partial-result incomplete action (e.g. only a half square is drawn). After watching the movie, the participants were asked to fulfill a truth-value judgment task, judging the perfective statement with a CA verb.

Figure 18 Means of “Yes” answers (1 equals “Yes” while 0 equals “No”) with incomplete perfective among Adults vs. Children (van Hout 2010:26)

The results obtained are as shown in Figure 18: for an incomplete situation, there is more rejection of the perfective sentence among children speaking Greek, Slavic (Russian, Polish, Croatian, and Serbian), Romance (Spanish and Italian) and Basque, which have

155

perfective as an unambiguous form for completion, whereas there is less rejection among children speaking English, Dutch and Estonian, which do not have unambiguous perfective form for completion. There was a further striking finding holding across the 12 languages except for Danish: children accept more often the perfective statement with incremental theme verbs than with change of state verbs under the partial result condition, highlighting the influence of verb type on the acceptance of perfective statements.

Therefore, van Hout et al.’s (2010, 2014) experiments validate the claim/conjecture that when perfective aspect form is semantically unambiguous, children comprehend more easily its completion entailment.

To summarize, the multiple studies carried out in van Hout (1998a, 1998b, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2014) share the objective of finding out why children neglect the endstate change requirement in perfective sentences with telic predicates when they map aspectual forms onto meaning. van Hout’s overall conclusions are that children around 3-years of age easily reject perfective statements with CA verbs under the incomplete condition when the endstate change is encoded transparently (overtly and unambiguously) with particles (in keeping with her Transparency Principle (11), Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis (20) and Semantic Markedness Hypothesis (22)).

5.2.4 Martin et al.’s Invariant Meaning Hypothesis

To explain over children’s non-adultlike interpretation of perfective telic sentences, Martin et al. (2018a) propose the Invariant Meaning Hypothesis as shown in (24):

24) Invariant Meaning Hypothesis:

(i) The locus of children’s non-target like interpretations of telic sentences in a given language lies with tense-aspectual forms that have a variable meaning; (ii) Non-target like interpretations of telic sentences result from children’s immature command of pragmatic reasoning, which, in the adult grammar, guides the context-sensitive choice of interpretations for forms with multiple meanings.

156

This hypothesis takes into account whether in specific language, the interpretation of a given tense-aspectual category has more than one meaning. Based on van Hout’s (2008) Form-to-Meaning Hypothesis, it predicts that children acquire more easily the forms that have a one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning than forms with variable aspectual interpretations, as explained in (24i). Moreover, this hypothesis states in (24ii) that children’s interpretation of the forms with variable aspectual interpretation depends heavily on contextual factors, and requires sophisticated pragmatic reasoning. Martin et al. go on to show that children generally do better with semantic than pragmatic content of linguistic expressions. They quote previous studies to show children’s failure in pragmatic interpretations. Furthermore, they use Table 24 below to illustrate how the Invariant Meaning Hypothesis applies in three patterns. Forms with only one meaning are given in the unmarked cells, forms with two different meanings in the shaded cells.

Table 24 Types of non-adultlike interpretations of telic sentences across languages proposed by Martin et al. (2018a)

Target-like: forms with invariant Non-target like: forms with variable meaning meaning

Language Invariant meaning Meaning 1 Meaning 2

PATTERN 1

English Telic VPs combined with imperfective Telic VPs combined with perfective Spanish aspect aspect Italian ENGLISH: ENGLISH: Dutch John drew the star. John was drawing the star. German

Incomplete event Incomplete event Complete event

PATTERN 2

Russian Telic VPs combined with perfective Telic VPs combined with imperfective Polish aspect aspect RUSSIAN: RUSSIAN: Ivan narisoval zvezdu. Ivan risoval zvezdu. Ivan draw-PST.PERF star Ivan draw-PST.IMP star ‘Ivan drew (all of) a/the star.’ ‘Ivan was drawing/drew a/the star.’

Complete event Incomplete event Complete event

PATTERN 3

157

Mandarin Verbs entailing a result with perfective Verbs implying a result with perfective English aspect aspect MAND. CHINESE: MAND. CHINESE: Lulu guān-shàng-le nà shàn mén. Lulu guān-le nà shàn mén. Lulu close-up-PERF that CL door Lulu close-PERF that CL door ‘Lulu completely closed that door.’ ‘Lulu closed that door.’

Complete event Incomplete event Complete event

Here, we only observe how this hypothesis applies in Mandarin CA verbs, i.e. Pattern 3. RVCs in Mandarin invariably denote endstate change, having one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning, while MCA verbs imply endstate change, have variable meaning: either complete or incomplete. Thus, Martin et al. (2018a) claim that by hypothesis, RVCs are much easier to acquire than MCA verbs. Based on the results of Chen’s (2004, 2008, 2016) study with Mandarin children., Martin et al. contend that the Invariant Meaning Hypothesis is proved. Mandarin children cannot cancel the implied endstate change component in MCA verbs as they cannot inhibit the abductive reasoning (there is a causative action, then there should be an endstate change). So unlike adults who can inhibit the abductive reasoning, picking up the incomplete interpretation for nonculminating event, children overgeneralize abductive reasoning and insist on the complete interpretation.

So, Martin et al.’s Invariant Meaning Hypothesis sheds light on Mandarin children’s over-rejection of perfective statements with MCA verbs under the zero-result condition20. There are subtle interactions between the semantic and pragmatic components of MCA verbs with variable meaning (complete vs. incomplete).

5.3 Mandarin Children’s Acquisition of Causative Accomplishments

Mandarin CA verbs are classified into two kinds, Resultative Verb Compounds (RVCs) and Monomorphemic ones (MCA verbs). RVCs entail the occurrence of an endstate change encoded by V2 that results from the causing action encoded by V1, while MCA verbs imply the endstate change. Although RVC is a large class in Mandarin, while MCA verbs are of a small number, the latter are frequently used, and thus very well represented in the input. Since RVCs transparently encode the endstate while MCA verbs are opaque, Wittek’s Transparent Endstate Hypothesis predicts that RVCs are easier to acquire than MCA verbs.

20 The results found in Chen’s (2004) experiment as well as in our experiments.

158

Van Hout’s Transparency Principle and Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis, Martin et al.’s Invariant Meaning Hypothesis also predict that since RVCs are unambiguous and transparent endstate encoded forms, they should be acquired earlier. In this section, we review the L1 acquisition literature to access these predictions.

Chen (2004) finds that children aged from 2;6 to 6;1 mistakenly treat V1 of the RVC as if it entails a state-change. Chen explains that adults’ use of monomorphemic action verbs to refer to a fulfilled event misleads children into associating the monomorphemic action verbs with a change of state.

Chen’s (2004) findings probably sustain among Mandarin children, when they are exposed to adequate input of culminating use of MCA verbs. However, recall our discussion in Chapter 3 that Mandarin adults often use MCA verbs to denote NEC events. So, we wonder if young children, who have access to both the input of culminating construals and the input of nonculminating construals, and who do not have adequate input of culminating construals would also overgeneralize the result components of V1? Would they head to another direction of overgeneralization?

In this section, we review the literature on the acquisition of Mandarin RVC and MCA verbs, highlighting the acquisition issues that the present study seeks to address.

5.3.1 The Acquisition of Mandarin RVCs

Mandarin children’s acquisition of RVC has attracted much attention in the last three decades. Previous acquisition studies have shown that children begin early to use RVCs or verbs in the V2 slot, indicating the possible existence of RVC-formation rules.

Li & Bowerman (1990) carried out an imitation test. In imitating sentences with RVCs, the children of three groups (3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and 5-year-olds) were found to be sensitive to the endstate change conveyed by RVCs, as they imitated the combination of RVCs with the perfective aspect marker-le much better than with the progressive marker - zai21.

21 According to adults’ grammar, RVC+-zai is ungrammatical.

159

Lee (1996) reviewed previous studies on Mandarin children in Taiwan, and reported that children aged from 2 to 4, used productively RVCs.

Zhou (1997) found that children at 1;6 began to use RVCs, and at 3;6 their use of resultatives were almost adult-like.

Yang (2006) analyzed the transcripts of two Mandarin children. She found that around 2, children used a lot of verbs in the V2 slot of the RVC, as well as a lot of compositional RVCs.

Xiao et al. (2006 also found frequent use of V2 in their analysis of the transcripts of two children from southern China from 1;2 to 2;0.

Deng (2010) reported the findings of her first longitudinal study of two children from 1;6 to 2;6. She found out that the two children showed their first use of RVC at around 1;7. Deng’s (2010) second experiment with 32 Mandarin children aged from 2;9 to 4;0 found that they rely heavily on V2 to interpret and produce result state in RVC. And moreover 6 children out of the 32 were able to decompose and form new RVCs.

Therefore, in light of the relevant findings on the acquisition of compositional resultatives, we would expect Mandarin-speaking children to acquire RVCs early. The question, however, relevant for our study is whether RVCs are acquired earlier than monomorphemic CA since RVCs are in transparent form.

5.3.2 The Acquisition of Mandarin MCA Verbs vs. RVCs: Chen (2004, 2008, 2016)

There are few empirical studies analyzing children’s acquisition of Mandarin MCA verbs. Chen’s (2004, 2008, 2016) experimental study is the only one which we review here bearing directly on the issue of (non) culminating construals.

Chen’s study (2004, 2008, 2016) investigates in-depth and systematical how Mandarin Chinese-speaking children interpret the culmination entailment/implicature in RVC (V1+V2) and in monomorphemic V1 (same V1 as in RVC). For RVCs, Chen used Wittek’s (1999, 2002) set of stimuli: nào-xǐng ‘wake’ (someone), chuī-miè ‘extinguish’ (candle), chuí-suì ‘break’(plate), jiá-suì ‘crack’ (nut), dǎ-sǐ ‘kill’ (deer), zhāi-xià ‘pick’ (apple), dǎo-mǎn ‘fill’

160

(cup), and guān-shàng ‘close’ (door). As for the eight monomorphemic Verbs, they correspond to the V1 in the eight RVCs: zhāi ‘pick’, guān ‘close’, dǎ ‘shot’, jiá ‘press from both sides’, dào ‘pour’, nào ‘make noise’, chuí ‘hammer’ and chuī ‘blew’.

Chen compares the culmination interpretation of RVCs with that of monomorphemic V1s among Mandarin speaking children of four age groups: 2;6 (2;5-2;9), 3;6 (3;5-3;8), 4;6 (4;3-4;7) and 6;1(5;4-6;10), as well as an adult control group. Each verb involves two types of result conditions: Full result vs. Zero result.

The task was a Truth Value Judgment (TVJ) task. There were sixteen video clips in total, with eight showing full result events and eight showing zero result events. Each participant watched eight video clips: four of which involving full result situations and four of which zero result situations (but never both full-result and zero-result videos for the same verb). After watching each video, participants were asked to judge two statements given by a puppet differing in the choice of verbal form used to convey the state change: RVC and corresponding monomorphemic (given in the sequential order), as illustrated by the watching pair in (25).

25) a. RVC Ayi zhai-xia le pingguo ma ? auntie do.picking.action-descend PERF apple QP ‘Did auntie pick the apple?’

b. MCA Ayi zhai le pingguo ma ? auntie do.picking.action PERF apple QP ‘Did auntie do picking action on the apple?’

(Chen 2016: 8)

Chen expects that, for telic transparent RVCs, children should easily figure out the state change and thus reject the perfective statement under the incomplete condition. Chen’s experiment yields significant results, as shown in Figure 3. Under the no-state-change condition, children and adults reject RVC perfective statements 80% to 100% of the time, with the three youngest groups of children (2;6, 3;6 and 4;6) giving some “Yes” answers.

161

The youngest age group (the 2; 6 years old group) yield the highest acceptance rate (20%). The acceptance rate decreases as age increases.

Figure 3. Percentage of “Yes” responses to RVC (Chen 2016: 10)

On the other hand, as shown in Figure 4 bellow, adults accepted 100% of the time monomorphemic V1 sentences22 under the zero-result condition, whereas children in the 2- year-old group accepted these sentences only 10% of the time. As age increases, the “Yes” answers percentage increases. Being more adult like, children at the age of around 6 years old, gave 75% “Yes” answers.

Figure 4. Percentage of “Yes” responses to V1(Chen 2016: 11)

With these findings, Chen (2016) assumes that RVCs are acquired early. Turning to her results for V1, Chen claims that Mandarin children have difficulty in determining ‘where the state-change meaning is encoded: in V1, V2, or the RVC’ (Chen 2016: 20). Chen further states that there is a difference between the adult and the child grammar: the adults

22 Chen analyses monomorphemic V1s as result implied action verbs (Chapter 3 RELVANT discussion), commenting further that they vary in “the strength of implicature in state change”. This is important theoretical claim, the importance of which will become clear when we discuss the difference in findings between Chen and our experiment in Chapter 9.

162

understand that the final endstate change is just an implicature for the action verb V1, while young kids acquire it late and view it as an entailment. In order to explain why young children, accept much less than adults the perfective statement with V1 on the incomplete condition, Chen contends that young children do not understand the fact that the endstate change is just pragmatically implied in V1 and thus can be canceled.

Table 25 Chen's target sentences and Chen’s translation 1. 张三用钳子夹了那个核桃，可是核桃没开。 ‘Zhangsan cracked the walnut with a nutcracker, but the walnut didn’t break.’ 2. 李四用枪打了张三，可是张三没死. ‘Lisi shot Zhangsan, but Zhangsan didn’t die.’ 3. 李四吹了蜡烛，可是蜡烛没灭。 ‘Lisi blew out the candle, but the candle didn’t go out.’ 4. 张三在杯子里倒了水，可是杯子里的水没满。 ‘Zhangsan poured water into the cup, but the cup was not filled.’ 5. 张三用锤子锤了那个盘子，可是盘子没碎。 ‘Zhangsan used a hammer to break the plate, but the plate didn’t break.’ 6 张三用闹钟闹了李四，可是李四没醒。 ‘Zhangsan used an alarm clock to wake Lisi, but Lisi didn’t wake.’ 7. 张三关了门，可是门还开着。 ‘Zhangsan closed the door, but the door was still open.’ 8. 张三摘了树上的苹果，可是苹果还在树上。 ‘Zhangsan picked the apple on the tree, but the apple was still on the tree.’

Table 26 Percentage of “yes” responses by age and typology of V1 in Chen’s experiment (Chen 2005: 13)

V1 Typology Clip 2;6 3;6 4;6 6;1 adults

jiá Pure Act. fail to crack nut 60% 20% 60% 80% 100% dào Pure Act. fail to fill cup 60% 80% 80% 60% 100% chuí Pure Act. fail to break plate 40% 40% 40% 80% 100% nào Pure Act. fail to wake 20% 40% 40% 80% 100% dǎ Result implied fail tosomeone kill animal 0 20% 80% 100% 100% chuī ResultAct. implied fail to extinguish 0 0 80% 80% 100% zhāi AccomplishmentAct. fail tocandle pick apple 0 0 20% 40% 100% guān Accomplishment fail to close door 0 40% 20% 40% 100% *According to Martin et al.’s Typology (2018a), we classify the V1s in the test sentence into three different aspects in the second column.

As shown in Table 26, Chen finds that children are adult-like with jiá ‘hold tight from both side’, dào ‘pour’, chuí ‘hammer’ and nào ‘make noise’. That is to say, with these verbs,

163

they yield a more adult like acceptance on no state change condition. By contrast, with dǎ ‘shoot’, chuī ‘blow’, zhāi ‘pick’, and guān ‘close’ which she claims as more strongly imply the state change than the former four, children perform worse, rejecting the perfective statement under no state change condition.

We do not agree with Chen’s classification of the eight “monomorphemic action verbs” (V1) (Chen 2005:11). In particular, under Martin et al.’s (2018a) typology, we argue that only 5 of these verbs as triggering an endstate implicature: 3 result-implied monoventive activity verbs: dào ‘pour’, chuī ‘blew’ and dǎ ‘shoot’, and 2 result-implied bieventive accomplishment verbs: zhāi ‘pick’ and guān ‘close’. On the other hand, the rest are 3 pure activity verbs, jiá ‘press tight from both sides’, nào ‘make noise’, and chuí ‘hammer’, see Table 26 for the typology of the 8 V1s.

Recall our discussion in section 3.2.2 of Chapter 3, the diagnostic “zero-result reading under the intransitive use” distinguish result-implied activities from result-implied accomplishments, while the diagnostic “restitutive reading of again” distinguish result- implied accomplishments from pure activities and result-implied activities, while the diagnostic “intransitive use” distinguish pure activities from result-implied activities and accomplishments.

This means that the acceptance rate reported by Chen (2004, 2008) obtained with V1 under incomplete condition actually conflates two lexical aspects classes: activities (pure vs. implied) and causative accomplishments. The adult participants’ “Yes” answers for V1 under zero-result condition may attribute to the atelic feature of the six activities and the cancelable endstate change of gradable MCA verbs. Notice, however, our typology explains the ranking she gives in Table 26, on the basis of children participants’ responses. For pure activities, there are high acceptance rate, while for result-implied activities, the acceptance rate reduces a little. Finally, for accomplishments, children participants tend to reject the perfective statement.

There might be an effect of the design of the task on the experimental result. Since for each experimental condition, each participant was shown both RVCs (V1V2) and V1 alternates to evaluate. Moreover, in the same sequential order, V1V2 was given first, the correspondent V1 second. This makes the task more like a felicity judgement task (Chierchia et al., 2001), in which the same participant is given two alternative descriptions of the same

164

situation and are asked to judge which one is the best. Even though the alternative is not simultaneously, but sequentially, this is a potential flaw in the design we sought to avoid in our experiment, by distributing the testing items on two lists, by using an in-between subject design, where the participants were exposed to either the RVC (V1V2) testing item, or V1 testing item, but never both across all conditions.

Summarizing, the experimental studies carried out by Chen (2004, 2016) contribute to Mandarin children’s early knowledge of state change meaning component encoded as an entailment in RVCs and in monomorphemic verbs as an inference, see Martin et al. (2018b) for extensive discussion. This dissertation aims to follow Chen’s study, further exploring Mandarin children’s acquisition pattern of the telicity in RVCs as well as bieventive monomorphemic causative accomplishment verbs. It sets voluntarily asides monoeventive result-implied activities and pure activities and focuses exclusively on opaque endstate change verbs (verbs encoding a result or endstate change in the meaning), rather than morphologically realized transparent RVCS (verbs encoding the endstate change transparently by V2).

5.4 Summary and Conclusion

The studies on children’s acquisition of CA predicates have found that children conceptualize and produce the endstate change at an early stage. They are attentive to endstate changes, using verbal particles like -off, -up, -down etc. to express state changes before the age of 2, applying case markers on the patient undergoing the change of state around 2 or 3-year-old, and being sensitive to grammatical encoding of the concepts involved in CA verbs by the age of 3, e.g. marking the patient with accusative case under goer and attaching perfective aspect markers to telic CA events. It is also the case in Mandarin.

Nevertheless, the experiments of Gentner (1978b), Gropen et al. (1991), Tamasello (1992), Wittek (2002) a.o. have led to a paradox that on one hand children show early on sensitivity to state change, being able to conceptualize and produce CA verbs, while on the other hand, they seem to neglect the endstate change encoded in the meaning of CA verbs, since they accept the perfective CA statement under incomplete situation.

165

Such paradox has been the center of acquisition research. A lot of hypotheses have been put forward. Gentner (1978b) and Gropen et al. (1991) proposed the Manner Bias Hypothesis, attributing non-target pattern to the incomplete semantic representation that children learn the manner action components before the change of state component. Under Wittek’s (2002) Weak Endstate Interpretation Hypothesis, children do not completely neglect the endstate but interpret MCA verbs as if an endstate is optional, i.e. might well come about, but need not. According to van Hout’s (1998a, 1998b, 2007, 2008, 2010,2014) Transparency Principle, Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis and Semantic Markedness Hypothesis, endstate change transparently and unambiguously encoded forms, such as verb+particle in Romance and Germanic language, and CV in Hindi, should be easier and earlier to acquire than opaque forms.

Moreover, concerning Mandarin children’s acquisition of two types of CA verbs: RVCs vs. MCA verbs, previous studies that we’ve reviewed in this chapter suggest that children acquire the transparent form RVCs early, however, they always associate MCA verbs with endstate change. As established in Martin et al.’s(2018b) paper, gradable MCA verbs allow zero-result readings without any modification in adult grammar. Mandarin children, unlike adults, hardly cancel the endstate change meaning component in MCA verbs. Our experimental design is going to test zero-result NC construals with both RVCs (V1V2) and MCA verbs under agentive vs. pure cause subjects, with and without explicit grammatical modification of frequency adverbs.

166

Chapter 6 Experiment 1: Nonculminating Construals of Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishments

6.1 Introduction

This chapter reports an experiment23 designed to investigate the acceptance of zero- result event for telic-perfective Monomorphemic causative accomplishment (MCA) verbs (corresponding to Wittek’s “opaque endstate verbs”) among Mandarin adults and children. Unlike RVCs (Resultative Verb Compound) (transparent endstate verbs, with V2 encoding the state change), MCA verbs are a kind of opaque endstate verbs that do not show state change transparently and overtly. Recall the typology proposed by Martin et al. (2018b), and our argument in Section 4.2 of Chapter 4 that combined with the perfective marker -le, gradable MCA verbs can yield nonculminating (NC) construals. As shown in (1), the MCA verb xiū ‘repair’ combined with -le in the first clause can refer to a failed attempt event (the agent tries to repair the bicycle but does not succeed). Hence, the second clause which negates the state change does not contradict the first perfective clause.

1) Tā xiū-le nèi liàng zìxíngchē, kěshì gēnběn jiù méi xiū-hǎo. 3SG fix-PERF that CL bicycle but at.all JIU NEG repair-good ‘He fixed the bicycle, but it didn’t get fixed at all.’

This chapter aims to explore how the agenthood of the subject control over the nonculminating event. Recall that two types of nonculminating events have been found in the literature (see Tatevosov 2008, Demirdache & Martin 2015): zero-result/failed attempt and partial-result. We observe zero-result rather than partial-result situations, because “situations with a zero result constitute the strongest case of Nonculmination” (van Hout et al. 2017:326) and because Mandarin is claimed to prove the weak version of ACH,

23 The design of the experiment was developed within the project “Agent control and the Acquisition of event culmination in Basque, Dutch, English, Spanish and Mandarin” hosted by van Hout, Angeliek. University of Groningen, [email protected]. We gratefully acknowledge the support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO (GraMALL, Grasping Meaning across Languages and Learners), and LLING (Laboratoire de Linguistique Université de Nantes).

167

according to which only zero-result NC construals are relevant. (Demirdache & Martin 2015)

We further experimentally explore Mandarin children’s comprehension of the culmination in MCA verbs. Can children infer the inherent state change of MCA verbs? Do they accept MCA verbs under the zero-result condition? If yes, do their incomplete event interpretation have the same source as adults’ non-culminating construals? To address these questions, this experiment observes the acceptance of perfective statement with MCA verbs for zero-result condition among Mandarin children.

The chapter is organized as follows. Section 6.2 explains the aims and hypothesis of the study. The design of the experiment is introduced in section 6.3. Section 6.4 presents the results, while section 6.5 discusses the results.

6.2 Research Questions and Predictions

This study attempts to test how Mandarin adults, 3-year-old children and 5-year-old children interpret MCA verbs. It aims to answer the following four questions: (1) Do adults accept NC construals of MCA verbs? (2) Does volitional human agent, rather than pure cause, play a role in NC construals of MCA verbs? (3) Do children acquire the strong associate of culmination to MCA verbs? (4) Do they behave like the adults, taking into consideration the influence of agentivity?

First of all, we set up hypothesis for the adults, concerning the influence of agentivity.

Weak Version of Agent Control Hypothesis (ACH):

Zero-result non-culminating construals require the predicate's external argument to be associated with 'agenthood' properties.

(Demirdache & Martin 2015: 201)

Demirdache & Martin (2015) assert that the culmination encoded in accomplishment verbs is easier to be canceled when the subject’s referent is an intentional Agent than when it is an inanimate Cause. If Demirdache & Martin’s Agent Control Hypothesis is correct,

168

Mandarin adults would yield more “Yes” answers for zero-result events when the subject is a human agent rather than when it is a pure cause.

6.3 Methods

With the research questions and expectations given in the previous section, we turn to the experiment design, introducing research subjects, materials, procedure and criteria.

6.3.1 Subjects

In this experiment, three groups of participants were tested: 23 3-year-old children, 21 5-year-old children and 30 adults. All children and adults were native speakers of Mandarin.

Thirty adults (range 20; 4 – 35; 3, mean age 33), native speakers of Mandarin from southern as well as northern P.R. China, were tested as the control group. They are all literate, having received higher education. The children were tested at the Mandarin Classics Kindergarten and the Youbei Reading Center in the Province of Guangdong. They are of mono-lingual background. Three 3-year-olds were excluded as they failed to meet the accuracy criteria on the task (both filler questions and testing probes). Two of them often volunteered “Yes” answers to all the questions, while one of them was confused with the color of the objects. Moreover, the responses of one 5-year-olds were also discarded, as he gave more than 3 incorrect answers in the “No”-target fillers, designed to elicit “No” answers and train the children to refute if they don’t agree. (see page 171 and 172 of this chapter) Therefore, the number of the valid participants for each children group was twenty. This study included children as young as 3 years old, because in the literature reviewed in Chapter 5, children by age 3 were found to produce perfective telic verbs. In Chen’s studies (2004, 2008, 2016), Mandarin children were found to be able to comprehend MCA verbs and RVCs even at the age of 2;6.

Table 27 below shows an overview of the participants from the three groups, including the number, age range, mean age and the gender division.

169

Table 27: Overview of number, average age, age range and gender of all experimental groups

Number Age range Gender

3-Y-O n = 20 (3;4) 2 ;11 – 3 ;11 10 females

5-Y-O n = 20 (5;6) 5 ;0 – 5 ;11 9 females

Adults n = 30 (33;6) 20 ;4 – 35 ; 3 15 females

6.3.2 Task

The experiment was a Truth Value Judgement Task (TVJT for short), testing whether or not Mandarin adults and children accept MCA verbs-le under zero-result condition. A puppet uttered questions involving MCA verbs-le, and the participants were to tell him whether he was right or not under the complete(full-result) and incomplete (zero-result) situations.

In particular, participants were asked to help an askew puppet who was trying to guess what had happened in the videos. In the beginning, the experimenter introduced a hand frog puppet, named Froggy, to the participant. The participant was told that he or she would watch the videos together with Froggy, whose eyes were askew, and thus who would not see clearly what happened in the video. Moreover, the participant was reminded that with the askant default, sometimes Froggy utters silly statements over the video, so he had better rebut him and tell him what actually happened. Finally, the experimenter added that sometimes Froggy was right, and the tester should confirm his statement by “Yes”. In this way, children are encouraged to disagree with the puppet’s utterances and to give their own judgment.

To kindle participants’ interest, the experimenter emphasizes the interesting situations—a strong gust of wind and a big explosion, as well as the funny characters-- clown and pirate. What’s more, the experimenter promised to give the children a gift after they helped Froggy.

170

All participants were tested by the experimenter, individually, in a separate room, watching short videos on a laptop computer, and answering the questions. The experiment lasted 15 minutes in total.

There were in total 38 videos (6 training videos, 32 experimental stimuli). To familiarize the children with the task, 6 training videos were presented before the experimental videos started. They served to introduce the two human characters: clown and pirate, as well as the two pure causers: wind and explosion. Besides, they contributed to children’s acquaintance with the filler questions and the testing probes. The training videos also serve to train the children to disagree with the utterance of Froggy and tell him what actually happened. Among the 6 training items, 3 were to bring out a negative answer.

After the training part, the participant and the experimenter would watch together the test video clips. For each story, this frog puppet uttered the filler question and then the test sentence with the MCA verbs. Children were asked to judge whether or not the frog’s statement was a good or bad description of what happened in the short story.

Note, however, for adults, who can deny when they disagree, the filler questions were omitted in order not to annoy them with simple questions over the color or the object.

The experimenter stopped each video with the last scene visible. Therefore, when the filler or the testing probe was asked, the participant could still see the last scene.

After watching each video, the children were first asked one filler question.

There were two types of fillers: (i) designed to elicit the name of an object such as (2a) and (ii) designed to elicit the color of the object such as (2b). The “Yes” and “No” responses were counterbalanced, i.e. half of the fillers were “Yes”-targeted while the other half were “No”-targeted. Hence, children are encouraged to give a negative answer when they didn’t agree. What’s more, the alternation of “Yes” and “No” in response to the filler questions trained children to avoid a fixed pattern response. Note, however, the analysis did not include the warm-up fillers.

2) a. Inquiring the name

Is that a plate? / Is that a pencil?

171

b. Inquiring the appearance

Is the basket blown? / Is the candle purple?

Right after the filler question, Froggy told the child what he saw just now in the video with one statement, the testing probe. At the same time, the child was required to judge if Froggy was right (the test trial).

Agent+ Full-result:

3) Hǎidào guān- le nà shàn chuānghu ma? Pirate close -PERF that CL window Int? ‘Did the pirate close that window?’

Agent+zero-result:

4) Hǎidào guān -le nà shàn mén ma? Pirate close -PERF that CL door Int? ‘Did the pirate close that door?’

Cause+ Full-result

5) Nà-zhèn fēng guān -le nà shàn mén ma? that –CL wind close -PERF that CL door Int? ‘Did the wind close that door?’

Cause+zero-result:

6) Nà-zhèn fēng guān-le nà shàn chuānghù ma? that –CL wind close-PERF that CL window Int? ‘Did the wind close that window?’

The target answer to all test probes in the full-result change of state (CoS) condition is “Yes”, because the CoS associated with the test verbs did occur. On the other hand, according to Agent-Control Hypothesis, the target answer to test probes under cause-zero condition is definitely “No”, while that for test probes in agent-zero condition is “Yes”. In the result analysis, we observed Mandarin adults’ responses to the testing probes under zero- result condition with agent as subject vs. cause as subject, in order to prove the Agent Control Hypothesis. What’s more, we investigated children’s responses under the zero-result

172

condition to explore their knowledge of the culmination in MCA verbs and their sensitivity to agentivity in nonculminating readings.

The participants’ responses to the testing probes on the Full-result conditions were also observed for two reasons. First, they reveal children’s comprehension of the verbs and the scenes depicted in the videos. Second, via comparison with their responses to zero-result condition, they can show children’s knowledge of the culmination in the telic predicates.

Because of the short concentration span of the 3-year-olds, they had a short break during the experiment. On the other hand, the 5-year-olds and the adults finished the task within one session.

6.3.3 Materials

Each test video lasted less than 10 seconds. The 32 testing probes involved 8 MCA verbs: suì24 ‘break’, kāi ‘open’, zhé ‘cut’, jiě ‘untie’, guān ‘close’, mái ‘bury’, shā ‘kill’ and xī ‘blow out’. These 8 verbs were part of the everyday vocabularies of preschool-children. Even though it was not designed in the experiment, we discover that the 8 test MCA verbs consist of two classes: gradable (denoting gradable change) vs. ungradable (denoting binary scalar changes), as listed in (7) below.

7) 5 Gradable MCA verbs vs. 3 Ungradable MCA verbs mái ‘bury’ shā ‘kill’ zhé ‘cut’ suì ‘break (a plate) jiě ‘untie’ xī ‘extinguish’ guān ‘close’ kāi ‘open’

There are two variables: Result state (full-result vs. zero-result) and Subject type (Agent vs. Cause). Therefore, each MCA verbs has 4 conditions:

24 Individuals show difference on the transitive use of suì “break” and xī ‘blow out’, some northern speakers reject the transitive use of suì “break” and xī ‘blow out’, while some southern speakers accept it. Personally speaking, from Canton, southern China I find suì “break” has transitive use with plate as the patient, and xī ‘blow out’ also has transitive use with candle as the patient. The children tested in the experiment are from Southern China, and they allow the testing probes with transitive use of suì “break” and xī ‘blow out’. On the other hand, among the 30 adult subjects, 3 from northern China, pointed out the problem of having transitive use of suì “break” and xī ‘blow out’ in the testing probes.

173

Table 28: Experimental conditions

Condition 1 – Agent+ full-result

Condition 2 – Agent+zero-result

Condition 3 – Cause+ full-result

Condition 4 – Cause+zero-result.

Each participant watched 8 agent as subject full-result condition video clips, 8 agent as subject zero-result condition video clips, 8 cause as subject full-result condition video clips and 8 cause as subject zero-result (zero state change) condition video clips.

In the experiment, full-result video clips and zero-result video clips form a pair. Full- result video clips ended with the object undergoing the state change associated with the verb, while in the zero-result video clips, the same action did not lead to a change of state in the object.

E.g.

A. Agent+ Full-result: There is a window open. A pirate pulls it back until it touches the windowsill. And then she locks the window. As Figure 19 shows:

Figure 19: Agent in full-result situation (‘close’)

B. Agent+ Zero-result: There is a door open. A pirate standing pushes the door, intending to close it, however, the door is stuck, and the pirate fails. As Figure 20 shows:

174

Figure 20: Agent in Zero-result situation (‘close’)

C. Cause+ Full-result There is a door open. A strong gust of wind blows it closed, and the door slams. As Figure 21 shows:

Figure 21: Cause in full-result situation (‘close’)

D. Cause+zero-result: There is a window open. A strong gust of wind blows it, the window swings a little, however the window is still widely open. As Figure 22 shows:

Figure 22: Cause in zero-result situation (‘close’)

Table 29 bellow gives a complete list of the test items in a sequential order. The four conditions of a same MCA verb are separated by the other verbs in between. What’s more, the video clips of the same situation avoid being shown successively. This list keeps participants from getting the research purpose and avoids fixed pattern of answers.

175

Table 29:32 Test items in order

1 breaking a plate_Agent zero 17. killing a spider_ Agent Zero

2 opening a basket_ Agent Zero 18. blowing out a candle_Cause Full

3 closing a door_Cause Full 19. killing a mouse_Agent Full

4 blowing out a candle_ Agent Full 20. cutting a carrot in two _Cause Zero

5 untying a ribbon _Cause Zero 21. breaking a plate_Cause Full

6. cutting a carrot in two_ Agent Zero 22. closing a window_Agent Full

7. killing a mouse_Cause Full 23.burying a ducky _Cause Zero

8.breaking a glass_Agent Full 24. opening a basket _Cause Zero

9. untying a balloon _Agent Zero 25. burying a ducky_Agent Full

10. opening a closet_Cause Full 26. breaking a glass _Cause Zero

11. closing a door _Agent Zero 27. burying a flipflop_Cause Full

12. cutting a branch in two_Agent Full 28. blowing out a candle_Agent Zero

13. killing a spider _Cause Zero 29. untying a ribbon_Agent Full

14. cutting a branch in two_Cause Full 30. closing a window _ Cause Zero

15. burying a flipflop _Agent Zero 31. opening a closet_ Agent Full

16. untying a balloon_Cause Full 32. blowing out a candle _ Cause Zero

In the video, either a volitional human agent or a pure cause manipulates an object. We chose a clown and a pirate as two agent characters, as they are familiar to the young children. These two characters were dressed up, stimulating children’s interest. We chose an explosion and a hard-blowing wind as two causers, as they are editable with Adobe Premiere and they can kindle the interest of the children. Wind as natural cause occurs randomly without any intention. Concerning explosion, even though it is triggered typically by agents, “its occurrence was completely random and non-associated with the actions of an agent” (Strangmann 2015: 29) Hence, we used the explosion as a cause. In the video clips, the agent or the force triggering the explosion is not shown, and the participants only see random occurrence of the explosion.

176

Following each filler question, a testing probe was asked. All testing probes used MCA verbs in perfective form, i.e. combined with the weak perfective aspect marker –le. Example (8) illustrates such a testing probe with gradable MCA verbs kāi ‘open’ collocated with –le.

8) Nà-gè Hǎidào kāi-le nà gè càilánzi ma? That–CLF Pirate open-perf that CL basket Int? ‘The pirate opened that basket, right?’

5.3.4 Introduction & Follow-up Questions

Before the start of each video, the experimenter would give a statement, introducing the MCA verbs and the objects or just the MCA verbs. As illustrated below, the subject type was not mentioned. What’s more, aspect markers were also left out, mentioning just verb and object.

9) Zhè shì guānyū kāi chuānghù de gùshì. This is about open window DE story ‘(This video) is a story about opening a window.’

10) Zhè shì guānyū mái dōngxī de gùshì. This is about bury object DE story ‘(This video) is a story about burying something.

If a child did not produce the target answer during the training session, Froggy, the puppet, would proceed with definite questions, requiring him or her to pay more attention. Froggy would not criticize the child. Instead, he put forward the questions in a mild way. During our experiment, a boy, aged 3 years and 2 months, did not say “No” to the first training questions even though Froggy was obviously wrong. So, Froggy questioned him again:

11) ----Froggy：Nà miàn qízi shì lánsè hé fěnsè ma? That CL flag is blue and pink INT ‘Is the flag blue and pink?’ (Actually, it is blue and white)

----Child: Shìde. Yes

177

“Yes”

---Froggy: Nà miàn qízi zhēn hǎo kàn. Nǐ néng bāng wǒ zài kàn qīngchǔ That CL flag very good looking you can help me again look clearly yìdǐan ne?shì lánsè hé fěnsè de ma? more INT is blue and pink DE INT ‘The flag is so beautiful. Would you please look at it more carefully? Is it blue and pink?’

Once the training finished, the test item was asked.

If the participant responded with an unexpected answer (i.e. “No” answer to the full- result event as well as the agent -zero-result experimental probe; “Yes” answers to the cause- zero-result experimental probe), Froggy would ask him what in fact did happen in the video: “Oh, really? What happened?” On the other hand, if he gave “Yes” answer to the full-result experimental probes, or if he responded with a “No” answer to the zero-result experimental probe, Froggy would not ask the follow-up questions. During our experiment, four 3-year- olds boys and two 3-year-old girls did not provide an alternative explanation. They just said “Yes” or “No”. Among them, three even just shook or nodded their heads, without uttering a word. Nevertheless, their responses were taken into consideration because they produced less than 3 non-target answers to the filler questions and their responses conformed to the other 3-year-olds, we thus considered them qualified subjects, and put their answers into our analysis.

The experimenter took notes on the children’s comments. And the whole process was tape-recorded. The experimenter checked the notes with the tape recording on the day of the experimentation. These follow-up questions to the zero-result testing probes are extremely crucial, as they shed light on why the participants accept a perfective form of MCA verbs on zero-result condition.

If the child or the adult responded with “Yes” to the testing probe in zero result situation (i.e. ‘agent+zero’ and ‘cause+zero’), and in his comments the failed attempt was recognized, we assume that he/she allowed non-culminating interpretation of MCA verbs.

After watching the video over a pirate’s failure to close a door, a boy in the 5-year-old group was asked:

178

12) Nà-gè Hǎidào guān -le nà shàn mén ma? That –CLF Pirate close-perf that CL door Int? ‘The pirate closed that door, right?’

The boy responded “Yes.”

Then Froggy continued to ask:

13) Zhēn de ma? Fāshēng shěnme shì le? Really DE Int happen what thing LE? ‘Really? What happened then?’

The boy responded:

14) Guān-le, méi guān-shàng. Close-PERF, NEG close-up ‘(She) did close (the door), but has not closed it successfully.’

We see clearly how the following-up questions confirm the boy’s acceptance of the gradable MCA verbs verb guān(close)-le under zero-result condition.

6.4 Results

6.4.1 Coding

Note that, not all data was included in the result analysis. There are 3 different types of non-target answers, and we just discarded one type of non-target answers: different description non-targets C.

Based on the categorization of Strangmann (2015), concerning the Mandarin data, the non-target answers are divided into three different categories.

A. Accept-zero non-targets: An incorrect “Yes” answer in the cause zero-change condition. e.g. A window is open, then after a strong gust of wind blows it, the window is still widely open. Nevertheless, the participant answered “Yes” to the question whether the gust of wind closed the window. Note that the “Yes” answers to

179

the agent zero-change condition is not counted as non-target, as according to Agent- control Hypothesis, the agentivity facilitate nonculminating reading.

B. Reject-full non-targets: An incorrect “No” answer in both the agent and cause full-change condition (e.g. A door is open. Birthday flags are flapping in the wind and a howling wind is heard. Suddenly, the wind slams shut the door. Yet the participant answered “No” to the question whether the wind closed the door).

C. Different-description non-targets: Depending on the type of answer and the given explanation by the participants, they were aware of the (no)-change, but they supposed there was a mismatch between the video and the experimental probe. In particular, according to them, the verbs in the test probe did not provide an accurate representation of the event.

E.g. In the video, there is a toy duck on the beach, suddenly an explosion occurs, and the sand covers the whole toy duck. An adult was asked:

15) Nà gè bàozhà mái -le nà gè yāzi ma? That CL explosion bury-PERF that CL duck INT ‘Did the explosion bury the duck?’

But the adult gave a negative answer with the following explanation:

16) Búshì, bàozhà méiyǒu bǎ yāzi mái qǐlái, zhǐshì bàozhà guòhòu No, explosion not BA duck bury up only explosion after

yāzi bèi shāzi gài zhù le. duck BEI sand cover up LE ‘No, the explosion did not bury the duck, it was the sand that covered the duck.’

The participant’s explanation clearly indicates that he rejected the testing probes because he regarded the testing probe did not correctly represent the event.

Similarly, in another video which showed a gust of wind blowing a ribbon, the respondent answered “No” to the question of whether the wind untied the ribbon, and further

180

explained that “The wind only blew the ribbon up in the air.” Therefore, he gave a negative answer because he took the material not to represent an untying of the ribbon, but rather a blowing action.

In one video, a clown is sitting behind a table with a newspaper besides him. Suddenly, a white mouse appears, walking towards the clown. And the clown quickly picks up the newspaper and hits the mouse twice. In a zoom shot, the mouse is shown lying on its back, with its feet up in the air. The clown puts the newspaper down. When the video stops with the last scene visible, the participant is questioned as to whether the clown killed the mouse. He responded negatively “No”, and further showed his disagreement with the representation of the video: ‘The mouse just fainted, as it is not bleeding.’

The respondents’ explanations and their “Yes” answers under full-result condition indicated that they comprehended the state change, but they did not think the video showed accurately the event that the experimental probe was asking about. On a total of 2240 responses, 62 non-target description answers were elicited corresponding to only 2.8% of all the results. Of the three categories of non-target answers, this experiment leaves only the different-description responses out of the main analysis, as they did not show the participants’ culmination reading of the test MCA verbs and they are not errors. Fortunately, the majority of the participants did accept the scenes depicted in the video as events to which the experimental probes can be applied.

6.4.2 Mean “Yes” Responses for All the Three Groups

The “Yes” or “No” answer to each testing probe by each participant was recorded and analyzed.

Table 30 below summarizes the total number, the mean proportion and the standard deviations (SD) of “Yes” responses among adults and children under the four different conditions. The different description non-targets answers were discarded from the analysis, thus the total valid number for each condition is the total minus the Different description non-targets. For example, concerning the adult group, the number of valid answers for the agent-full condition is 234, with 6 different description non-target items discarded from the total of 240 responses. Likewise, for the adult group, the total valid answers we analyze for

181

the agent-zero condition is 231, with 9 different description non-target items discarded from the total 240 responses.

Table 30: Descriptive statistics of mean proportion of “Yes” responses, standard deviation, and number of “Yes” responses

Mean Number of “Yes”- Std. Age Group Condition proportion of responses Deviation “Yes”-responses Agent-Full 1 234（234） 0.000

Adults Agent-Zero 0.38 89（231） 0.48 Cause-Full 1 225（225） 0.000

Cause-Zero 0.07 16（230） 0.25 Agent-Full 1 157(157) 0.000 Agent-Zero 0.42 67(160) 0.352 3-Year-Olds Cause-Full 1 156(156) 0.000 Cause-Zero 0.23 36(157) 0.339 Agent-Full 1 155(155) 0.000 Agent-Zero 0.12 19（159） 0.284 5-Year-Olds Cause-Full 1 154(154) 0.000 Cause-Zero 0.08 11(160) 0.184

According to Table 30, the overall mean acceptance of the perfective telic testing probes under agent-zero condition among the adults is 0.38 (=89/231), which suggests that certain Mandarin adult speakers accept the cancelation of a resultant state change even when only an intentional causal action has occurred. On the other hand, under cause-zero condition, adults’ mean acceptance is 0.07 (=16/230). In the table, 3-year-old children yield a proper mean “Yes” answers in zero condition (agent 0.42 vs. cause 0.23). Nevertheless, 5-year-old children almost reject the perfective telic sentence under zero condition, mean “Yes” answer is 0.12 for agent-subject while 0.08 for cause-subject.

The two groups of children accepted perfective MCA verbs for full-result situations just like the adults. The 100% percentage “Yes” answers for both agent-full and cause-full

182

condition indicate their sensitivity of state change in MCA verbs. They paid attention to the state change in interpreting each MCA verb.

Figure 23:Mean “Yes” answers by groups, 1 being “Yes”, 0 being “No”.

Figure 23 reveals that all age groups fully accept MCA verbs-le for full-result situations, showing full percentage of acceptance for both human agent-subject and pure cause-subject conditions (100% “Yes”). Since the two age groups of children show full acceptance of perfective MCA verbs for complete events (with non-target descriptions omitted), we can conclude that they are capable of matching the full-result state-change with perfective MCA verbs.

On the other hand, as Figure 23 above shows, for zero-result situations, there is great variation among the three groups, and between agent as subject and cause as subject conditions. Therefore, we must statistically ascertain the influence of the agentivity over the acceptance of perfective statement under zero-result condition respectively in each age group.

6.4.3 Subject Types

In the previous section, adults and 3-year-old children were found to accept nonculminating readings for the agent-zero condition (42% acceptance among adults, 38%

183

acceptance among 3-year-olds), whereas 5-year-olds tend to reject nonculminating readings for agent-zero condition (only 12% acceptance). In this section, we will determine if there is significant and consistent influence of subject type on the nonculminating readings among each group (3-year-olds, 5-year-olds and adults).

For the zero-result condition, the subjects are of two types: either the intentional agent or the inanimate cause. Does Subject-Type play a role in the acceptance of perfective statement with MCA verbs under zero-result condition, as predicted by Demirdache & Martin (2015)?

Table 31: Mean acceptance(“Yes” answers) per group on two zero-result conditions

Subject-Type

Agent_zero Cause_zero 0.42 0.23 Mean 3-Y 0.49 0.41 SD 0.12 0.06 Mean 5-Y 0.32 0.24 SD 0.38 0.07 Mean Adults 0.49 0.25 SD

Table 31 shows the mean number of “Yes” answer on each condition for the three groups. The adult group showed the higher level of preference for nonculminating construals of MCA verbs for the agent-subject condition (38% “Yes”) than for the cause-subject condition (7% “Yes”). For the 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds, the mean “Yes” answer for agent-subject also exceeds that for the cause-subject. But for the 5-year-old children, the acceptance rate for both agent-zero and cause-zero condition is small.

Adults

As shown in Figure 24, among the thirty adults, there are two (A5 and A19) who totally rejecting non-culminating construals (neither agent-subject nor cause-subject). Twenty- eight adults accept from time to time non-culminating construals for the agent-zero condition, seven of which even accepting non-culminating construals for the cause-zero condition.

184

Figure 24: Subject oriented non-culmination acceptance in adult group

To verify whether there is indeed an effect of subject-type, i.e. to check if the % of “Yes” answers significantly varies between agent-zero and cause-zero condition, a chi- square test (also called x2 test) is conducted. We got the statistic result highlighting the significant influence of subject type on adults’ nonculminating reading (x2 =65.31; p<.001). There is a significant difference between the two subject types in licensing nonculminating reading among the adults. Agent-subject differs greatly from cause-subject in yielding nonculminating readings: agent-subject yields much more “Yes” answers.

3-Year-Old

Figure 25: Subject oriented non-culmination acceptance in 3-Y-O group

Then we turn to the 3-year-old children. As Figure 25 reveals, among the twenty 3- year-olds, there are four (A1, A8, A17 and A20) totally rejecting non-culminating readings, and two accept non-culminating construals only once or twice under the Agent-Zero condition. These six 3-year-old children thus pattern like the 5-year-old children in their

185

rejection of non-culminating construals under zero-result condition. However, the other fourteen 3-year-old children are more tolerant, accepting more than 3 times out of 8 times non-culminating construals on zero result conditions, be it with agent subject or with cause subject. Therefore, among the 3-year-olds, we find two patterns: tolerant vs. restrictive.

We used a chi-square test to compare the “Yes” answers under the Cause-Zero condition with those under the Agent-Zero condition and we got x2 =14.37, p<.001. Therefore, this is statistically significant showing that for the 3-year-old group there is an influence of subject type in their “Yes” answers. As was the case with the adults, they yielded more “Yes” answers with agent subject statements than with cause subject statements.

5-Year-Old

Figure 26: Subject oriented non-culmination acceptance in 5-Y-O Group

Finally, we turn to the results of the 5-year-old group. As Figure 26 reveals, among the twenty 5-year-old children, thirteen refuse nonculminating construals of MCA verbs, while three (A2, A6, and A10) accept non-culminating construals only once for the Agent-Zero condition. Only two 5-year-old children (A11 and A12) are tolerant, respectively responding 8 and 6 times “Yes” to Agent-Zero events, and behaving as the 3-year-olds. Therefore, among the twenty 5-year-old children, eighteen are very strict.

We conducted chi-square test to explore the difference between agent subject and cause subject in yielding the “Yes” answers. And we found there is no main effect of Subject type (x2 =3.31; p=0.077). No clear difference is shown in the frequency of “Yes” answers between agent-zero conditions and cause-zero conditions for 5-year-old children. Note,

186

however, “Yes” answers for the 5-year-old group is of limited number (10 “Yes” in total under cause-zero condition while 18 “Yes” in total under agent-zero condition).

Figure 27:Estimated marginal means of “Yes” answers : cause-zero vs. agent-zero

As Figure 27 above shows, when the event does not culminate, subject-type plays an important role in licensing “Yes” answers across the adults and 3-year-olds. They easily allowed nonculminating readings of MCA verbs with intentional agent subjects. Unlike the adult group who consistently rejected the cause-zero conditions, a few 3-year-old children even accepted cause-zero nonculminating construals. However, in general, the twenty 3- year-old children differentiated agent-subject from cause-subject in yielding “Yes” answers across the board. 5-year-old children, on the other hand, tended to reject the nonculminating readings, showing no sensitivity to agentivity of the subject. The findings among Mandarin adults and 3-year-old children confirm the role of agenthood, as predicted by the ACH, with culmination behaving as a cancellable implicature with Agents, but as an entailment with Causes.

187

6.4.4 Two Classes of MCA Verbs

As mentioned in section 6.3.3, the 8 test MCA verbs can be divided into two classes according to their scalar structure: gradable (denoting gradable change) vs. ungradable (denoting binary scalar changes). There are 5 Gradable MCA verbs (mái ‘bury’, zhé ‘cut’, jiě ‘untie’, guān ‘close’ and kāi ‘open’), and 3 Ungradable MCA verbs (shā 'kill', suì ‘break (a plate)’and xī ‘blow out (a candle)’).

Even though our experiment was not designed to take gradability into consideration as a variable, we can address the experimental findings across these two classes of MCA verbs, in order to determine if verb-type plays a role in the nonculminating reading across all the three groups.

Adults

Figure 28: Mean “Yes” answers devided by verbs among adults

Firstly, we observe how adults perform. From Figure 28, we see that, under agent- subject condition, mái ‘bury’(0.47), zhé ‘cut’(0.7), jiě ‘untie’(0.44), guān ‘close’(0.5) and kāi ‘open’(0.37) allow easily non-culminating construals, in contrast, shā 'kill'(0.17), suì ‘break (a plate)’(0.17) and xī ‘blow out (a candle)’(0.23) resist non-culminating readings.

188

Figure 29 : Adults’ mean “Yes” answers under the zero condition with the two classes of MCA verbs

As shown in Figure 29, for the adult group, under the agent-zero condition, the mean “Yes” answer for gradable MCA verbs is 0.497, while that for ungradable MCA verbs is only 0.19. On the other hand, under cause-zero condition, the mean “Yes” answer for gradable MCA verbs is 0.107, while that for ungradable MCA verbs is 0.00. We conduct a chi-square test to check if the % of “Yes” answer varies between gradable MCA verbs and ungradable MCA verbs under the agent zero-result condition. We got x2 =20.271; p<.001, therefore, for the adult group, there is a statistically significant difference between gradable MCA verbs and ungradable MCA verbs in yielding nonculminating readings under agent- zero result condition. Compared with ungradable MCA verbs, gradable MCA verbs more easily license nonculminating readings under the agent-zero condition among the adults.

Crucially, the adult group yielded 16 “Yes” answers with kāi ‘open’, jiě ‘untie’, guān ‘close’ and zhé ‘cut’ under the cause-zero condition. Coincidently, the subject of kāi ‘open’, jiě ‘untie’, and guān ‘close’ is wind, which in Mandarin culture is often personified, and as such, endowed with agenthood, suggesting ACH could also be relevant to explain non-target “Yes” answers under the cause-zero condition. We did not conduct a chi-square test to compare the mean “Yes” answer with the two classes of MCA verbs (gradable vs. ungradable) under cause-zero condition, as the “Yes” answers are of extremely small number. What’s more important, we only expect the influence of the gradability of verbs under agent-zero condition.

189

3-Year-Olds

We now examine the mean “Yes” answers for each verb among the 3-year-old children under zero-result condition.

Figure 30:Verb oriented acceptance under zero condition among 3-Y-O

Figure 30 indicates that, under agent-zero condition, mái ‘bury’ (0.5), zhé ‘cut’ (0.6), jiě ‘untie’ (0.55), guān ‘close’ (0.3) and kāi ‘open’ (0.5) license more easily non-culminating readings, while the ungradable predicates shā 'kill'(0.15) and xī ‘blow out (a candle)’ (0.15) resist strongly the non-culminating acceptance. But amazingly, suì ‘break (a plate)’25 which belongs to ungradable MCA verbs generates a high mean of “Yes” answers (mean “Yes” answer is 0.6) among the 3-year-old kids. We can impute that the unexpected high rate of acceptance among the 3-year-old children for suì ‘break (a plate)’ may be due to the fact that it was the first item presented in the experiment, and as such, the nonculminating breaking event depicted could not be contrasted with the culminating.

25 The adults group reject most of the time (83%) the following sentence with suì ‘break (a plate)’ when the plate did not break at all.

1) Nage xiaochou sui-le na ge diezi ma? That clown break-PERF that CL plate Int “Did the clown break the plate ?”

190

Table 32: Number of “Yes” answers under zero-result conditions in sequential order among 3-Y-O

“Yes” Verbs in order Answers (out Expected of total n=20) 1 breaking a plate_Agent zero 12 No (ungradable, but first presentation) 2 opening a basket_Agent Zero 10 Yes (Gradable Agent-Zero) 5 untying a ribbon_Cause Zero 12 No (cause-zero) 6. cutting a carrot in two_Agent Zero 12 Yes (Gradable Agent-zero) 9. untying a balloon_Agent Zero 11 Yes (Gradable Agent-zero) 11. closing a door_Agent Zero 6 No (Gradable Agent-zero) 13. killing a spider_Cause Zero 4 Yes (Cause-zero) 15. burying a flipflop_Agent Zero 10 Yes (Gradable Agent-zero) 17. killing a spider_Agent Zero 3 Yes(ungradable) 20. cutting a carrot in two_Cause Zero 4 Yes(cause-zero) 23.burying a ducky_Cause Zero 4 Yes(cause-zero) 24. opening a basket_Cause Zero 4 Yes(cause-zero) 26. breaking a glass_Cause Zero 3 Yes(cause-zero) 28. blowing out a candle_Agent Zero 3 Yes(ungradable) 30. closing a window_ Cause Zero 4 Yes(cause-zero) 32. blowing out a candle_ Cause Zero 3 Yes(cause-zero)

As shown in Table 32, among 3-year-old children, besides high acceptance(12/20) of ungradable MCA verbs verb suì ‘breaking a plate’ under zero condition, we got unexpected responses with two more items: respectively high acceptance(12/20) of jiě ‘untie (a ribbon)’ under cause-zero condition and not high acceptance(6/20) of gradable MCA verbs verb guān ‘close (a door)’ under agent-zero condition. To account for such high acceptance with jiě ‘untie (a ribbon)’ under cause-zero condition, we reckon that its subject is wind, which in Mandarin culture is often personified, and as such, endowed with agenthood. So, if ACH holds among young children, it is normal that under zero condition, they accept favorably jiě ‘untie (a ribbon)’ with agent-like subject, the wind. Finally, concerning low acceptance of guān ‘close (a door)’ under agent-zero condition, we

191

wonder whether for certain Mandarin speakers, guān ‘close (a door)’ is more likely to be viewed as ungradable MCA verbs26.

Figure 31: Non-culmination acceptance for two classes of MCA verbs among 3-Y-O

As shown in Figure 31, under the agent-zero condition, for the 3-year-old children, the mean “Yes” answers for the gradable class is 0.49, while that for the ungradable class is 0.3. On the other hand, under the cause-zero condition, the mean “Yes” answers for gradable one is 0.268, while that for ungradable ones is 0.167. We conduct chi-square test to check if the % of “Yes” answer varies between gradable MCA verbs and ungradable MCA verbs under the agent zero-result condition. We got x2 =5.562; p=0.018<0.05. 3-year-old children’s “Yes” answers are of higher percent for gradable MCA verbs than for ungradable MCA verbs under the agent-zero condition.

5-Year-Olds

We finally turn to the 5-year-old children. Figure 32 shows that for the 5-year-olds, the mean “Yes” answers for each verb under agent-zero condition is small: mái ‘bury’ (0.2), zhé ‘cut’(0.1), jiě ‘untie’(0.1), guān ‘close’(0.1), kāi ‘open’(0.15), shā 'kill'(0.05), xī ‘blow out (a candle)’(0.1), and suì ‘break (a plate)’(0.15).

26 In Chapter 3, guān “close (a door)” passes the manner modifier and degree modifier tests, so we esteem it as a gradable MCA verb, e.g. Yīdiǎn yīdiǎn de, ayi guan-le nà shan men A little a little DE ant close-PERF that CL door “Ant gradually close that door.”

192

Figure 32: Verb oriented non-culmination acceptance for zero condition in 5-Y-O

Figure 33: Non-culmination acceptance for two classes of MCA verbs for 5-Y-O

As shown in Figure 33, under the agent-zero condition, the mean “Yes” answers for the gradable class is 0.121, while that for the ungradable one is 0.102. Both are small numbers. We conduct a chi-square test then to compare Gradable and Ungradable MCA verbs in licensing nonculminating readings under the agent-zero condition, and we got x2=0.028, p=0.866>0.05. The 5-year-old children do not distinguish gradable MCA verbs from the ungradable ones under the agent-zero condition. They frequently reject nonculminating readings.

193

Therefore, overall, our results show that Mandarin adults significantly distinguish gradable from ungradable MCA verbs in yielding nonculminating readings, while children of 5 years of age do not show such statistical difference, since they reject most of the time nonculminating readings, showing an overly restrictive pattern. On the other hand, Mandarin children of 3-year-old easily accept nonculminating readings, and their mean “Yes” answer for gradable MCA verbs is higher than that for ungradable MCA verbs under agent-subject conditions.

6.5 Discussion

The aim of this study was to test the correlation between agent subjects and nonculminating construals of MCA verbs, i.e. Agent Control Hypothesis proposed by Demirdache and Martin (2015). In particular, we sought to investigate the weak version of the ACH, i.e. the culmination encoded in accomplishment verbs is easier to cancel when the subject’s referent is an intentional Agent than when it is an inanimate Cause. Our experiment was carried out among three groups of Mandarin participants: adults, 3-year-old children and 5-year-old children. Their acceptance of the perfective sentences with MCA verbs shows a significant contrast: agent-zero vs. cause-zero. Our results with the adult group and the 3- year-old children support the weak version of the ACH. In contrast, among 5-year-old children, no effect of agentivity is found. They are restrictive, refusing nonculminating construals most of the time irrespective of the subject type.

Adults

Mandarin adults differed from English adults in allowing nonculminating construals with agent-subject MCA verbs. Even if there was no change whatsoever, Mandarin adults accepted the perfective statement with MCA verbs when the subject is an agent (38% acceptance). Moreover, there was a significant difference between subject causes and subject agents in eliciting nonculminating readings (x2 =65.31, p=<0.001). Adults yielded more easily nonculminating readings with agent subject than with cause subject. In particular, there was a significant number and an even distribution of “Yes” answers under agent-zero condition among the adults.

194

Even though the experiment beforehand, was not designed to test another important factor (gradability) for nonculminating construals as proposed in Chapter 4, once we subdivide the 8 MCA verbs into two types of classes, we nonetheless observe the effect of gradability. We contrast the “Yes” answers with gradable MCA verbs vs. with ungradable MCA verbs under agent-zero condition. Adults tended to accept perfective statement with gradable MCA verbs under the agent-zero condition, yielding non-culminating construals (mean “Yes” answer is 0.497). In contrast, for the ungradable MCA verbs, adults’ mean “Yes” answers are of small quantity (mean “Yes” answer is 0.19). The contrast between gradable and ungradable MCA verbs in licensing “Yes” answer is thus significant (x2 =20.271, p<0.001). This was the case on the assumption that the result state of ungradable MCA verbs is of a single value while that of ungradable MCA verbs covers a set of values. Note, however, instead of full acceptance, among the 30 Mandarin adults, we’ve only got 49.7% acceptance of the perfective statements under zero-result condition. To explain why under agent-zero condition, adults only showed 49.7% acceptance, but not full acceptance, we therefore postpone the issue to Chapter 8 when we really get ceiling level acceptance when there is modification of the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’.

Children

So far, we have observed that Mandarin children at the age of 3 and 5 accept at ceiling level perfective sentences with MCA verbs for full result events as expected. The contrast between their “Yes” answers to the full-result situation, and their frequent “No” answers to the zero result situations, indicate their sensitivity to the state change in MCA verbs. They paid attention to the state change in interpreting each MCA verb.

Crucially, as illustrated in Figure 34 below, the acceptance of the perfective sentences with MCA verbs on agent-zero condition across the three age groups reveals a discontinuous development pattern in child language. Surprisingly, it is 5-year-old children (18 among 20) that have difficulty in allowing nonculminating construals with agent as subject. There is no significant difference between agent subject and cause subject in their interpretation of MCA verbs. While a great number of 3-year-olds (42%) allowed nonculminating construals with agent as subject statements, most 5-year-old (88%) rejected nonculminating construals with MCA verbs in perfective form, even with agent as subject.

195

Figure 34 Mean “Yes” answer with gradable MCA verbs on agent-zero conditions by age groups

0.5 0.42 0.4 0.38 0.3

0.2

0.1 0.121 mean "yes" anwer anwer "yes" mean 0 3-year-old 5-year-old adults

These results are surprising in that the older children of 5 years of age, unlike the younger children of 3 years of age, did not seem to converge on the adult-like nonculminating construals of MCA verbs on the agent-zero condition. The older children should have more adult-like patterns than younger children. Then why did we get such a puzzling discontinuous pattern?

The ‘U-shaped’ curve shown in Figure 34 resembles a ‘U-shaped’ developmental pattern, which has been reported in a great number of studies of first and second language acquisition (cf. Kellerman 1978,1979, Bowerman 1982, Bybee & Slobin 1982, Plunkett & Marchman 1991, Pinker 1984,1991, Lightbown1985, Ellis 1994, Lidz & Galiardi 2010, Galiardi, Mease & Lidz 2011, Choi 2015 among many others). Lightbown (1985:177) pointed out such discontinuous pattern of acquisition as follows:

Having practiced a particular form or pattern does not mean that the form or pattern is permanently established. Learners appear to forget forms and structures which they had seemed previously to master and which they had extensively practiced.

Pinker (1984) found U-shaped development in children’s acquisition of English past tense morphology. In English, there are two distinct morphological forms for past tense: (i) Regular forms with the -ed suffix added to the verb stems, such as walked and played; (ii) Irregular forms such as gave and went. Pinker pointed out that children were found to early

196

acquire the irregular past tense forms (i.e. went and gave), but later after acquiring the morphological rule of adding the suffixes -ed, they overregularized the morphological forms for past tense, i.e. they produced overregularized incorrect past tense forma (i.e. goed, gived). After a period of overregularization, children finally have a more adult-like production. They can generate regular past tense forms (i.e. walked) as well as irregular past tense forms (i.e. went). Therefore, according to Pinker, there are three stages in the acquisition of English past tense forms: master irregular forms for past tense----overregularize the forms for past tense---master both regular and irregular forms for past tense. These three stages in English children’s acquisition of past tense yield a U-shaped development pattern. Pinker (1984, 1989) argued that children commit overregularization errors because they fail to retrieve the irregular forms. He further claimed that there is a memory retrieval failure. Later, when they become older, when their retrievability improves, they can apply the irregular rules in their use of the past tense.

Choi (2015) also found a U-shaped development pattern in Korean children’s acquisition of deadjectival inchoative states. 4-year-old “were mostly target-like in using the lexically-specified form for (deadjectival) inchoative states”, while 5-year-old used “both lexically-specified and morphologically-derived form for inchoative states”, and then 6- year-old come back to preferring the lexically-specified form over the morphologically- derived form for (deadjectival) inchoative states. Her experiment found out that 4-year-olds performed better than 5-year-olds, while 6-year-olds performed better than 5-year-olds.

Our results show a ‘U’ shaped curve. For zero-result event, 3-year-old children were mostly adult-like in accepting the perfective statement more with agent-subject than with cause subject (mean “Yes” answers: 0.42 vs. 0.23). In contrast, the group of children, the 5- year-olds rarely allowed nonculminating readings of MCA verbs under zero condition. They did not differentiate agent-subject from cause-subject for the nonculminating construals. Thus, 3-year-old children seemed to perform better than 5-year-olds in the acquisition of the ACH. Would the U-shaped curve in Figure 34 show a similar U-shaped development pattern of ACH to the previous findings in first language acquisition?

Our answer is “No”. Once we carry out the second experiment on RVCs reported in the next chapter, we conclude that the U-shaped curve in Figure 34 does not represent a U- shaped development pattern. We shall see in the following two experiments and our

197

discussion in Chapter 9 that the 3-year-old children do not have adult-like patterns of interpretation with perfective sentences with CA verbs.

Concerning the 5-year-old children’s restrictive behavioral patterns, there are similar findings in Chen’s (2004, 2008, 2016) experiment. As we’ve reviewed in section 5.3.2 of Chapter 5, Chen investigated how Mandarin-speaking children interpreted state-change in monomorphemic V1 (same V1 as in RVC). She found that adults accepted 100% of the time monomorphemic V1 sentences under the zero-result condition, whereas children in 2;6- year-old group accepted these sentences only 10% of the time. As age increases, the “Yes” answers percentage increases. Being more adults like, children at the age of around 6 years old, gave 75% “Yes” answers. With such results, Chen claimed that Mandarin children tend to treat the state change inference triggered by result-implied monomorphemic action verbs in perfective form as an entailment.

Quoting the finding’s in Chen’s experiment, Martin et al.(2018a) in their article “Children's non-adultlike interpretations of telic predicates across languages” proposed one particular pattern for Mandarin children’s interpretation of telic predicates. They pointed out that in pattern 3 (they’ve proposed 3 patterns in total), Mandarin/English children are ‘overly restrictive’, showing ‘result-entailed interpretations’, i.e. they mistakenly treat the state change inference of action verbs as entailing a result. They used Altshuler and Gyarmathy’s (2017) abduction theory to account for such restrictive pattern that Children cannot cancel easily the result inference of result-implied verbs by pragmatic reasoning, so they tend to abduct the inference.

In this experiment on MCA verbs, we’ve already found 5-year-olds to be restrictive, patterning like the small children in Chen’s experiment, and correlating to Martin et al’s pattern 3. On the other hand, 3-year-old differed from 5-year-olds in still yielding a few acceptances. Thus, we wonder if the pragmatic perspective can account for Mandarin 5- year-old children’s restrictive behavioral patterns of readings of MCA verbs. We will see more in the next chapter on the experiment on RVCs.

Going back to our research questions: (1) Do adults accept non-culminating construals of MCA verbs? (2) Does volitional, human agent, rather than pure cause, play a role in state change cancelation in MCA verbs? (3) Do children acquire the strong associate of

198

culmination to MCA verbs? (4) Do they behave like the adults, taking into consideration, the influence of agentivity?

The results of the truth-value judgement task for the adults allow us to conclude that Mandarin adults mostly allow nonculminating construals with MCA verbs when the subject is a volitional human agent.

Our results with the 3-year-old children allow us to infer that Mandarin young children may differentiate agent-subject from cause-subject in their nonculminating readings on the zero-result condition. However, the 5-year-old children were very restrictive, rejecting NC construals even with MCA verbs under zero-result condition. So, ACH is not firmly proved among both the two groups of children.

5-year-olds showed non-adultlike rejection of MCAs under zero-result condition in this experiment. They performed worse than the 3-year-olds with MCA verbs under the zero- result condition. But we cannot conclude so far why they are so restrictive.

6.6 Conclusion

In this chapter, we have reported an experiment aiming to test Mandarin adults’, 3- year-old children’s and 5-year-old children’s interpretation of MCA verbs, which encode both causual actions and caused state changes. A truth-value judgement task based on van Hout (2015) was adapted to Mandarin.

The results show that adults recognize agentivity for nonculminating readings, as they distinguish agent-subject statement from cause-subject statement. On the zero-result condition, the adults show a low rate of acceptance with cause subjects while a high rate of acceptance with agent subjects. ACH is confirmed among Mandarin adults. Additionally, their “Yes” answers on two classes of MCA verbs (gradable vs. ungradable) significantly form a contrast, suggesting the influence of the gradability on the acceptance of NC construals.

For 3-year-old children, we found a small acceptance under both agent-zero and cause- zero condition, but there is a preference with agent-zero subject on the acceptance, thus ACH

199

is suggested among the 3-year-olds. Quite differently, 5-year-old children generally reject NC construals for MCA verbs under both agent-zero and cause-zero conditions.

In Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, we proposed that MCA verbs in Mandarin allow nonculminating readings. Gradability of the verbs and agentivity of the subject facilitate NC construals. This chapter provides experimental evidence from Mandarin adults for agentivity as a facilitating factor for NC construals. Among Mandarin children, our results present a U-shaped curve for the acceptance under agent-zero condition. However, we assimilate that it does not resemble the well-known U-shaped development pattern, as we shall see 3-year- olds do not have adultlike interpretation of perfective CA verbs.

200

Chapter 7 Experiment 2: Culmination in Resultative Verb Compunds

7.1 Introduction

Besides MCA verbs that we tested in the previous experiment, in Mandarin there is another type of causative accomplishments that are acceptable to describe telic/culminated causative events: RVC. For instance, to convey the standard telic meaning of an accomplishment ‘open’, both kāi ‘open’ and kāi-kāi ‘open-open’ are possible. To denote the concept of ‘x kill y’, both shā ‘kill’ and shā-sǐ ‘kill-dead’ are possible.

Compared with MCA verbs which allow both culminating and nonculminating readings, RVCs entail the culmination, showing one form to one meaning mapping. Moreover, RVCs encode the state change transparently, overtly and clearly: V1 lexically specifying the causing action while V2 the state change. According to Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis (van Hout 2008), and Semantic Markedness Hypothesis (van Hout 2010;2014), children should easily acquire RVCs and thus pattern like adults in rejecting the perfective statement with RVCs under zero-result condition.

As we’ve reviewed in section 5.3.2 of Chapter 5, Chen (2004, 2008, 2016) investigated how Mandarin-speaking children interpreted state-change in RVCs (V1+V2) and she got sharp results. Under the no-state-change condition, children and adults reject perfective statement with RVCs 80% to 100% of the time, with the three youngest groups of children (2;6, 3;6 and 4;6) giving some inappropriate “Yes” answers (taking adults’ answers as the standard). The youngest age group (i.e. the 2; 6 years old group) yielded the highest acceptance rate (20%). The acceptance rate decreases as age increases.

In this case, we carry out a second experiment, investigating Mandarin adults and children’s acceptance of perfective statements with RVCs under zero-result condition. Compared with the study on MCA verbs reported in Chapter 6, it further sheds light on children’s acquisition pattern of culmination entailment/inference of CA verbs. Moreover, this chapter continues the investigation of ACH. We shall even see with RVC if the subjecthood (agent vs. cause) is relevant in nonculminating construals.

201

7.2 Research Questions and Predictions

This study attempts to answer the following three questions: (1) How do Mandarin children comprehend the culmination entailment in RVCs? (2) Do Mandarin adults and young children validate the expected pattern in the literature in rejecting more easily RVCs than MCA verbs on the zero-result condition? (3) Does subjecthood still remain a parameter?

We test the hypotheses as follows:

1) Transparent Endstate Hypothesis (TEH):

For a language, which more often indicate state changes with complex predicates RVC such as verb-particle construction (like blow out), displaying endstate on the linguistic surface, children learners should pay more attention to endstate when they are transparently expressed by means of complex predicates (overtly encoding the result state), than when endstate are expressed using monomorphemic verbs (which do not overtly express the CoS).

(Wittek 2002:38-39)

If Transparent Endstate Hypothesis is validated, children should strongly reject the perfective assertion with RVC under the zero-result condition.

2) Weak Version of Agent Control Hypothesis (ACH):

Zero-result non-culminating construals require the predicate's external argument to be associated with 'agenthood' properties.

(Demirdache & Martin 2015: 201)

Demirdache & Martin (2015:201) assert that accomplishment verbs can more easily cancel the culmination when the subject’s referent is an intentional Agent than when it is an inanimate Cause.

In Chapter 6 section 6.4.3, Mandarin adults and 3-year-olds were found to yield more “Yes” answers with the MCA verbs on the zero-result situation with an agent subject than with a cause subject. However, for statements of RVCs under perfective form, there are two

202

conflicting linguistic parameters: agenthood of the subject facilitating nonculminating construals vs. overt-encoding of the result state (which impedes the zero result nonculminating construal). As we shall see, the results show that it is the second parameter that is relevant. For adults, RVCs trigger a culmination entailment, because they overtly encode the consequent state change and thus adults reject the nonculminating construals. In contrast, for the 13/20 3-year-old children, who neglect the state change, even when it is overtly encoded, agenthood is a discriminating parameter as is expected by ACH.

7.3 Methods

This section describes research subjects, materials, procedure and criteria.

7.3.1 Subjects

In this experiment, two groups of participants were tested: 41 children (21 3-year-olds and 20 5-year-olds) and 20 adults. All children and adults were native speakers of Mandarin.

The children were tested at the Mandarin Classics Kindergarten and the Youbei Reading Center in Guangdong Province. The children were tested at the same location as for Experiment 1, but they were not the same children, as it is not a between-subject study. The children are of mono-lingual background. Twenty adults were tested as the control group. They are native speakers of Mandarin from southern as well as northern China, literate, and having received higher education. The participants were tested with the experimenter, individually, in a separate room.

Among the twenty-one 3-year-old children, one was excluded as he failed to meet the accuracy criteria on the task27, giving “Yes” answers to all questions. Table 33 below gives an overview of valid participants from the three groups, including the total number of the participants, age range, mean age and gender division.

27 The criteria are the same for experiment 1 (see section 5.3.2). If a participant gave more than 3 incorrect answers out of 16 “No” answer fillers and 16 “Yes” answer fillers (both divided in two categories: questions soliciting the name of the object and questions soliciting the color of the object), he was excluded from the final analysis.

203

Table 33: Overview of number, average age, age range and gender of all groups

Number& Mean Age Age range Gender

3-Y-O n = 20 (3;2) 2;7 – 3;11 10 females

5-Y-O n = 20 (5;3) 4;9 – 5;11 9 females

Adults n = 20 (33;5) 20;4 – 37; 2 10 females

7.3.2 Materials

The same 38 videos (6 training videos in the beginning, 32 experimental stimuli) as for the first experiment were employed. However, instead of MCA verbs, the 32 testing probes involve 8 RVC verbs: suì-diào (break), dǎ-kāi(open), zhé -duàn (cut), jiě-kāi (untie), guān- shàng (close), mái-hǎo (bury), shā-sǐ (kill) and xī-miè (blow out). These 8 RVC verbs were part of everyday vocabularies of preschool-children.

Table 34: English equivalents of the 8 RVC verbs in Mandarin

English Mandarin RVC

blow out (candle 1, candle 2) xī-miè ‘blow-extinguished’

break (plate, glass) suì-diào’break-down’

bury (duck, flipflop) mái-hǎo ‘bury-good’

close (window, door) guān-shàng ‘close-up’

cut (branch, carrot) zhé -duàn ‘cut-broken’

open (cupboard, basket) dǎ-kāi ‘hit-open’

untie (balloon, ribbon) jiě-kāi ‘untie-open’

kill (mouse, spider) shā-sǐ ‘kill-dead’

As in Experiment 1, there are two variables: Result-state (Full vs. Zero) and Subject type (Agent vs. Cause). Therefore, each RVC was tested under 4 conditions:

204

Table 35: Experimental conditions

Condition 1 – Agent+Full result

Condition 2 – Agent+Zero result

Condition 3 – Cause+Full result

Condition 4 – Cause+Zero result.

The procedure is thus the same as the first experiment, but instead of MCA verbs, the testing probes examine another type of causative accomplishment verbs: RVCs. The stimuli and the test probes for each RVC is illustrated as bellow:

A. Agent+Full Result:

There is a window open. A pirate pulls it back until it touches the windowsill. And then she locks the window:

Figure 35: Agent in full-result situation (‘close’)

1) Hǎidào guān-shàng -le nà shàn chuānghù ma? Pirate close-up-PERF that CL window Int? ‘Did the pirate close that window?’

B. Agent+Zero Result:

There is a door open. A pirate standing pushes the window, intending to close it, however, the door is stuck, and the pirate fails:

205

Figure 36: Agent in zero-result situation (‘close’)

2) Hǎidào guān-shàng -le nà shàn mén ma? Pirate close-up-PERF that CL door Int? ‘Did the pirate close that door?’

C. Cause+ Full Result

There is a door open. A strong gust of wind blows it, and the door slams:

Figure 37: Cause in full-result situation (‘close’)

3) Nà-zhèn fēng guān-shàng -le nà shàn mén ma? That –CL wind close-up-PERF that CL door Int? ‘Did the wind close that door?’

D. Cause+Zero Result:

There is a window open. A strong gust of wind blows it, the window swings a little, however the window still remains widely open:

206

Figure 38: Cause in zero-result situation (‘close’)

4) Nà-zhèn fēng guān-shàng -le nà shàn chuānghu ma? That –CL wind close-up-PERF that CL window Int? ‘Did the wind close that window?’

7.4 Results

7.4.1 “Yes” Responses across All the Three Groups

Table 36 shows the mean proportion of “Yes” responses among adults and children under the four different conditions. Means and standard deviations are also presented. The responses are classified as the first experiment (see section 6.4.1 of Chapter 6). Description non-target answers will be discarded from the analysis as will the first experiment. Thus, the number valid for each condition is the total number of responses minus the Different description non-targets28. For example, for the 3-year-old group, the valid answers we analyze for the cause-zero condition is 157, with 3 different description non-target items eliminated from the total 160 responses. Moreover, out of 1920 responses, there are only 5 non-target description answers, corresponding to 0.3 % of all the results. Fortunately, the majority of the participants did accept the scenes depicted in the video as events to which the experimental probes can be applied. The only 5 non-target description answers concern ‘burying a toy duck’ ( 2 participants supposed the video depicted a ‘covering’ action instead), ‘cutting a carrot’ ( 2 participant pointed out that the head of the carrot was cut, thus yielding a full result event) and ‘closing a window’ ( 1 participant noticed the window was still open, thus yielding an incomplete event).

28 Recall from Section 6.4.1 in Chapter 6 that different description-non-target answers are those that the participants give when they suppose there is a mismatch between the video and the experimental probe. In particular, because of this mismatch, the verbs in the test probe did not provide an accurate representation of the event.

207

Table 36: Descriptive statistics of mean proportion of “Yes” responses

Mean Age Number of “Yes”- Condition proportion of Std. Deviation Group responses “Yes”-responses Agent-Full 1 160（ 160） 0.000 Adults Agent-Zero 0 0（ 160） 0.000 Cause-Full 1 160（ 160） 0.000 Cause-Zero 0 0（ 160） 0.000 Agent-Full 1 159（ 159） 0.000 3-Year- Agent-Zero 0.37 59(160) 0.32 Old Cause-Full 1 160（ 160） 0.000 Cause-Zero 0.21 33(157) 0.23 Agent-Full 1 160（ 160） 0.000 5-Year- Agent-Zero 0.03 5（159） 0.08 Old Cause-Full 1 160（ 160） 0.000 Cause-Zero 0.01 1(160) 0.02

Figure 39:Mean “Yes” answers across three groups

208

As shown in Table 36 and Figure 39, RVCs combined with -le for full-result situations (both human agent-subject condition and natural cause-subject condition) are fully accepted by adults and children (100% “Yes”), while under agent zero-result situations, there is variation in the response pattern across the three groups: adults (0% for both agent subject and cause subject), 5-year-olds (8% for agent subject and 2% for cause subject), and for 3- year-olds (37% for agent subject and 21% for cause subject)). Conclusively, adults and 5- year-old children tend to reject the perfective statement with RVCs under both agent-zero and cause-zero condition, while 3-year-olds still show a decent rate of acceptance both under agent-zero and cause-zero condition.

For the 5-year-old children, “Yes” answers are of small number (mean “Yes”: 0.03 in agent-zero vs. 0.01 in cause-zero). Figure 40 below shows that, among the twenty 5-year- old children, only three accepted zero change construals (once, twice and three times). Of the 6 “Yes” responses, 1 was volunteered under the cause subject condition, while 5 under the agent subject condition. So, overall, seventeen 5-year-old children behaved evenly, rejecting nonculminating readings for RVCs.

Figure 40 Non-culmination acceptance across participants in 5-Y-O group

For the 5-year-old children, the contrast between their full acceptance of the perfective telic statement under full-result condition and their rejection almost at ceiling level under the zero-result condition signifies their acquisition of the entailed culmination in RVCs.

209

Let’s turn to the results for the 3-year-olds in Table 36 and Figure 41. They accepted NC construals under the cause zero condition (21%), just like under the agent zero condition (37%). Note that these occasional “Yes” answers are not numerous. We also found similar report in previous studies29. We cannot take it as a proof that 3-year-old children interpret change-of-state verbs as if a state change is optional, since the number is not big. 3-year-old still rejected NC construals with RVC 63% of the case under zero-conditions. Even though the 3-year-old children did not have an adult-like understanding of the inherent culmination in MCA verbs, they showed full acceptance for RVCs in perfective form under full-result condition.

Figure 41:Mean “Yes” answers over 3-Y-O children

We have just seen that only 3-year-olds showed significant nonculminating readings under the zero-result condition, thus raising the issue of whether such nonculminating readings under the agent-zero condition is of even distribution. We now turn to the distribution of “Yes” answers among the participants. As the Figure 41 shows, among the twenty 3-year-old children, thirteen accepted nonculminating readings for RVCs. The other seven children appeared to be 5-year-olds like, being attentive to the entailment of

29 Concerning the acceptance of perfective statements under an incomplete situation, Chen got 20% for 2;6 year-olds with RVC, Stangmann had 14% for 3-year-olds with transparent Dutch CA, Wittek found 25% for the 4-year old vs. 10% for 5-year-old with opaque MCA verbs, and 40% for the 4-year old vs. 25% for 5-year-old with transparent MCA verbs in the first experiment, and van Hout got 29% for 2-year- olds while 22% for 3-year-olds in her experiment in 2005.

210

culmination in the necessity of RVCs and rejecting the perfective statement under zero-result conditions.

Therefore, among the three groups, only 3-year-old children gave “Yes” answers with RVC under zero-result conditions.

7.4.2 Subject Types

For zero result condition, the subjects are also of two types: either intentional agent or inanimate causer. Does Subject-Type have an impact on the acceptance of perfective RVCs under the zero-result condition, as predicted by Demirdache & Martin (2015)?

Since as we have just established, 3-year-old children allow NC construals of RVCs under agent-zero condition. To check if the % of “Yes” answers varies between agent-zero and cause-zero condition, chi-square test (also called x2 test) is conducted. The statistic result of chi-square test reveals the influence of subject type on 3-year-olds’ nonculminating reading (x2 =9.671; p<0.05). There is difference between agent-subject and cause-subject in licensing nonculminating readings among 3-year-olds. Agent-subject yielded much more “Yes” answers. Recall in the first experiment reported in Chapter 6 with MCA verbs, 3-year- old children were found to be sensitive to agentivity. The findings in this second experiment with RVCs also prove that the ACH holds among 3-year-old children. Therefore, we infer that the subject type is a valuable parameter for the 3-year-old children.

In sum, since RVCs entail the culmination, the effect of agenthood was found but only for 3-year-old group.

7.5 Discussion：Culmination in MCA Verbs vs. in RVCs

In this section, we compare our findings in this experiment for RVCs with our findings in the first experiment for MCA verbs.

First, we observe the mean “Yes” answer value of each group in the two experiments. As Figure 42 bellow shows, there is a sharp contrast between MCA verbs and RVCs in allowing nonculminating readings among the adults. The mean ‘yes answer for agent-zero (0.38) or cause-zero (0.07) with MCA verbs falls to zero for adults with RVCs. On the other hand, for 5-year old children, there is a small decline from 0.12(Mono) to 0.03(RVC) under

211

agent-zero condition, and from 0.08 (mono) to 0.01 (RVC) under cause-zero condition. For 3-year-old children, no sharp difference is found, there is a slight decline from 0.42(mono) to 0.37(RVC) under agent-zero condition, and from 0.23 (mono) to 0.21 (RVC) under cause- zero condition.

Figure 42:Mean “Yes” answers across the 3 groups for Mono vs. RVC verbs 3-Y-O 5-Y-O Adults

To verify if transparency of the verbs (Mono vs. RVC) plays a role in the nonculminating readings on agent-zero condition, chi-square test (also called x2 test) is conducted among each age group, comparing “Yes” answers for MCA verbs with those for RVCs. For 3-year-olds, we got x2 =0.838, p=0.360>0.05, therefore, there is no great difference in “Yes” answers between MCA verbs and RVCs under the agent-zero condition among the 3-year-olds.

For adults, we got x2 =78.97, p<0.001. There is a significant difference between MCA verbs and RVCs in licensing “Yes” answers under the agent-zero condition among the adults. Finally, for 5-year-olds, under the agent-zero condition, both MCA verbs and RVCs yielded a low rate of acceptance, 12% vs. 3%. The contrast is not significant though the acceptance percentage do decline a little. In summary, only Mandarin adults show clear distinct pattern of distribution for MCA verbs (allow NC construals) vs. RVC (forbid NC construals). Both 3-year-old and 5-year-old do not show adult-like pattern in the culmination interpretation of the two types of CA verbs.

212

Unlike adults, 5-year-olds did not distinguish MCA verbs from RVCs in merely implying the culmination. With both MCA verbs and RVCs, they yielded small rate of NC construals acceptance (12% with MCA verbs while 3% with RVC). They are overly restrictive, rejecting generally NC construals for all the two types of CA verbs. They assign culmination to CA verbs both in monomorphemic form and in RVC. They are attentive to state change in the RVCs just as they are with MCA verbs.

On the other hand, the 3-year-old children still gave occasionally “Yes” answers with RVC answers on the zero-result condition. Compared with MCA verbs, the mean “Yes” the 3-year-olds volunteered for RVCs just drops from 0.42 to 0.37 under agent-zero condition, and from 0.23 to 0.21 under cause-zero condition. The results obtained with chi-square test (x2 =0.838, p=0.360>0.05) suggest that there is no great difference for nonculminating readings between MCA verbs and RVCs for the 3-year-old children. They still occasionally accepted NC construals for CA verbs. RVCs with the state change transparently encoded do not help this group of young children to recognize the culmination. Thus, among the 3-year- old children, Wittek’s Transparent Endstate Hypothesis was not validated. The 5-year-old showed similar rejection pattern across the two experiments, so Transparent Endstate Hypothesis was neither proved among the 5-year-old children.

On the other hand, in both the first experiment and this second experiment, 3-year-old children showed sensitivity to agentivity, yielding more “Yes” answers under agent-zero condition than cause-zero condition.

The findings of the second experiment with RVCs and that of the first experiment with MCA verbs, together show that the two groups of children have not achieved adultlike interpretation of the two types of CA verbs, which show different culmination implied/entailed pattern. Across the two types of CA verbs, 5-year-olds reject NC construals while 3-year-olds show a few acceptances. The issue whether children have acquired the MCA verbs with culmination implied is still impossible to clarify. In next experiment, we will combine MCA verbs with frequency adverb which is a linguistic means explicitly canceling the culmination in MCA verbs as we’ve discussed in Chapter 3. We will turn to a more elaborated discussion after obtaining the results of the whole three experiments.

213

Chapter 8 Experiment 3: Modification of Frequency Adverbs

8.1 Introduction

In Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, we’ve extensively discussed on the role of gradability of the predicate in yielding nonculminating construals (NC construals). We proposed that NC construals arises with gradable and ungradable MCA verbs when the verbs are modified by an iterative adverbial like hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. Recall further the findings from our first experiment, ungradable MCA verbs without modification are found to hardly license nonculminating readings. The acceptance of nonculminating construals significantly increase with gradable MCA verbs and becomes available with ungradable MCA verbs when the VP combines with hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, as illustrated in (1/2). In the first clause of sentence (1), the ungradable MCA verb shā-le (Yuēhàn) ‘killed (John)’ entails the state change (John died), so the subsequent clause negating the state change is infelicitous since it is perceived as a contradiction of the first clause. In contrast, in sentence (2), the MCA verb ‘shā-le Yuēhàn’ (killed John) combines with hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, and this allows the culmination inference to be canceled.

1) Tā shā le Yuēhàn, #Yuēhàn hái huó zhe. 3SG kill PERF Yuehan, Yuehan still live DUR Intended `He killed John, but John is still alive.'

2) Tā shā le Yuēhàn hǎojǐ-cì, Yuēhàn hái huó zhe. 3SG kill PERF Yuehan several times Yuehan still live DUR ‘He killed John several times, but John is still alive.'

Moreover, recall, the findings in our first experiment on MCA verbs, the mean “Yes” answers given by 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds and adults under Agent-Zero conditions are respectively 42%, 12%, and 38%, whereas their “Yes” answers under Cause-Zero conditions are respectively 23%, 6%, and 7%. We established there is significant difference in eliciting nonculminating readings under agent-zero vs. under cause-zero conditions among 3-year- olds and adults. The question remains however, why the adults only volunteered “Yes” answers 38% of the time instead of 100% under agent-zero condition.

214

This chapter presents an experiment on Mandarin children’s and adults’ acceptance of zero-result NC construals for telic-perfective MCA verbs modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. Comparing the acceptance rate with that of the first experiment on MCA verbs, we will see if the acceptance of NC construals is increased, when we attach hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ 30 to the MCA verbs.

In sum, this chapter examines whether Mandarin adults and children yield nonculminating readings when MCA verbs combine with the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ in the perfective form. Moreover, it continues to explore if there is difference between agent-zero condition and cause-zero condition, verifying Demirdache & Martin’s (2015) Agent Control Hypothesis.

The chapter is organized as follows. Section 8.2 explains the research questions and predicions of the study. The design of the experiment is introduced in section 8.3. Section 8.4 presents the results, while section 8.5 discusses the results.

8.2 Research Questions and Predictions

This chapter aims to explore whether two parameters (the agenthood of the subject, and frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’) facilitate canceling culmination inferences with MCA verbs among Mandarin adults and children.

The questions addressed in this chapter are as follows. (1) Does hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ facilitate NC construals on zero-result conditions when the verb is modified by the frequency adverb? (2) Does agenthood play a role in nonculminating readings?

8.3 Methods

This section presents research subjects, materials, and procedure. The criteria for selecting the valid subjects is the same as for experiment 1 (see section 6.3.1 of Chapter 6).

8.3.1 Subjects

30 Hǎojǐ-cì “Several-times”, specifying the repeated occurrence of an event, has been argued to be a classifier phrase for events, taking either mass or counting function (See Doetjies 1997; Landman 2006, Paris 2011, Donnozan 2012 etc.).

215

In this experiment, four groups of participants were tested: 60 children (20 3.5-year- olds, 20 5.5-year-olds, and 20 7.5-year-olds) and 20 adults. All children and adults were native speakers of Mandarin.

The children were tested at the Children’s Homework Guidance Center and the Lego Entertainment Center in Guangzhou China. They are of mono-lingual background. Twenty adults, who are native speakers of Mandarin from southern as well as northern China, were tested as the control group. They are all literate, having received higher education. They were tested with the experimenter, individually, in a separate room.

Table 37 gives an overview of valid participants from the three groups, including the total number, age range, mean age and gender division.

Table 37: Overview of number, average age, age range and gender of all groups

Number & Mean Age Age range Gender 3.5-Y-O n = 20 (3;9) 3; 1 – 4;6 10 females 5.5-Y-O n = 20 (5;4) 4;7-6;3 10 females 7.5-Y-O n = 20 (7;3) 6;4 – 8;0 10 females Adults n = 20 (30;2) 20;4 – 36; 3 10 females

8.3.2 Materials

38 videos were used (6 training videos, 32 experimental stimuli). The video materials were almost the same as in Experiment 1. There was, however, a critical difference in the experimental stimuli: the movie was edited to reiterate the described event under the no- change condition. That is to say, under zero-change conditions, the attempted change of state action described in the test item is iteratively repeated for both agent-subject and cause- subject.

For example, as the following pictures show, under the agent-zero condition of closing the door, the pirate makes several attempts. She pushes and pushes, however, each time the door remains stuck.

216

Figure 43 Pirate’s endeavor in closing the door

Similarly, under the cause-zero condition of closing the door, there are several gusts of the wind, with the window slinger swinging. However, the force of the wind on the window is not strong enough, and the window slinger stays far away from the clutch:

Figure 44 Repeated gust of wind exerting their force on the window

Aiming to compare the result of the first experiment with bare MCA verbs, Experiment 3 followed the same procedure as Experiment 1, testing the same 8 verbs as listed in (3) below. Just as the first experiment, the third experiment was not designed to take gradability into consideration as a variable, but the experimental findings across these two classes of MCA verbs can be addressed, in order to determine if verb-type plays a role in the nonculminating reading across all the four groups. Also, in this way, we can have a parallel comparison with the first experiment.

3) 5 Gradable MCA verbs vs. 3 Ungradable MCA verbs mái ‘bury’ shā ‘kill’, zhé ‘cut’ suì ‘break (a plate) jiě ‘untie’ xī ‘extinguish’ guān ‘close’ kāi ‘open’

217

However, the testing probes for zero-result (including agent-zero and cause-zero) are different. Instead of bare MCA verbs, we tested MCA verbs modified by frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. The 32 testing probes involve 8 predicates of the structure ‘MCA verbs+-le +hǎojǐ-cì’ as Table 38 shows:

Table 38: 8 MCA verbs+ hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ in Mandarin

Context Mandarin MCA+ hǎojǐcì

Several endeavors of blowing out (candle) xī-le- hǎojǐcì ‘blow-PERF several times’

Several endeavors of breaking (plate, glass) suì-le- hǎojǐcì ‘break-PERF several times’

Several endeavors of burying (duck, flipflop) mái-le- hǎojǐcì ‘bury-PERF several times’

Several endeavors of closing (window, door) guān-le- hǎojǐcì ‘close-PERF several times’

Several endeavors of cutting (branch, carrot) zhé-le- hǎojǐcì ‘cut-PERF several times’

Several endeavors of opening (cupboard, basket) kāi-le- hǎojǐcì ‘open-PERF several times’

Several endeavors of untying (balloon, ribbon) jiě-le- hǎojǐcì ‘untie-PERF several times’

Several endeavors of killing (mouse, spider) shā-le- hǎojǐcì ‘kill-PERF several times’

There are two variables: Result-state (Full vs. Zero) and Subject type (Agent vs. Cause). Therefore, each MCA verb has 4 conditions:

Table 39: Experimental conditions

Condition 1 – Agent+Full result

Condition 2 – Agent+Zero result

Condition 3 – Cause+Full result

Condition 4 – Cause+Zero result.

As was the case with the first experiment, the task was also Truth Value Judgement Task. The stimuli and the test probe for each MCA verbs is illustrated bellow:

218

A. Agent+Full Result:

There is a window open. A pirate pulls it back until it touches the windowsill. And then she locks the window:

Figure 45: Agent in full-result situation (‘close’)

4) Hǎidào guān-le nà shàn chuānghu ma? Pirate close -PERF that CL window Int? ‘Did the pirate close that window?’

B. Agent+Zero Result:

There is a door open. A pirate standing pushes the window again and again, intending to close it, however, the door is stuck each time, and the pirate fails:

Figure 46: Agent in zero-result situation (‘close’)

5) Hǎidào guān-le - hǎojǐcì nà shàn mén ma? Pirate close-PERF-several times that CL door Int? ‘Did the pirate close several times that door?’

C. Cause+ Full Result

There is a door open. A strong gust of wind blows it, and the door slams:

219

Figure 47: Cause in full-result situation (‘close’)

6) Nà-zhèn fēng guān-le nà shàn mén ma? That –CLF wind close-PERF that CL door Int? ‘Did the wind close that door?’

D. Cause+Zero Result:

There is a window open. A strong gust of wind blows it again and again, the window swings a little, however the wind is not strong enough, and the window slinger stays far away from the clutch:

Figure 48: Cause in zero-result situation (‘close’)

7) Nà-zhèn fēng guān -le- hǎojǐcì nà shàn chuānghù ma? That –CLF wind close -PERF-several times that CL window Int? ‘Did the wind close that window?’

Notice that in the testing probe, in example (5), ‘guān -le’ (close-PERF) is modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ in the agent as subject sentence. Similarly, in example (7), the same structure appears in the cause as subject sentence. These two testing probes are posed under the zero-result condition.

The procedure was used across the three experiments. Concerning the non-culminating situation (i.e. ‘agent+zero result’ and ‘cause+zero result’), no matter what the adult answered,

220

either “Yes” or “No”, Froggy would ask a follow-up question to clarify the reason why the participant said “Yes” or “No”.

For example, after watching the video depicting a pirate’s failure to close a door, an adult was asked:

8) Hǎidào guān-le - hǎojǐcì nà shàn mén ma? Pirate close-PERF-several times that CL door Int? ‘Did the pirate close several times that door?’

The adult responded Buduì. “No.”

Then Froggy continued to ask: Zhēn de ma? Fā shēng shěnme shì le? ‘Really? What happened then?’

The adult responded:

méi guān shàng. not close-arrive Intended ‘(She) did not close it successfully.’

Therefore, the follow-up question shows the adult’s nonculminating interpretation of the “MCA verb +several times”.

8.4 Results

8.4.1 “Yes” Responses across All Four Age Groups

The criteria for coding the responses are the same for Experiment 1 (see section 6.4 of Chapter 6).

Table 40 below shows the mean proportion of “Yes” responses among adults and children under the four different conditions. Means and the Standard deviations are also presented. As was the case with the first experiment, the description non-targets answers31

31 Recall that, the non-target answers are classified into three categories. Description non-target answers is one category yielded when the participant supposes there is a mismatch between the scene in the video clip and the predicate. (see section 5.4 of chapter 5) This experiment leaves only the different-

221

were discarded from the analysis. The total valid number of responses for each condition is thus the total number of responses minus the different description non-targets. For example, concerning agent-zero condition, the valid answers for the adult group is 147, with 13 non- target items eliminated from 160. Out of a total of 2560 responses, only 64 were non-target description answers corresponding to 2.5 % of all the responses.

As was the case with our previous two experiments, participants accepted at ceiling level test probes under the full-result condition.

As Table 40 shows, adults and children overwhelmingly accepted MCA verbs modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ on the agent-zero condition, showing high percentage of acceptance (higher than 80% for all groups), while for cause-zero conditions the acceptance declined as age increases (mean “Yes” answers: 0.9 for 3.5-year-old, 0.82 for 5.5-year-old, 0.55 for 7.5-year-old, and 0.05 for the adults).

Table 40 Descriptive statistics of mean proportion of “Yes”-responses, number of “Yes” responses and standard deviation.

Mean Group Condition percentage of “Yes” Number of Std. responses “Yes” responses Deviation

Agent-Zero 1 156(156) 0

Agent-Full 1 159(159) 0 3.5-Y-O Cause-Zero 0.9 142(157) 0.294

Cause-Full 1 159(159) 0

Agent-Zero 0.99 153(155) 0.113

Agent-Full 1 159(159) 0 5.5-Y-O Cause-Zero 0.82 127(156) 0.390

Cause-Full 1 159(159) 0

Agent-Zero 0.94 148(158) 0.23 7.5-Y-O Agent-Full 1 157(157) 0

description responses out of the main analysis, as they did not show the participants’ culmination reading of the test MCA verbs and they are not errors.

222

Cause-Zero 0.55 88(160) 0.50

Cause-Full 1 158(158) 0

Agent-Zero 0.82 121 (147) 0.22

Agent-Full 1 153(153) 0 Adults Cause-Zero 0.05 8 (150) 0.38

Cause-Full 1 153(153) 0

8.4.2 Nonculminating Construals: Agent vs. Cause Subject

This section explores whether for the four groups, there are significantly more “Yes” answers under agent-zero conditions than under cause-zero conditions when MCA verbs are modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, i.e. whether agenthood is a factor in licensing nonculminating construals as is expected by the ACH.

Adults

Figure 49: Mean “Yes” answers for the adult group

As was shown in Figure 49, as far as zero result stimuli is concerned, adults showed significantly high level of preference for the nonculminating interpretation of MCA verbs modified by hǎojǐcì on the agent-subject condition (0.823 “Yes”). However, with pure cause-subjects, the mean “Yes” answer is barely 0.053. There is a sharp contrast between agent subject and cause subject in triggering nonculminating readings.

223

We performed chi-square test and found a significant influence of Subject Type (agent vs. cause) under the zero condition, x2=179.068, p < .001. This statistic significance reveals that Mandarin adults distinguish agent subject from cause subject, with respect to the nonculminating interpretation of the MCA verbs+ hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. Agent-subject differs greatly from cause-subject in licensing nonculminating readings. Such findings reconfirm the role of agenthood, with culmination behaving as a cancellable implicature with Agents, but as an entailment with Causers.

As shown in Figure 50, the 20 adults evenly allowed non-culminating readings of a perfective statement with MCA verbs when modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ under the agent-zero condition (20/20 accept nonculminating readings more than 63 % of the time). In contrast, with a pure cause as a subject, only 3 adults said “Yes” (less than 38% of the time) on the zero condition. Note that the subject of these three cause- zero nonculminating readings is the wind, which is often personified in Mandarin culture, and as such, endowed with agenthood, thus suggesting the wind for the speaker, was understood as an agent. Visual inspection of Figure 50 itself shows the contrast is evenly distributed among the adults between agent-subject and cause-subject condition in licensing the NC readings.

Figure 50：Non-culmination acceptance over 20 adult participants

1 1 1 1 1 1 0.880.86 0.88 0.880.88 0.86 0.8 0.8 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.750.75 0.63 0.63 0.63 0.6 0.38 0.38 Agent-Zero 0.4 0.25 Cause-Zero 0.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 A10 A11 A12 A13 A14 A15 A16 A17 A18 A19 A20

A Binominal-test was used to analyze the 147 valid agent-zero experimental answers of the adult group, observing the distribution between “0” (“No” answers) and “1” (“Yes” answers). We assume there is even distribution of the answers (50% “Yes” and 50% “No”) and got sig.=0.000<0. 001. As “Yes” answer is of higher rate, the binomial test indicated that the proportion of “Yes” answers under the agent-zero condition was much higher than the expected 0.5, i.e. mean “Yes” significantly overpasses mean “No”.

224

Figure 51: Non-culmination acceptance with agent-subject over 20 adult participants

Figure 51 shows that all the twenty adults were likely to accept non-culminating readings when the subject is an agent.

Summarizing, the pattern of response is exactly what is expected under the ACH. The adult group tended to accept nonculminating readings only on the agent-zero condition.

7.5-year-old

Figure 52: Mean “Yes” answers for the 7.5-Y-O group

As was shown in Figure 52, 7.5-year-old children, like the adults, strongly accepted nonculminating readings of MCA verbs modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ on the agent- subject condition (0.94 “Yes”). Unlike adults, however, they also accepted nonculminating construals on the cause-subject condition (0.55 “Yes”).

A chi-square test was used to explore the influence of subject type (agent vs. cause) on the answers (“Yes” or “No”) under the zero condition. We got x2=64.69, p < .001. The result

225

indicates that there is a significant variation between agent-zero and cause-zero conditions among 7.5-year-olds: culmination behaves as a cancellable implicature with Agents, but as an entailment with Causers. Thus, ACH holds among 7-5-year-olds.

As Figure 53 and Figure 54 below reveal, the twenty 7.5-year-old children largely accepted non-culminating readings for Agent-Zero condition when MCA verbs are modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. Among the twenty 7.5-year-olds, seventeen gave 100% of the time and two gave more than 75% of the time “Yes” answers on the zero-result condition when the subject is an agent. Only one 7.5-year-old child A10 gave only 38% “Yes” answers under the agent-zero condition. On the other hand, among the same twenty 7.5-year-olds, nine gave less than 50% “Yes” on the zero-result condition when the subject is a pure cause. Only one participant A2 gave 8 out of 8 “Yes” answers under the cause-zero condition. There was a strong tendency, however, of “Yes” answers under agent-zero condition for the 7.5-year-old group, while for cause-zero condition, the acceptance rate reduced significantly.

Figure 53: Non-culmination acceptance over 20 7.5-Y-O participants 1 11 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.88 0.8 0.750.750.75 0.75 0.750.75 0.75 0.63 0.63 0.63 0.630.63 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.38 0.380.38 0.38 Agent-Zero 0.4 0.25 Cause-Zero 0.2 0.13 0.13 0 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 A10 A11 A12 A13 A14 A15 A16 A17 A18 A19 A20

Figure 54: Non-culmination acceptance with agent subject over 20 7.5-Y-O

226

5.5-year-old

Figure 55: Non-culmination acceptance over 20 5.5-Y-O participants

Our findings in Figure 55 already show that 5.5-year-old children accepted MCA verbs modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ for human agent-zero condition (0.99 “Yes”) as well as natural cause-zero condition (0.82 “Yes”).

We conducted a chi-square test to compare the “Yes” answers yielded under agent-zero and cause-zero condition, and we got x2=24.948, p<0.001. Even though there was a high rate of “Yes” answers on both agent-zero and cause-zero condition, 5.5-year-olds distinguished agent-subject from cause-subject: allow nonculminating construals more easily with agent subject than cause subject under zero-result condition.

Figure 56: Non-culmination acceptance over 20 5.5-Y-O in agent-zero condition

1 1 11 11 1 11 11 11 1 1 1 11 1 1 11 1 1 1 1 1 0.88 0.860.88 0.88 0.88 0.8 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.750.75 0.63 0.63 0.63 0.6 0.5

0.4

0.2

0 Agent-Zero 1 2 3 4 5 6 A A A A A A A7 A8 A9

A10 A11 A12 A13 A14 A15 A16 A17 A18 A19 A20 Cause-Zero

Figure 56 shows that nineteen out of twenty 5.5-year-old children fully accepted nonculminating readings for Agent-Zero condition when the MCA verb is modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, while only one A20 gave 75% “Yes” answers.

227

3.5-year-old

Finally, we turn to the youngest group, 3.5-year-olds. As was shown in Figure 57, as far as zero result stimuli is concerned, 3.5-year-old children showed at ceiling level nonculminating construals when MCA verbs are modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, be it with agent-subject condition (1 “Yes”) or be it with cause-subject condition (0.9 “Yes”).

Figure 57: Mean “Yes” answers for the 3.5-Y-O group

Even though the 3.5-year-old group largely accepted nonculminating construals both on the agent-zero and the cause-zero condition, we still wonder whether there is an effect of agenthood. Thus, we check if the % of yes answers varies between agent-zero and cause- zero condition, chi-square test (also called x2 test) was conducted. We got x2 =15.655; p<0.001. The statistic result of chi-square test highlights the significant influence of subject type on 3.5-year-old children’s nonculminating reading. Agent-subject differs from cause- subject in yielding nonculminating readings. Agent-subject yields much more “Yes” answers.

Figure 58: Non-culmination acceptance over 20 3.5-Y-O participants

228

Figure 59: Mean “Yes” answers of the 3.5-Y-O group under agent-zero condition

Summarizing the findings across the 4 groups, nonculminating construals under the agent-zero condition when the verb is modified by ‘several times’ is found across all the four groups (the adults, 7.5-year-olds, 5.5-year-olds, and 3.5-year-olds). On the other hand, there is variation across the 4 groups with regard to the nonculminating readings of MCA verbs under the cause-zero condition. Adults overwhelmingly reject nonculminating construals under the cause-zero condition (in keeping with the ACH), while 3.5-year-olds, 5.5-year-olds, and 7.5-year-olds more or less accept the nonculminating construals with cause subject, the acceptance rate decreases as age increases. However, the contrast between agent-subject and cause-subject in yielding nonculminating construals is found to be statistically significant among all the 4 groups.

8.4.3 Comparison: Without vs. with hǎojǐcì ‘several times’

Experiment 1 tested the NC construals of MCA verbs that were not modified by the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, while experiment 3 tested the NC construals of MCA verbs modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. As Figure 60 below shows, there is a sharp contrast between these two structures in allowing nonculminating readings under agent-zero condition across adult as well as children groups. For all participant groups, modification of hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ increased the acceptance rate of NC construals. However, under the cause-zero condition, only adults still rejected significantly the test probes with MCA verbs.

229

Figure 60: Mean “Yes” answers in the 1st experiment vs. 3rd experiment

Zooming in on the agent-zero condition (the green column), we now verify statistically whether the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ do facilitate nonculminating readings, irrespective of subject type.

Adults

Figure 61: % of “Yes” under agent-zero condition in 1st vs. 3rd experiment among adult group

As shown in Figure 61 above, under agent-zero conditions, Mandarin adults’ acceptance of MCA verbs (without hǎojǐcì ‘several times’) is only 38%, while their

230

acceptance of MCA verbs combined with hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ is as high as 82%. We performed a chi-square test on adults’ agent-zero data, comparing “Yes” answers in the two experiments to see if the modification by the adverb plays a significant role. We got x2=69.84, P<0.001. Thus, we can conclude that Mandarin adults generate much more readily nonculminating readings under agent-zero condition when the MCA verb is modified by the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. This statistical result shows that the frequency adverb increases the licensing nonculminating construals. When MCA verbs are modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, the acceptance climbs to 82%.

Below, we show that the adverbial modifier hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ facilitates the NC readings for both gradable MCA verbs and ungradable MCA verbs. As can be seen in Figure 62, when modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, the mean “Yes” answers for both gradable and ungradable MCA verbs increase. The nonculminating construals for gradable MCA verbs increase from 50% to 96% (a ceiling level). Ungradable MCA verbs which seldom license NC construals in the first experiment (19% of acceptance), when modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, are accepted at a high rate (56%)32.

Figure 62: Adults’ mean “Yes” answers for zero condition in two classes of MCA

Children

32 The lack of a second clause indicating the failure in the test probes attributes to some adults’ refusal of nonculminating construals for ungradable MCA verbs (see more in Chapter 3).

231

We now turn to children participants. In the first experiment we’ve only tested 2 groups of children: 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds. On the other hand, in the third experiment, 3 groups of children were tested: 3.5-year-olds, 5.5-year-olds and 7.5-year-olds. Hence the comparison will be done between 3-year-olds in the first experiment and 3.5-year-olds in the third experiment, and between 5-year-olds in the first experiment and 5.5-year-olds in the third experiment.

First of all, we compare the result of the 3.5-year-old children in the third experiment with that of 3-year-old in the first experiment.

Figure 63: % of “Yes” under agent-zero condition in 1st vs. 3rd Experiment among 3-Y-O

As shown in Figure 63, under the agent-zero condition, their acceptance of the perfective statements with MCA verbs (without hǎojǐcì ‘several times’) is just 42%, however, their acceptance increases to ceiling level percent when MCA verbs are modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. We use a chi-square test to compare the answers of the two experiments among 3-year-olds, and we got x2 =128.49, P<0.001. Such statistic result proves that, Mandarin children around 3 years of age allow NC construals under the agent zero condition significantly more often when MCA verbs are modified by frequency adverbs such as hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. This experimental evidence confirms that there is an adverb effect among 3-year-old children. Note that be it in the first experiment or the third experiment, 3-year- old children showed a high rate of acceptance of the perfective statement under the zero- result condition, and they differentiated agent subject from cause subject in the acceptance.

232

As shown in Figure 64 below, under agent-zero condition, without modification of the adverbial modifier, Mandarin 5-year-old children were restrictive, only allow NC construals 11.9% of the time, whereas after being modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, they show acceptance at ceiling level: 98.8% . This contrast, on one hand, suggests the influence of the adverbial modifier in allowing NC construals of MCA verbs, on the other hand, reveals that 5-year-old children know that culmination is an implication in MCA verbs. When there is an explicit cancelation generated by the adverbial modifier, they are ready to allow NC construals.

Figure 64:Mean “Yes” under the agent-zero condition among 5-Y-O group: 1st vs. 3rd Experiment

Therefore, according to the results we get from the comparison, under the agent-zero condition, Mandarin adults, and our two groups of children (3 and 5 years old) all accept the nonculminating readings of MCA verbs more easily when there is a combination with the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’.

8.4.4 Comparison: Three Experiments

233

Figure 65 Mean “Yes” answers across three experiments among adults

0.9 0.82 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.38 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.07 0.1 0.05 0 0 0 Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Mono RVC Modified

The results with the adult control groups in the first experiment (testing MCA verbs) and the third experiment (testing MCA verbs modified by the adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’), both validate the ACH. As shown in Figure 65, in the first experiment, adults allowed NC construals 38% of the time for the Agent-zero condition while only 7% of the time for the Cause-zero condition. In the third experiment, the rate of acceptance climed to 82% for the Agent-zero condition, and falls to 5% however for the Cause-zero condition. Moreover, the chi-square tests conducted respectively in the two experiments show a statistically significant contrast (in both two experiments, p<0.001) between agent-subject and cause- subject in yielding NC readings. Thus, the results indicate that for adults, nonculminating construals under zero-result condition are more easily achieved with MCA verbs when the subject’s referent is an intentional Agent than when it is an inanimate Cause, confirming the weak version of ACH hypothesis. On the other hand, in the second experiment with RVC, which encode state change transparently and overtly, adults fully rejected NC construals on both agent-zero and cause-zero conditions, and as such here in the second experiment.

234

Figure 66 Mean “Yes” answers across three experiments among 3-Y-O

1 1 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6

0.5 0.42 0.4 0.37 0.3 0.23 0.21 0.2 0.1 0 Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Mono RVC Modified

The data and the statistical analysis in the three experiments has suggested that 3-year- olds are sensitive to agenthood. In each experiment, the acceptance rate for the agent-zero condition is higher than that for the cause-zero condition (1st: 42% vs. 23%; 2nd: 37% vs. 21%; 3rd:100% vs. 90%). Moreover, the chi-square tests conducted in each experiment show statistically significant difference between agent subject and cause subject in licensing NC construals (p< 0). Thus, ACH is found among 3-year-olds across all the three experiments. However, strikingly, less ACH effect is found in the third experiment, when MCA verbs are modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’.

Figure 67 Mean “Yes” answers across three experiments among 5-Y-O

1 0.99

0.9 0.82 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3

0.2 0.12 0.08 0.1 0.03 0.01 0 Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Agent-Zero Cause-Zero Mono RVC Modified

235

As for the 5-year-old children, as shown in Figure 67 above, they tended to reject NC construals under zero-result condition for both MCA verbs in the first experiment and for RVCs in the second experiment.

Crucially, however, in the third experiment, the 5-year-olds, like the adults and 3-year- old children, were sensitive to the effect of the frequency adverbs in licensing NC construals overtly. This suggests that they know culmination can be canceled. They broadly accepted nonculminating construals under agent-zero conditions. Even though there is a high rate of “Yes” answers on both agent-zero and cause-zero condition, 5.5-year-olds distinguished agent-subject from cause-subject this time (x2=24.948, p<0.001). When modified by the adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, they allowed NC construals and perceive the effect of the ACH: allowing NC readings more readily with agent subjects than with cause subjects.

Table 41: ACH tested across the three experiments

Table 41 summarizes the tests of ACH in the three experiments across the participant groups. In conclusion, adults’ response pattern with Mandarin MCA verbs validates the weak version of ACH. The results with children suggested that they acquire ACH early (around 3 years of age). However, when there was no modification of adverb, children around 5-year-old viewed MCA verbs as entailing the result, and showed no effect of ACH. Only when there was modification of adverbial modifier hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, the effect of ACH reappeared.

8.5 Discussion

Unlike the first experiment on MCA verbs without adverbial modifiers, this new experiment observes MCA verbs modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’.

236

A. Adults

For the adults in this experiment, their acceptance rate on the agent-zero condition (82%) has increased significantly from that in the first experiment (38%). These results were expected, given the interaction of MCA verbs and the frequency adverbs hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ proposed in Chapter 3.

E.g.

9) Hǎidào guān-le - hǎojǐcì nà shàn mén ma? Pirate close-PERF several times that CL door ING ‘Did the pirate close the door several times?’

When the experimenter asked the adult participant question as in (9), the adult participant answered (10).

10) Shìde, guān-le, dànshì méi guān-shàng. Yes close-PERF but not close-up ‘Yes, she was on the way to close it but she didn’t close it.’

The door got stuck, and the pirate pushed it again and again. Mandarin adults accepted more easily the perfective statement with both gradable MCA verbs and ungradable MCA verbs when there was an adverbial modifier hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ under the agent-zero situation. Ungradable MCA verbs which seldom yielded NC construals without modifiers in the first experiment, after being modified by hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, have yielded a rate of 56% acceptance under zero-result condition.

Moreover, for the adults, “Yes” answers on agent-zero condition is of significant number, dramatically overpassing that on the cause-zero condition. ACH effect is shown.

The adult results thus confirm the role hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ and agenthood play in facilitating nonculminating readings on zero-result conditions.

B. Children

As was the case for the adults, 7.5-year-olds, 5.5-year-olds and 3.5-year-olds were also sensitive to the adverb effect. There is high rate of acceptance on the agent-zero condition across the three groups, respectively 94%(7.5-year-olds), 99%(5.5-year-olds)

237

and 100%(3.5-year-olds). Their acceptance of NC construals increases dramatically from that in the first experiment with MCA verbs without modification by frequency adverbs: 5-year-olds (12%) and 3-year-olds (48%). Therefore, the child results indicate that children around 3 years old, 5 years old and 7 years old have canceled the implicature and thus yielded NC construals.

On the other hand, in this new experiment, unlike adults’ overwhelming rejection of NC construals under cause-zero conditions (in keeping with the ACH), 3.5-year-olds, 5.5-year-olds, and 7.5-year-olds more or less accepted nonculminating construals with cause subject. The acceptance rate decreased as age increased: 90% for 3.5-year-olds, 82% for 5.5-year-olds and 55% for 7.5-year-0lds. Even though the cause-zero condition yielded acceptance to some degree, the contrast between agent-subject and cause-subject in licensing nonculminating construals was found among 3 groups of children. The chi- square tests conducted with each child group showed, agenthood is verified among 7.5- year-old children, as well as 5.5-year-olds and 3.5-year-olds. Older children did better in identifying the role of agent control with the effect of frequency adverbs, approaching adult-like rejection on the cause-zero condition.

We will forward more discussion on the issue of Mandarin children’s acquisition pattern of CA verbs in next chapter.

238

Chapter 9 Conclusions

This chapter summarizes the main proposals defended in this thesis. Resultative Verb Compounds (RVCs) entail culmination of the described event and as such reject Nonculminating (NC) construals, while Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment (MCA) verbs imply culmination, and thus allow NC construals. We further put forward a typology of Mandarin MCA verbs depending on their degree scale structures. We showed that when combined with the perfective marker -le, which functions as a partitive operator, gradable MCA verbs allow NC construals. On the other hand, ungradable MCA verbs do not allow NC construals when combined with -le. Only after combining with modifiers such as the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ can they license NC construals. Moreover, we claimed that the agenthood of the subject is an essential element in yielding NC construals. MCA verbs with animate subjects, as opposed to pure causer, more easily allow NC construals, in accordance with the Agent Control Hypothesis (ACH). We thus identified three essential factors for NC construals of MCA verbs: i) the gradability of the predicate ii) partitive operator -le, and (iii) agent control.

This chapter summarizes the findings of our three experimental studies investigating (non)-culminating readings of causative accomplishment verbs among Mandarin adults and children, involving accomplishments of three different constructions, respectively: (i) MCA verbs; (ii) RVCs; (iii) MCA verbs + hǎojǐcì ‘several times’.

I conclude highlighting some remaining issues for future studies.

9.1 Summary of My Proposals

In Chapter 2, 3 and 4, we answered the first two research questions put forward in Chapter 1:

(i) How do Mandarin Monomorphemic Causative Accomplishment Verbs differ from RVCs in their culmination patterns?

239

(ii) What is the source of NC construals for MCA verbs in Mandarin? In particular, what is the role of meaning dimensions such as gradability of the predicates, agent control, the aspectual operator -le in licensing NC construals?

After assessing previous literature and applying a set of diagnostics, we established that MCA verbs in Mandarin are primitive accomplishments. Our proposals share assumptions both with the authors in the literature who deny the existence of monomorphemic accomplishments (see Teng 1974, Chu 1976, Shi 1988, Smith 1991, Tai 1984, Sybesma 1997, 1999, Lin 2004 et al. 2000, Lin 2004, Sun Z. 2013 etc.) and with those who defend their existence (see Talmy 2000, Soh & Kuo 2005, Chen & Shirai 2010, Lin 2012, Zhang 2014). In accordance with the first camp, we assume that monomorphemic accomplishments do not entail but imply culmination of the result (change of) state. However, in accordance with the second camp, we assume that they are true monomorphemic accomplishments with a bi-eventive structure, consisting of two event components: process and culmination.

To establish the inherent culmination of MCA verbs in Mandarin, we applied 5 diagnostic tests : yòu ‘again’ test (see (1)), the availability of an intransitive use of the verb on the zero-result (see (2)), ‘almost’ test (see (3)), the default aspectual interpretation (perfective) test in (aspect free) relative clause context test (see (4)), and in-x-time test (see (5)).

Sally yòu kāi le mén. Sally again open PERF door ‘Sally opened the door again.’ a. Presupposition on the repetitive reading: Sally has opened the door before. b. Presupposition on the restitutive reading: The door had been open before.

Mén guān le, (# dàn gēnběn méi guān-shàng). door close PERF but at.all NEG.PERF close-up Intended: ‘I closed the door, but it didn’t get closed at all.’

Tāmen jīhu gài-le yī suǒ fǎngzi They almost build-PERF a CL house ‘They have started building a house but have not finished it’

240

or ‘they did not even start building a house’

Wǒ yùjiàn xiě sān fēng xìn de nánrén. I meet write three CL letters DE man ‘I met the man who wrote three letters.’ Default Perfective Interpretation

Tā zài liǎng fēnzhōng nèi shā le nà-zhī zhāngláng. 3SG at two minute in kill PERF that-CL coackroach ‘He killed that cockroach in two minutes.’

To establish, on the other hand, that the culmination/result is implied but not entailed with Mandarin MCA verbs, we used the availability of zero-result readings (without any modifier with gradable MCA verbs as in (6) vs. with a frequency adverb with ungradable MCA verbs as in (7)).

Tā mái-le nà zhī tuōxié, dànshì yì diǎn dōu méi mái-shàng 3SG bury-PERF that CL slipper but one little all NEG. PERF bury-up ‘He buried that slipper, but didn’t bury it at all.’

XiǎoXīng zhāi-le nà gè píngguǒ hǎojǐcì, (dōu méi XiǎoXīng pick-PERF that CL apple several times all NEG. PERF

zhāi-xiàlái.) pick-down ‘Xiaoxin picked that apple several times, (but failed in picking it)’

Conversely, to establish that the culmination/result is entailed with RVCs in Mandarin, we used the unavailability of zero-result readings (even in the presence of a frequency adverb, as in (8)), together with the almost test ((9))

Hǎidào guān-shàng-le hǎojǐcì chuānghù, #dàn méi guān- Pirate close-up-PERF several times window, but NEG. PERF close- hǎo completely Intended ‘The pirate closed the window several times, but it didn’t get closed at all.’

241

Wǒ jīhū xiū-hǎo-le nà liàng zìxíngchē I almost repair-good-PERF that CL bicycle ‘I have started repairing that bicycle but have not finished it’

In Chapter 4, there was an elaborated discussion of the source of NC construals of MCA verbs in perfective form.

Firstly, we distinguished gradable from ungradable MCA verbs with respect to NC construals. We claim that events denoted by Mandarin gradable MCA verbs involve two different types of telos following Kearns (2007) and Fleischhauer (2016), the onset of state change and the maximal degree of state change. And this is one of the reasons why ultimately Mandarin gradable MCAs can be true of subevents (e’, e’’, e’’’ …) of the described event. These subevents are mapped onto a degree on the associates scale of state changes. There are at least three degrees (zero degree ‘d0’, full degree ‘df’ and some degree(s) in between ‘d’, d’’, d’’’ …’) for gradable verbs. In contrast, for ungradable MCA verbs, the state change is binary and involves only two degrees (zero degree ‘d0’and full degree ‘df’). Therefore, in Mandarin, only gradable MCA verbs have subevents, and thus allow NC readings (see (10)), while no NC construals is available for ungradable MCAs without modifiers (see (11)).

Figure 68 Scale structure of events denoted by gradable vs. ungradable MCA verbs a. Agentive Gradable

242

d0= 0 degree, original state df= full degree, full change of state d’, d’’, d’’’=intermediate degrees ts=standard telos, onset/lower bound of the state change tm= maximal telos, upper bound of the state change

Tā mái-le nà zhī tuōxié, dànshì yì diǎn dōu méi mái-shàng 3SG bury-PERF that CL slipper but one little all not bury-up ‘He buried that slipper, but didn’t bury it at all.’

Tā shā-le nà zhī zhū, #dàn gēnběn méi shā-sǐ

3SG kill-PERF that CL pig but at all not kill-die Intended ‘He killed that pig, but the pig didn’t die at all’

In Chapter 4, we as well established -le as a partitive operator in Altshuler’s (2014) sense. This is the second necessary ingredient in order to allow a perfective VP to denote a proper event part in the extension of the VP that the perfective operator combines with and, thus, in the case of a gradable predicate, to be true of any maximal stage in the denotation of the VP, including the first subevent that culminates at the standard telos, which is the onset of the state change. That is, it can pick up a ‘smaller’ subinterval e’ that does not contain the culmination, the maximal telos. But there is a prerequisite: the event has to be gradable. In this way, explicit denial of event completion/culmination is allowed.

We illustrated how the zero-result reading comes about with the incremental gradable MCA verb jiàn fángzi ‘build a/the house’. The perfective marker -le applied to this VP allows the perfective statement to denote any maximal stage in the VP’s extension, including the first subevent that culminates at the standard telos, i.e. at the onset of the result state, which is when the house first starts coming into existence (e.g. the first bricks are laid). This is how the perfective verbal predicate build a house can be truthfully applied to aspects of house-building that do not involve changes in the part- whole structure of the house, such as drawing up plans, getting permits, erecting scaffolding, but rather merely involve the intention of the agent initiating, planning his house building.

243

Figure 69 Gradable MCAs -le

interval

d0 d’ d’’ d’’’ … df e0 e’ e’’ e

tc= ts

start of the action tc’ tc’’ tc’’’ tc’’’’=tm

tc, tc’, tc’’, and tc’’’ refer to the compositional telicity

Assuming a homomorphic mapping between events and their associated scales where degrees increase as the event progresses. Whereas, with ungradable predicates associated with scales involving only two degrees (d0 and df), there is no ‘smaller’ event, so the event culminates at the maximal telos. As illustrated in Figure 70, there is no proper subevent that the perfective VP can denote, but only the whole event. The maximum telos tm and compositional telos tc coincide.

Figure 70 Ungradable MCA verbs modified by -le

d0 df Time of utterance

onset of the event tc=tm

Chapter 4 also explored the reason why pure causers do not license zero-result NC construals in Mandarin, while agent subjects do. We have just seen that zero-result NC construals arise when the subevent denoted by the perfective accomplishment is the initial subevent, which starts when the action is initiated and ends with the onset of the result state/state change. This initial subevent with gradable MCA verbs does not involve incremental change in the part-whole structure of the house, but aspects of the event of which ‘building a house’ can nonetheless hold true (drawing up plans, getting permits, erecting scaffolding), corresponding to the leftmost/initial interval in the schema under Figure 69.

244

Such a “preliminary preparatory phase” is only possible with agentive predicates, not with non-agentive predicates, since it exists only because it revolves around the intention of the agent initiating, planning his action, as was illustrated with schema under Figure 69.

Hǎidào guān-le nà shàn mén, dàn mén méi dòng.

pirate close-PERF that CL door but door not move ‘The pirate closed that door , but the door didn’t move.’

Nà-zhèn fēng guān-le nà-shàn mén, # dàn mén méi dòng.

That –CLF wind close-PERF that CL door but door not move Intended ‘The wind closed that door, but the door didn’t move.’

In sum, we have suggested an account of NC construals of MCA verbs in Mandarin involving the interaction of three essential factors: gradability of predicates, the partitive operator -le and agent control.

9.2 Summary of My Experimental Studies

This dissertation also presented three experimental studies investigating Mandarin adults’ and children’s (non)-culminating readings of CA verbs in perfective forms, concerning respectively three different constructions: (i) MCA verbs; (ii) RVCs; (iii) MCA verbs + hǎojǐcì ‘several times’.

9.2.1 Findings with Mandarin Adults

Our studies provide novel experimental support for the ACH for gradable MCA verbs in adults: 49.7% acceptance rate with Agent subject vs. 1% with Cause subject (in the first experiment). Mandarin adults allow NC construals for gradable MCA verbs when the subject is an Agent, but reject NC construals when the subject is a pure Cause.

Our studies with the adult participants moreover confirm the culmination implied pattern of MCA verbs and the culmination entailed pattern of RVCs. For agent subject test items, adults’ acceptance rate for gradable MCA in the first experiment is as high as

245

49.7%, while that for RVC in the second experiment is 0%. In contrast, adults totally rejected RVC under the NC construals condition.

Moreover, the results with the Mandarin adults also suggest the role gradability plays in facilitating NC construals. In the first experiment, with agent subject under zero- result condition, the acceptance rates of the perfective test item for gradable vs. ungradable predicates are respectively: 49.7% vs. 19%. The contrast between the two types of MCA verbs is statistically significant (x2= 20.271; p< 0.001). However, after combining with hǎojǐcì ‘several times’, both gradable and ungradable MCA are broadly accepted under the zero-result condition.

9.2.2 Findings with Mandarin Children

In the third experiment, with the frequency adverb hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ added in the test items, i.e. when there is linguistic material explicitly cancelling the lexical culmination implicature, the three groups of children overwhelmingly accepted perfective statements with MCA verbs under zero-result conditions, patterning just like the adults. However, children did not perform well when they needed to invoke contextual and pragmatic parameters in order to cancel the lexical implicature. 5-year- olds showed non-adultlike rejection of MCAs under zero-result conditions in the first experiment, when there is no linguistic material to explicitly cancel the culmination implicature.

To explain children’s non-adultlike interpretation of perfective telic sentences in our experiments, we turn to Martin et al.’s (2018a) Invariant Meaning Hypothesis in (14), which we will adapt as in (17) below.

Invariant Meaning Hypothesis:

246

guides the context-sensitive choice of interpretations for forms with multiple meanings.

This hypothesis takes into account whether the interpretation of a given tense- aspectual category has more than one meaning in a given language. Building on van Hout’s (2008) Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis, it predicts that children acquire more easily the forms that have a one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning than forms with variable aspectual interpretations, as stated in (14i).

By the same reasoning, and as expected in the Form-to-Meaning Correspondence Hypothesis (van Hout 2008), and the Semantic Markedness Hypothesis (van Hout 2010, 2014), Mandarin RVCs should be acquired easily, since RVCs have a specific/unambiguous meaning: culmination, which they moreover transparently encode (as V2).

However, children’s acquisition of CA verbs in Mandarin does not proceed so easily, since there are 2 different types of causative accomplishments that can be used felicitously to describe telic / culminated /completed causative events: RVC vs. MCA verbs. For instance, to convey the standard telic meaning of the accomplishment conveyed by ‘open’ in English, both kāi ‘open’ and kāi-kāi ‘open-open’ are possible. To describe a situation where ‘x killed y’ in Mandarin, both shā ‘kill’ and shā-sǐ ‘kill-dead’ are possible.

As recapitulated in Table 42, there is thus no one to one mapping between meaning and form to convey causative accomplishments. Instead, to describe complete events, both RVCs and MCA verbs are possible. The same meaning can be mapped onto two different morphosyntactic forms. For instance, to convey the concept of ‘kill’, both MCA shā ‘ kill’ and RVC shā-sǐ ‘kill-dead’ are commonly used.

247

Table 42 Locus of nontarget-T interpretations of causative accomplishments

Mapping one meaning onto 2 forms

Form1 Form 2

Complete/culminated event

Mono RVC

Opaque endstate Transparent endstate

The reader should bear in mind how complex and tricky it is to unravel the contextual and pragmatic parameters underlying the distinction between RVCs and MCA verbs in Mandarin. It is by far not obvious to figure out when a speaker prefers using one form over the other. These questions are indeed most probably very poorly understood by linguists. It is difficult to learn when to use which type of CA verbs in Mandarin to describe a complete/culminated event, since both can be used to refer to telic accomplishments. Recall moreover that the default/unmarked reading for MCA verbs is telic. If it were imperfective, they would be easier to acquire since imperfectivity would serve to distinguish the two classes.

To distinguish MCA verbs from RVCs semantically, we can adapt Martin & Gyarmathy’s (2018) analysis, which extends Piñón’s (2011) proposal. On their proposal,

MCA verbs are predicates of events, while RVCs denote ordered pairs of events . For instance, the meaning of guān-shàng ‘close up’ is represented as shown in (15), while the semantic representation of guān ‘close’ is adapted from Martin & Gyarmathy’s proposal, as shown in (16).

guān-shàng ‘close up’⤳

λ〈e, b〉.∃s (b = right-boundary-of (e) ∧ b ⊏ e ∧ cause (e, s) ∧ closed (s))

248

kāi ‘open’ ⤳

λ〈e, s’〉.∃s (cause (e, s’) ∧ open (s’) ∧ (cause (e, s) ∧ open (s) ∧ s’ ≤ s)

We moreover put forward an adapted version of Martin et al.’s (2018b) Invariant Meaning Hypothesis in (14i), as stated in (17) below:

The locus of children’s non-target like interpretations of telic sentences in a given language lies in:

Either

a given tense-aspectual form encoding different meanings

a given tense-aspectual meaning encoded in different forms.

According to this generalization, Mandarin children’s acquisition of causative accomplishment verbs is predicted not to be an easy task. They will have to turn to pragmatic reasoning and understand pragmatic aspects of meanings in order to figure out when (not) to use a MCA verb in Mandarin to describe a complete/culminated event.

In support of this proposal, note that we find a slightly similar pattern of interpretation in Dutch child language. Recall that the first two experiments were carried out across 4 other child languages: English, Dutch, Basque and Spanish (see van Hout et al. 2017 for discussion). Interestingly, Dutch is the only child language, other than Mandarin, to show a small acceptance of perfective accomplishments under the zero- result condition. Crucially, the accomplishments used in Dutch were “transparent, change-of-state, particle verbs”. (Strangmann 2016: 53). For the agent-zero condition, Mandarin 3-year-old children showed 37% acceptance with RVC while Dutch 3-year- old children showed 14% acceptance. For the cause-zero condition, Mandarin children showed 21% acceptance with RVC while Dutch children showed 14% acceptance. Since both Mandarin and Dutch have systematically two forms of causative accomplishments that can be used to convey the meaning of completion, an opaque vs. a transparent form overtly encoding the endstate, we take these findings to support the proposal that

249

children’s non-adult patterns of interpretation with telic sentence can come from the difficulty that lies in mapping one meaning onto two forms.

9.2.2.1 Canceling Lexical Implicatures is Difficult

Let’s go back to understanding Mandarin children’s overly restrictive behavioral patterns of interpretations in our two first experiments. By hypothesis, we impute this behavior to their immature command of pragmatic reasoning and non-adultlike pragmatic skills. Recall in particular, that 5-year-olds in the two first experiments, overwhelmingly rejected perfective statements, be it with RVCs or MCA verbs, under the zero-result condition. That is, they did not appear to distinguish the two classes of CA verbs. The 3-year-olds were more liberal but still only allowed 42 % acceptance of MCA verbs on the zero-result conditions and, moreover, but did not appear to distinguish the two classes of CA verbs either since they also allow 37% of acceptance with RVCs under the zero-result condition. This leads us to ask whether the children, be it the 5- or the 3-year-olds are aware that culmination is just an implicature for MCA verbs? We contend that this is indeed the case and that our third experiment where we added a frequency adverb modifying the MCA verbs provides a compelling evidence for this conclusion since both 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds then showed acceptance of MCA verbs at ceiling levels under the zero-result condition once we added a modifier triggering cancelation of the implicature. This suggests that children are well aware of the culmination inference carried by MCA verbs, since they easily allow cancelation of the result state change inference when there are explicit linguistic clues that facilitate its cancelation. In sum, why are children more restrictive with bare MCA verbs than we might expect? Chen (2004,2008,2016) suggests that young children are more sensitive to the strength of implicature of state change. We suggest here that children have indeed acquired the culmination inference carried by MCA verbs, as the findings for the third experiment clearly show, but fail to cancel this inference in the absence of explicit linguistic cues.

Kids have been early and widely found to have problems with implicatures. A well- known example of children’s difficulties with pragmatic interpretations is their reported failure to compute scalar implicatures (Noveck 2001, Papafragou and Musolino 2003, Guasti et al. 2005, Foppolo et al. 2012, Katsos & Bishop 2011, Katsos et al. 2016, a.o.)

250

For instance, adults reject (18) in a context where John passed all his exams, as some triggers a not all implicature, while children accept (18) in a context were John passed all his exams, as they do not compute the ‘not all’ implicature for some.

John passed some of his exams. In fact, he passed all of them.

Recall however that the inference involved in the interpretation of causative accomplishments is not scalar implicature obtained through the competition between a MCA (e.g. guan ‘close’) and the corresponding RVC (e.g. guan-shang ‘close-up’) since competition would wrongly predict the use of a MCA verb to trigger the scalar implicature that culmination did not occur (since RVC is the stronger alternant), which is contrary to fact, since the default inference with MCA verbs is that the described event culminated (their default interpretation being perfective). Talmy (2000) concludes that the inference triggered by a result implied accomplishment is neither a scalar, nor a conversational implicature, but rather a lexical implicature.

We thus suggest that children’s overly restrictive behavioral pattern of interpretation under Experiment 1 with MCA verbs arose because children failed to cancel the lexical implicature in the absence of linguistic cue or trigger, such as the adverb of frequency hǎojǐcì ‘several times’. Mandarin children’s rejection of NC construals with MCA verbs is thus a problem with implicatures. But the difficulty lies here not in computing a (scalar) implicature, but rather in cancelling a (lexical) implicature. However, when there is linguistic material given in the test sentence (such as the modifier hǎojǐcì ‘several times’ in the third experiment) providing an explicit trigger for canceling the implicature, children very easily cancel the result state change inference, since they overwhelmingly accepted perfective statements with MCA verbs under the zero-result condition in the third experiment reported in Chapter 8. Note crucially that this explanation carries over to the adult pattern of interpretation also since adults also accepted MCA verbs under the zero-result condition much more easily/frequently in Experiment 3 than in Experiment 1.

Recall for instance that while adults broadly accept (50%) the NC construals for perfective statement with the MCA verb guān ‘close’ in the test sentence (19), 3-year-

251

olds only show 30% acceptance, and 5-year-olds only 10% acceptance. However, with a frequency adverb added, explicitly canceling the culmination as in (20), all speakers, children just like adults, show ceiling level acceptance rates.

Hǎidào guān -le nà shàn mén ma? Pirate close -PERF that CL door Int? ‘Did the pirate close that door?’

Hǎidào guān -le hǎojǐcì nà shàn mén ma? Pirate close -PERF several times that CL door Int? ‘Did the pirate close that door?’

Note that this line of reasoning is in keeping with Noveck’s view on the difficulty of dealing with implicatures since he explicitly points out that cancelling an implicature is more complex, and as such should be harder, than calculating an implicature: “Canceling is an extra step that one would more likely attribute to more sophisticated participants and not the other way around” (Noveck 2001:175).

Rejection of perfective statements with MCA verbs on agent-subject zero-result conditions arises, be it with adults or children, when they fail to cancel the lexical culmination implicature in the absence of an overt linguistic trigger. But adults, being more sophisticated than children, do far better than children in cancelling the lexical implicature without a linguistic trigger.

9.2.2.2 Two Different Behavioral Patterns of Canceling Lexical Implicatures

There remains an important issue to address: the difference in interpretational patterns that the 3- vs. 5-year-olds show. Why is it that 3-year-olds accepted perfective statements with MCA verbs 42% of the time on the agent-subject zero-result conditions, while 5-year-olds only accepted them 12% of the time on these conditions? That is, why did the 5-year-olds perform worse than the 3-year-olds with MCA verbs on the zero- result condition? This pattern of acquisition recalls U-shaped learning trajectories in that the child’s overall performance does not improve with age but rather goes through an apparent regression stage where the overall error rates increase before falling again. We

252

tentatively suggest that this learning trajectory does indeed reflect an overgeneralizing pattern in the domain of verb learning that arises when children have fully acquired the meaning of RVC, and incorrectly extended the meaning of RVCs to MCA verbs. They treat all causative accomplishment verbs as RVCs.

Martin et al.’s (2018a) propose to exploit abductive reasoning to explain how some result inference arise. Abduction is the inference to the best explanation, a defeasible inference (contrary to deductive reasoning). Can we appeal to abduction to explain this overgeneralization stage in the children’s learning trajectory?

We illustrate below how Martin et al. (2018a) exploit Gyarmathy & Altshuler’s (2017) pragmatic abductive reasoning to account for how the result inference of result- implied verbs arises.) Assume that Observation is true of the process a result-implied verb describes (e.g. a process of eating), and Explanation is true of the complete causative event which consists of a process and a result state change (e.g. the process of eating and the result “eaten up”). Theory: if there is an Observation, then there is an Explanation (Observation → Explanation). That is to say, if there is a process of eating, then there is a complete causative event leading to a result state change “the apple is eaten up”.

Theory: If there is an actual completed causative event Q of eating y, there is a process subevent P of eating y (i.e. P is a necessary condition for Q)

Observation: There is a process P of eating y

Explanation: There is an actual completed event Q of eating y

Note that there are two different behavioral patterns to explain:

i. Why did children, like adults, perform at ceiling level with perfective MCA statements on agent-subject zero-result conditions in experiment 3, but not in experiment 1?

253

ii. Why did the 5-year-olds perform much worse than the 3-year-olds with MCA verbs in Experiment 1?

We suggested two different answers to these questions, both appealing to pragmatic knowledge and skills.

Children like adults failed to reject MCA verbs on the agent-subject zero-result conditions when they failed to cancel the given verb’s lexical culmination implicature in the absence of an overt linguistic trigger. Children like adults, accepted the perfective statement under zero-result conditions at ceiling level when an explicit linguistic trigger was provided. Adults, however, being more pragmatically sophisticated than children, did far better than children in cancelling the culmination implicature without a linguistic trigger.

The learning trajectory displayed by Mandarin children for MCA verbs — with an overall performance that does not continuously improve with age but rather goes through an apparent regression stage around age 5 — reflects an overgeneralizing pattern in the domain of verb learning that arises when children have fully mastered the meaning of RVCs, and incorrectly extend the meaning of RVCs to MCA verbs, thus treating all accomplishments as RVCs. The source of this overgeneralization pattern could involve abductive reasoning that children exploit to overgeneralize result inferences at the age where they are shown to have fully mastered the causative event structure of RVCs.

We leave open the question here of whether this move is indeed justified or whether a more economical analysis invoking only one type of inference (lexical implicature or abductive inference) can uniformly account for the two different behavioral patterns identified in (22).

9.3 Further Investigations

This thesis focused on three essential factors for licensing NC construals of MCA verbs in Mandarin, namely the gradability of predicates, the partitive operator -le, and agent control.

254

We crucially distinguished perfective gradable vs. ungradable MCA predicates by showing in particular that only the former allows NC construals without an appropriate modifier such as the frequency adverb ‘several times’

a. Zhāngsān shā-le Lisi，# Lisi méi si. Zhangsan kill-PERF Lisi Lisi neg die Intended ‘Zhangsan killed Lisi, but Lisi didn’t die’

b. Zhāngsān shā-le Lisi hǎojǐcì, Lisi dōu méi si. Zhangsan kill-PERF Lisi several times Lisi still neg die ‘Zhangsan killed Lisi several times, but Lisi didn’t die’

(23b) gives an example here of an ungradable verb with a frequency adverb on a NC reading.

Our three experiments, however, were not designed to take gradability into consideration as a variable, even though we did examine our experimental findings in the light of this distinction across these two classes of MCA verbs. An experimental study designed to take into account the different scale structure of predicates in Mandarin must be designed in order to gain more insights in the role of gradability in licensing NC construals, in zero vs. partial result contexts.

We have further argued that the result inference carried by an MCA verb is a lexical implicature and conjectured that modifiers such as frequency adverbs facilitate NC construals by providing an explicit trigger for cancelling the implicature. More theoretical and experimental investigation is required in order to understand how this type of implicature is cancelled, and to conclusively establish that this result inference is indeed an implicature, as opposed in particular to an abductive inference.

255

Bibliography

Abusch, Dorit. 1986. Verbs of change, causation and time. Technical report CSLI- 86-50, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

Alexiadou, Artemis, Fabienne Martin & Florian Schäfer. 2017. Optionally causative manner verbs: when implied results get entailed. Roots V conference, Queen Mary University of London / University College London, 17-18 June.

Alsina, Alex. 1999. On the representation of event structure. In Tara Mohanan and Lionel Wee (eds.), Grammatical Semantics: Evidence for Structure in Meaning, 77-122. CSLI Publications, Stanford.

Altshuler, Daniel & Zsófia Gyarmathy. 2017. (Non)culmination by abduction. Workshop on Non-culminating, Irresultative and Atelic Readings of Telic Predicates (TELIC), University of Stuttgart, 12-14 January.

Altshuler, Daniel. 2014. A typology of partitive aspectual operators. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32(3). 735-775.

Aoki, N. and K. Nakatani. 2013. Process, Telicity, and Event Cancellability in Japanese: A Questionnaire Study. JELS 30: 257–263

Arunachalam, Sudha & Anubha Kothari. 2011. An experimental study of Hindi and English perfective Interpretation. JSAL Volume 4, Issue 1.

Asher, N. and A. Lascarides. 2003. Logics of Conversation. Cambridge University Press.

Bar-el, Leora, Henry Davis, and Lisa Matthewson. 2005. On non-culminating accomplishments. In Leah Bateman and Cherlon Ussery(eds.), Proceedings of the thirty- fifth annual meeting of the North-Eastern Linguistics Society, 87–103. Amherst: GLSA.

Beavers, John. 2006. Argument/Oblique Alternations and the Structure of Lexical Meaning. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford: Stanford University.

Beavers, John. 2008. Scalar Complexity and the Structure of Events. In Johannes Dölling and Tatjana Heyde-Zybatow(eds.), Event Structures in Linguistic Form and Interpretation, 245-265. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Behrens, H. 1993. Temporal reference in German child language: Form and function in early verb use. Ph.D., dissertation, University of Amsterdam.

Behrens, H. 1998. How difficult are complex verbs? Evidence from German, Dutch and English. Linguistics (36), 679-712.

256

Bierwisch, Manfred. 1989. The Semantics of Gradation. In Manfred Bierwisch & Ewald Lang (Eds.), Dimensional Adjectives, 71–261. Berlin: Springer.

Binnick, Robert I. 1991. Time and the Verb: A Guide to Tense and Aspect. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bochnak, M. Ryan. 2013. Two Sources of Scalarity Within the Verb Phrase. In Boban Arsenijević, Berit Gehrke & Rafael Marín (eds.), Studies in the Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 93), 99-123. Dordrecht: Springer.

Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Adjectives in English: Attribution and predication. Lingua 18, 1–34.

Borik, Olga, and Tanya Reinhart. 2004. Telicity and perfectivity: Two independent systems. In László Hunyadi, György Rákosi, and Enikő Tóth Debrecen (eds.), Proceedings of LOLA 8 (symposium on logic and language), Hungary, 13–34.

Bott, Oliver. 2010. The Processing of Events. Linguistik Aktuell/ Linguistics today, 162, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Bowerman, M. 1994. From universal to language-specific in early grammatical development. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 346, 37-45.

Cao Duxin. 2013. The Asymmetry of Chinese/English Action-Result Events Encoding: A Cognitive Approach. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics (Vol.3, No.2), 127-134.

Carlson, Greg. 1977. Reference to kinds in English. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Caudal, Patrick & David Nicolas. 2005. Types of degrees and types of event structure. In Claudia Maienborn & Angelika Wöllstein (eds.), Event Arguments: Foundations and Applications, 277–299. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Chang, Vincent Wu-chang. 1986. The particle le in Chinese narrative discourse. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida.

Chao, Yuen Ren. 1968. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chen J. & Shirai, Y. 2010. ‘The development of aspectual marking in child Mandarin Chinese’. Applied Psycholinguistics (31), 1-28

Chen Jidong. 2004. Interpreting state-change: Learning the meaning of verbs and verb compounds in Mandarin. The 29th Boston Annual Conference on Language Development.

257

Chen Jidong. 2007.‘He cut-break the rope’: Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in Mandarin. Cognitive Linguistics (18–2), 273-285.

Chen, Jidong. 2008. The acquisition of verb compounding in Mandarin Chinese. Amsterdam: Free University of Amsterdam PhD thesis.

Chen, Jidong. 2016. When transparency doesn't mean ease: learning the meaning of resultative verb compounds in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of child language 44(3). 695-718.

Cheng, Lisa & C.-T. James Huang. 1994. On the argument structure of resultative compounds. In Matthew Y. Chen & Ovid J. L. Tzeng (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies on Language and Language Change in honor of William S.-Y. Wang, 187–221. Taipei: Pyramid Press.

Chief, Liancheng. 2008. Scalarity and incomplete event descriptions in Mandarin Chinese. Buffalo, NY: State University of New York PhD Dissertation.

Chierchia et al. (2001). At the semantics/pragmatics interface in child language. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic theory XI. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications, Department of Linguistics, Cornell University.

Choi Jiyong. 2015. Inchoative States in Korean: Evidence from Child Language. PhD dissertation, Université de Nantes.

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The Cognitive Organization of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

de Swart, H. 1993. Adverbs of quantification: A generalized quantifier approach. New York: Garland.

----- 1998. Aspect shift and coercion. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 16: 347–385.

----- 2012. Verbal aspect. Robert I. Binnik(eds.), The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 752–780. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dell, François. 1983. An aspectual distinction in Tagalog. Oceanic Linguistics 22- 23: 175-206.

Demirdache, Hamida, and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 2004. The syntax of time adverbs. In Jacqueline Guéron and Jacqueline Lecarme (eds.), The syntax of time, 217– 234. Cambridge: MIT Press.

258

Demirdache, Hamida, and Martin, Fabienne. 2015. Agent control over non culminating events. E. Barrajón López, J.L. Cifuentes Honrubia & S. Rodríguez Rosique (Eds.) Verb Classes and Aspect, 185-217. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DENG, Xiangjun. 2010. The acquisition of the resultative verb compound in Mandarin Chinese. The Chinese University of Hong Kong. M.A. thesis.

Donazzan, Marta. 2012. On counting and measuring events. 219-236. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17. Paris

Dowty, David. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

Erbaugh, M. 1978. ‘Acquisition of temporal and aspectual distinctions in Mandarin’. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 15, 30–37.

---- 1982. Coming to order: Natural selection and the origin of syntax in the Mandarin speaking child. Ph.D dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.

---- 1992. ‘The acquisition of Mandarin’. In D. I. Slobin (eds.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (3), 373–455.

Ferreira, Marcelo. 2005. Event quantification and plurality. Ph.D dissertation, MIT, Cambridge.

Fillmore, Charles J. 1968. The case of case. In Emond Bach & Robert T.Harms (Eds.), Universals in Linguistic Theory, 1–88. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Fleischhauer, Jens. 2013. Interaction of telicity and degree gradation in change of state verbs. In Boban Arsenijević, Berit Gehrke & Rafael Marín (Eds.), Studies in the Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates, 125–152. Dordrecht: Springer.

---- 2016. Degree Gradation of Verbs. PhD dissertation, Düsseldorf University.

Folli, Raffaella and Harley, Heidi (2005). Flavours of v: consuming results in Italian and English. In Paula Kempchinsky and Roumyana Slabakova (eds.), Aspectual Inquiries, Dordrech: Springer, 95-120

Gagarina, N. 2008. First language acquisition of verb categories in Russian. St. Petersburg: Nauka.

García del Real, Isabel, Ezeizabarrena, Marie-José. 2011. Comprehension of grammatical and lexical aspect in early Spanish and Basque. In S. Ferré, P. Prévost, L. Tuller, R. Zebib (eds.) Selected Proceedings of the Romance Turn IV: Workshop on the Acquisition of Romance Languages, 82-103. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

259

García del Real, Isabel. 2015. The Acquisition of Tense and Aspect in Spanish. Ph. D dissertation, University of the Basque Country at Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Gärdenfors, Peter. 2000. Conceptual Spaces. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Gentner, D. 1978. On relational meaning: the acquisition of verb meaning. Child Development, 49,988-998.

Gerdts, Donna. 2008. Halkomelem limited control as speaker’s viewpoint. Handout for the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Chicago.

Gopnik, A; Melzoff, A. N. 1986. Relations between semantic ad cognitive development in the one-word stage: The specificity hypothesis. Child Development, 57, 1040-1053

Grano, Thomas. 2011. Mental action and event structure in the semantics of 'try'. In Neil Ashton, Anca Chereches & David Lutz (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT 21), 426-443.

---- 2012. Mandarin hen and universal markedness in gradable adjectives. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 30, 513–565.

Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument Structure. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Gropen, Jess, Pinker, Stephen, Hollander, Michelle, Goldberg, Richard. 1991. Syntax and semantics in the acquisition of locative verbs. Journal of Child Language, 18, 1, 115–151.

Hale, Ken & Samuel J. Keyser. 1991.On the Syntax of Argument Structure. Lexicon Project Working Papers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for Cognitive Science.

---- 1993. On Argument Structure and the Lexical Expression of Syntactic Relations. In K. Hale and S.J. Keyser (eds.) The View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

---- 1998. The basic elements of argument structure. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32, 73–118.

---- 1999. Bound Features, Merge, and Transitivity Alternations. In L. Pylkkanen, Angeliek van Hout, and Heidi Harley (eds.), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 35, Papers from the Penn/ MIT Roundtable on the Lexicon, 49-72.

Hay, Jennifer, Kennedy, Christopher, Levin, Beth. 1999. Scale structure underlies telicity in ‘degree achievements’. T. Matthews & D. Strolovitch (eds.), Semantics and Linguistic Theory 9, 127–144. Ithaca: CLC Publications.

260

Hodgson, Miren. 2001. The Acquisition of Spanish Reflexive se in Transitive Verb- Argument Structures and Singularity. B. Skarabela et al. (eds.) Proceedings of 26th BUCLD, 302-313. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.

---- 2003. Children’s production and comprehension of Spanish grammatical aspect. In R.Gess and E. Rubin (Eds.), Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

---- 2010. Locatum Structures and the Acquisition of Telicity. Language Acquisition, 17:155-182.

Huang, Chiung-Chih. 2003. ‘Mandarin Temporality Inference in Child, Maternal and Adult Speech’. First Language. Vol 23, Issue 2, 147 – 169.

Huang, C.-T. James. 2006. Resultatives and Unaccusatives: A Parametric View. Bulletin of the Chinese Linguistic Society of Japan, 253: 1-43.

Huang, C.-T. James, Audrey Y.-H. Li & Yafei Li. 2009. The syntax of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ikegami, Y. 1985. Activity – accomplishment – achievement—a language that can’t say ‘I burned it, but it didn’t burn’ and one that can. A. Makkai & A.K. Melby (Eds.) Linguistics and Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Rulon S. Wells, 265-304. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Jacobs, Peter. 2011. Control in Skwxwúmesh. PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia.

Jakendoff, Ray. 1991. Parts and boundaries. Cognition 41: 9-45

Jin, L., & Hendriks, H. 2005. ‘The development of aspect marking in L1 and L2 Chinese’. Working Papers in English and Applied Linguistics, 9, 69–99.

Kallulli, Dalina (2007). ‘Rethinking the passive/anticausative distinction’, Linguistic Inquiry, 38(4), 770-780.

Kamp, Hans, Reyle, Uwe. 1993. From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Kazanina, Nina, Phillips, Colin. 2007. A developmental perspective on the imperfective paradox. Cognition, 105, 65-102.

Kearns, Katherine. 1991. The semantics of the English progressive. PhD diss, MIT, Cambridge.

Kennedy, Christopher & Beth Levin. 2008. The adjectival core of degree achievements. In Louise McNally & Christopher Kennedy (eds.), Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics and Discourse, 156–182. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

261

Kennedy, Christopher & Louise McNally. 1999. From Event Structure to Scale Structure: Degree Modification in Deverbal Adjectives. In Tanya Matthews & Devon Strolovitch (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistics Theory 9, 163–180. Ithaca: CLC Publications.

Kennedy, Christopher & Louise McNally. 2005a. Scale Structure, Degree Modification, and the Semantics of Gradable Predicates. Language 81(2). 345–381.

---- 2005b. The Syntax and Semantics of Multiple Degree Modification in English. In Stefan Müller (ed.), The Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Head- Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 178–191. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

Kennedy, Christopher. 1999a. Gradable adjectives denote measure functions, not partial functions. Studies in Linguistic Sciences 29(1). 65–80.

---- 1999b. Projecting the Adjective – The Syntax and Semantics of Gradability and Comparison. New York: Garland.

Keyser, Samuel & Thomas Roeper. 1984. On the middle and ergative constructions in English. Linguistic Inquiry 15, 381–416.

Kim, Jung-Tae. 2015.Korean EFL Learners' Acquisition of Telicity in Locatum Structure. English Language and Linguistics 21.3, 165-18

Klein, Wolfgang (1994). Time in Language. London: Routledge.

Koenig, Jean-Pierre & Lian-Cheng Chief. 2008. Scalarity and state-changes in Mandarin (and other languages). In Bonami, Olivier & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (Eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 7. 241-262. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss7/koenig-chief-eiss7.pdf (accessed 2 August 2017).

Koenig, Jean-Pierre & Muansuwan, Nuttanart. 2000. How to End Without Ever Finishing: Thai Semi–perfectivity. Journal of Semantics 17(2). 147-182.

Kothari, Anubha. 2008. Event culmination as implicature in Hindi perfectives. Ms., Stanford University.

Krifka, Manfred, 1986. Nominal referenz and Zeikonstitution. Zur Semantik von Massenterman, Individualtermen, Aspecktklassen. PhD. Dissertation. University of Munich.

---- 1989. Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. R. Bartsch, J. van Benthem, P. van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and Contextual Expressions, 75-115. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

---- 1998. The origins of telicity. In S. Rothstein (eds.), Events and Grammar. Dordrecht:Kluwer.

262

Krifka, Manfred, Francis. J. Pelletier, Greg N. Carlson, Alice ter Meulen, Godehard Link, and Gennaro Chierchia. 1995. Genericity: An introduction. In Greg N. Carlson and Francis J. Pelletier (Eds.) The generic book, 1–124. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Landman, Fred. 1992. The progressive. Natural Language Semantics, 1.1, 1-32.

Lechner, Winfried, Giorgos Spathas, Artemis Alexiadou & Elena Anagnostopoulou. 2015. On deriving the typology of repetition and restitution. Paper presented at the 38th Generative Linguistics in the Old World colloquium, University of Paris 8/ CNRS, 15- 17 April.

Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.

Li, P. 1990. Aspect and Aktionsart in child Mandarin. Unpublished Ph. D dissertation, University of Leiden.

Li, P., & Bowerman, M. 1998. ‘The acquisition of grammatical and lexical aspect in Chinese’. First Language, 18, 311–350.

Li, P., & Shirai, Y. 2000. The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Lin, Jimmy. 2004: Event Structure and the Encoding of Arguments: The Syntax of the Mandarin and English Verb Phrase. PhD Dissertation, Cambridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lin, Jo.-wang. 2003. Selectional Restrictions of Tenses and Temporal Reference of Chinese Bare Sentences. Lingua 113:271-302.

--- 2006. Time in a language Without Tense: The case of Chinese. Journal of Semantics, 23, 1-53.

Lin, T. & Liu, C. 2009. ‘Again’ and ‘again’: a grammatical analysis of you and zai in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics, 47(5), 1183-1210.

Martin, Fabienne and Schäfer, Florian. 2013. On the Argument Structure of Verbs with Bi-and Mono-Eventive Uses. In Stefan Keine and Shayne Sloggett (eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (Nels 42), , GLSA Publications.

Martin, Fabienne and Schäfer, Florian. 2014. The syntax/semantics interface of causation. In Bridget Copley and Fabienne Martin (eds.) Causation in grammatical structures, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

263

Martin, Fabienne. 2015. Explaining the link between agentivity and nonculminating causation. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 25. 246-266.

Martin, Fabienne, Zsófia Gyarmathy & Károly Varasdi. 2016. On non-culminating interpretations of telic predicates. Paper presented at the Fall School on Tense, Mood and Aspect. Paris, 5-7 November.

Martin, Fabienne & Zsófia Gyarmathy. 2018. A fine-grained typology of perfective operators. In Christopher Piñón (ed.), Empirical issues in Syntax and Semantics 12. Paris: CSSP.

Martin, Fabienne, Hamida Demirdache, Isabel García del Real, Angeliek van Hout & Nina Kazanina. 2018a. Children’s non-adultlike interpretations of telic predicates across languages. Manuscript, Universität Stuttgart, Université de Nantes, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Universiteit Groningen and University of Bristol.

Martin, Fabienne, Hamida Demirdache, Hongyuan Sun & Jinhong Liu. 2018b. A fine-grained aspectual typology of simple verbs in Mandarin.

Nakatani, Kentaro & Natsuno Aoki. 2015. A Judgment Study on Aspectual Diagnostics in Japanese. In Naonori Nagaya, Akiko Takemura and Timothy Vance (eds.) Japanese/Korean Linguistics 22. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. 55-70.

Pan, Haihua. 1996. Imperfective aspect zhe, agent deletion and locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 14, 409–432.

Papafragou, A. 2006. Epistemic modality and truth conditions. Lingua 116, pp. 1688-1702

Paris, M.-C. 1981. Problemes de syntaxe et s’emantique en linguistique chinoise. Paris: College de France.

Paris, M.-C. 2006. Durational complements and their constructions in Chinese (with reference to French). In D.-a. Ho (eds.), Linguistic studies in Chinese and neighboring languages. Taipei: Academia Sinica.

----2011. Verbal reduplication and verbal classifiers in Chinese. In R. Djamouri, H. Chappell, and T. Wiebusch (eds.), Festschrift in honor of Alain Peyraube. Taipei: Academia Sinica.

Park, Ki –Seong. 1993. Korean causatives in role and reference grammar. MA dissertation, University of New York.

Parsons, Terence. 1990. Events in the semantics of English. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Partee, Barbara, Alice ter Meulen, and Robert Wall. 1993. Mathematical methods in linguistics. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

264

Partee, Barbara. 1973. Some structural analogies between tenses and pronouns in English. Journal of Philosophy 70: 601–609.CrossRef

---- 1977. John is easy to please. In Antonio Zampolli (eds.) , Linguistic structures processing, , 281–312. Amsterdam: North Holland.

Peck, J., Jingxia Lin & Chaofeng Sun. 2013. Aspectual Classification of Mandarin Chinee Verbs: A Perspective of Scale Structure. Language and Linguistics 14.4:663- 700.

Pederson, Eric. 2008. ‘Event realization in Tamil.’ In Melissa Bowerman and Penelope Brown (eds.), Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability, 331-355: New York/ London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Piñón, Christopher. 1997. Achievements in an Event Semantics. In Aaron Lawson and Eun Cho(eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 7, pages 273–296. CLC Publications, Cornell University, Ithaca, New-York,

---- 2008. Aspectual composition with degrees. In Louise McNally & Christopher Kennedy (eds.), Adjectives and Adverbs, 183–219. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pustejovsky, James. 1995.The Generative Lexicon. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,

Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon: A first-phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Beth Levin. 1998. Building verb meanings. In Miriam Butt & Wilhelm Geuder (eds.), The projection of arguments, 97–134. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

---2010. Re-ections on Manner/Result Complementarity. In Malka Rappaport Hovav, Edit Doron & Ivy Sichel (Eds.), Lexical Semantics, Syntax and Event Structure, 21–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rappaport Hovav, Malka. 2008. Lexicalized meaning and the internal temporal structure of events. In Susan Rothstein (ed.), Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect, 13–42. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Rothstein, S. 2004. Structuring Events. Oxford: Blackwell.

----2008. Two puzzles for a theory of lexical aspect: the case of semelfactives and degree adverbials. In J. Dolling, T. Heyde-Zybatow, and M. Shaefer (eds.), Event Structures in Linguistic Form and Interpretation, 175–198. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Ryle, Bilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind. London. Barnes and Noble.

265

Schulz, Petra, Penner, Zvi. 2002. How you can eat the apple and have it too: Evidence from the acquisition of telicity in German. J. Costa, M.J. Freitas (eds.) Proceedings of the GALA 2001 Conference on Language Acquisition.

Searle, John R., 1983, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shi, Ziqiang. 1988. The present of Past of the Particle le in Mandarin Chinese. Phd. Dissertation. University of Pennsylvaria.

Singh, Mona. 1994. Perfectivity, Definiteness, and Specificity: A classification of verbal predicates in Hindi. Austin: University of Texas at Austin.

Singh, Mona. 1998. On the semantics of the perfective aspect. Natural Language Semantics 6: 171–199.

Slobin, D. I. (1985). Crosslinguistic evidence for the Language-Making Capacity. In D. I. Slobin (eds.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol. 2: Theoretical issues, 1157-1256. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Smiley, P., & Charney, R.. 1983. Emergence of action categories in the child: Evidence from verb meanings. Psychological Review, 90, 72-93.

Smith, C.S. 1990. Event types in Mandarin. Linguistics, 28,309-336.

Smith, C.S. 1991. A valediction for sentence topic. In C. Georgopoulos & R. Ishihara (eds.), Inter disciplinary approaches to language: Essay in honor of S.-Y Kuroda, 545-565. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Smith, C.S. 1997. The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Soh, Hooi Ling & Jenny Yi-Chun Kuo. 2005. Perfective aspect and accomplishment situations in Mandarin Chinese. In Henk Verkuyl, Henriëtte de Swart & Angeliek van Hout (eds.), Perspectives on Aspect, 199-216. Berlin & New York: Springer.Strangmann, Iris, 2015. The Effect of Agents and Subject Causes on the Interpretation of Non-Culminating Endstates. MA dissertation, University of Groningen.

Sun ZhaoChun. 2013. The Eventuality of Mandarin Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation, Jinan University.

Sun, Hongyuan. 2014. Temporal Construals of Bare Predicates in Mandarin Chinese. Ph.D. Dissertation, Université de Nantes, Leiden University. Utrecht: LOT.

Sybesma, Rint. 1999. The Mandarin VP. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Syntax and Semantics 7, Oliver Bonami and Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), 241-262.

266

Tai, J. H-Y.1984. Verbs and times in Mandarin Chinese: Vendler’s four categories. In Testen, David, Veena Mishra, and Joseph Drogo (eds.), Papers from the Parasession on Lexical Semantics of the 20th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society, 289–296.

Tai, J. H-Y. 2003.Cognitive relativism: Resultative construction in Chinese. Language and Linguistics.

Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In T. Shopen (eds.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press， 57-149

Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Towards a cognitive semantics. Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Tatevosov, Sergei. 2008. Subevental structure and non-culmination. In O. Bonami and P. C. Hofherr (eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 7, 393–422.

Teng Shouhsin. 1975. A Semantic Study of Transitivity Relations in Chinese. In David Teten, Veena Mishra and Joseph Drogo (Eds.). The Parasession on Lexical Semantics. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Tham S.W. 2013. Change of state verbs and result state adjectives in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 49. Issue 03, 647-701

Tomasello, M. (1992b) First Verbs: A Case Study of Early Grammatical Development. Cambridge University Press

Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2003. Event cancellation and telicity. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 12: 388-399.

van Hout, Angeliek. 1998. On the role of direct objects and particles in learning telicity in Dutch and English. A. Greenhill, M. Hughes, H., Littlefield (eds.), Proceedings of 22th BUCLD, 397-408. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.

van Hout, Angeliek. 2005. Imperfect imperfectives: On the acquisition of aspect in Polish. In P. Kempchinsky & R. Slabakova (eds.), Aspectual inquiries, 317-343. Springer, Dordrecht.

van Hout, Angeliek. 2007. Acquisition of aspectual meanings in a language with and a language without morphological aspect. H. Caunt-Nulton, S. Kulatilake and I. Woo (Eds.), BUCLD 31 Proceedings Supplement.

van Hout, Angeliek. 2008a. Acquiring telicity cross-linguistically: On the acquisition of telicity entailments associated with transitivity. In M. Bowerman & P.

267

Brown (eds.) Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Argument Structure: Implications for Learnability, 255-278. Routledge, Hillsdale.

van Hout, Angeliek. 2008b. Acquisition of perfective and imperfective aspect in Dutch, Italian and Polish. Lingua 118:11, 1740—1765.

van Hout, Angeliek, Arche, María, Demirdache, Hamida, García del Real, Isabel, García Sanz, Ainara, Gavarró, Anna, Gomez Marzo, Lucía, Hommes, Saar, Kazanina, Nina, Liu, Jinhong, Lungu, Oana, Martin, Fabienne, Strangmann, Iris. 2017. Agent control and the acquisition of event culmination in Basque, Dutch, English, Spanish and Mandarin. Proceedings of the 41st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, ed. Maria LaMendola and Jennifer Scott, 323-332. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

van Valin, Robert D. & Randy La Polla. 1997. Syntax. Structure, meaning & function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

van Valin, Robert D. 2005. Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Cambridge University Press.

Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Verbs and times. Linguistics in Philosophy, 97-121. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Varasdi, Károly. 2014a. A contrastivist theory of the progressive aspect. Manuscript, Universität Düsseldorf.

Varasdi, Károly. 2014b. Making progressives: Necessary conditions are sufﬁcient. Journal of Semantics 31. 179–207.

Verkuyl, Henk. 1993. A Theory of Aspectuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Verkuyl, Henk. 1999. Tense, aspect, and aspectual composition. In Mila Dimitrova- Vulchanova and Lars Hellan (eds.), Topics in south Slavic syntax and semantics, 125– 162. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Verkuyl, Henk J. 2008. Binary tense. CSLI lecture notes (187). Stanford : CSLI Publications.

Wagner, Laura. 2002. Children’s comprehension of completion entailments in the absence of agency cues. Journal of Child Language 29, 109–125.

Wagner, Laura. 2012. First language acquisition. R. Binnick (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect, 458-480. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wang, Shi-yuan William. 1965. Two aspect markers in Mandarin. Language, 41: 457-470.

268

Watanabe, Honoré. 2003. A Morphological Description of Sliammon, Mainland Comox Salish: With a Sketch of Syntax. Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim, Osaka: Faculty of Informatics, Osaka Gakuin University.

Westney, Paul. 1986. Notes on Scales. Lingua 69. 333–354.

Wittek, Angelika. 2002. Learning the Meaning of Change of State Verbs: A case study of German child language. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Woo. Woo, I-hao. 2013. The syntax of the aspectual particles in Mandarin Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation. Boston University.

Xiao, Richard and Tony McEnery. 2004. Aspect in Mandarin Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Xie Duquan. 2009. An Isomorphic Perspective on Verb Phrase Syntax. PhD dissertation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Yin, Bin and Elsi Kaiser. 2013. Second language learners’ knowledge of syntax in the acquisition of aspectual semantics. Procedia. Social and Behavioral Sciences, 97:454-463.

Zucchi, Alessandro. 1999. Incomplete events, intensionality, and imperfective aspect Atlas, Jay D., Levinson, Stephen C. 1981. It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form: radical pragmatics. P. Cole (eds.) Radical pragmatics, 1-61. New York: Academic Press.

269

Appendix : Test Items of the Four Experiments

Table 43: Testing sentences in order in the 1st Experiment (MCA) Testing Sentences 那个小丑碎了那个碟子吗？ Nage xiaochou sui-le na ge diezi ma? That clown break-PERF that CL plate Int ‘Did the clown break the plate ?’ 那个海盗开了那个篮子吗？ Na ge haidao kai-le na ge lanzi ma? That CL pirate open-PERF that CL basket Int ‘Did the pirate open the basket ?’ 风关了那扇门吗？ Feng guan-le na shan men ma? Wind close-PERF that Cl door Int ‘Did the wind close the door?’ 那个小丑熄了那支蜡烛吗？ Na ge xiaochou xi-le na zhi lazhu ma? That CL clown blow out-PERF that CL candle Int ‘Did the clown blow out the candle?’ 风解了那条丝带吗 Feng jie-le na tiao sidai ma? Wind untie-PERF that CL ribbon Int ‘Did the wind untie the ribbon?’ 那个小丑折了那根胡萝卜吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-le na gen huluobo ma? That CL clown cut-PERF that CL carrot Int ‘Did the clown cut the carrot?’ 那个爆炸杀了那只白色的老鼠吗？ Na ge baozha sha-le na zhi baise de laoshu ma? That CL explosion kill-PERF that CL white DE mouse Int Did the explosion kill that white mouse? 那个小丑碎了那个玻璃杯吗？ Na ge xiaochou sui-le na ge bolibei ma? That CL clown break-PERF that CL glass Int Did the clown break the glass? 那个海盗解了那个气球吗? Na ge haidao jie-le na ge qiqiu ma? That CL pirate untie-PERF that CL ribon Int Did the pirate untie the balloon? 那阵风开了那个柜子吗？ Na zhen feng kai-le na ge guizi ma? That CL wind open-PEF that CL cupboard Int Did the wind open the cupboard? 那个海盗关了那扇门吗？ Na ge haidao guan-le na shan men ma? That CL pirate close-PER that CL door Int Did the pirate close the door ?

270

那个小丑折了那根树枝吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-le na gen shuzhi ma? That CL clown cut-PERF that CL branch Int Did the clown cut the branch? 那个爆炸杀了那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge baozha sha-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL explosion kill-PERF that CL spider Int Did the explosion kill the spider ? 那个爆炸折了那根树枝吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-le na gen shuzhi ma? That CL explosion cut-PERF that CL branch Int Did the explosion cut the branch? 那个海盗埋了那只拖鞋吗？ Na ge haidao mai-le na zhi tuoxie ma? That CL pirate bury-PERF that CL flipflop Int Did the pirate bury the flipflop ? 风解了那个气球吗？ Feng jie-le na ge qiqiu ma? Wind untie-PERF that CL balloon Int Did the wind untie the balloon? 那个小丑杀了那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL clown kill-PERF that CL spider Int Did the clown kill that spider ? 那阵风熄了那根蜡烛吗？ Na zhen feng xi-le na gen lazhu ma? That CL wind blow out-PERF that CL candle Int Did the wind blow out the candle? 那个爆炸杀了那只白色的老鼠吗？ Na ge baozha sha-le na zhi baise de laoshu ma? That CL explosion kill-PERF that CL white DE mouse Int Did the explosion kill that mouse? 那个小丑碎了那个玻璃杯吗？ Na ge xiaochou sui-le na ge bolibei ma? That CL clown break-PERF that CL glass Int Did the clown break the glass ? 那个海盗解了那个气球吗? Na ge haidao jie-le na ge qiqiu ma? That CL pirate untie-PERF that CL ribon Int Did the pirate untie the balloon? 那阵风开了那个柜子吗？ Na zhen feng kai-le na ge guizi ma? That CL wind open-PEF that CL cupboard Int Did the wind open the cupboard? 那个海盗关了那扇门吗？ Na ge haidao guan-le na shan men ma? That CL pirate close-PER that CL door Int Did the pirate close the door ? 那个小丑折了那根树枝吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-le na gen shuzhi, shi ma?

271

That CL clown cut-PERF that CL branch Int Did the clown cut the branch? 那个爆炸杀了那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge baozha sha-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL explosion kill-PERF that CL spider Int Did the explosion kill the spider? 那个爆炸折了那根树枝吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-le na gen shuzhi ma? That CL explosion cut-PERF that CL branch Int Did the explosion cut the branch? 那个海盗埋了那只拖鞋吗？ Na ge haidao mai-le na zhi tuoxie ma? That CL pirate bury-PERF that CL flipflop Int Did the pirate bury the flipflop? 风解了那个气球吗？ Feng jie-le na ge qiqiu ma? Wind untie-PERF that CL balloon Int Did the wind untie the ballon? 那个小丑杀了那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL clown kill-PERF that CL spider Int Did the clown kill the spider? 那阵风熄了那根蜡烛吗？ Na zhen feng xi-le na gen lazhu ma? That CL wind blow out-PERF that CL candle Int Did the wind blow out the candle? 那个小丑杀了那只老鼠吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-le na zhi laoshu ma? That CL clown kill-PERF that CL mouse Int Did the clown kill the mouse? 那个爆炸折了那根萝卜吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-le na gen luobo ma? That CL explosion cut-PERF that CL carrot Int Did the explosion cut the carrot ?

272

Table 44: Testing sentences in order in the 2nd Experiment (RVCs) Testing Sentences 那个小丑敲碎了那个碟子吗？ Nage xiaochou sui-diao-le na ge diezi ma? That clown break-drop-PERF that CL plate Int ‘Did the clown break the plate ?’ 那个海盗打开了那个篮子吗？ Na ge haidao da-kai-le na ge lanzi ma? That CL pirate beat-open-PERF that CL basket Int ‘Did the pirate open the basket ?’ 风关上了那扇门吗？ Feng guan-shang-le na shan men ma? Wind close-up-PERF that Cl door Int ‘Did the wind close the door?’ 那个小丑熄灭了那支蜡烛吗？ Na ge xiaochou xi-mie-le na zhi lazhu ma? That CL clown blow out-extinguished-PERF that CL candle Int ‘Did the clown blow out the candle?’ 风解开了那条丝带吗 Feng jie-kai-le na tiao sidai ma? Wind untie-open-PERF that CL ribbon Int ‘Did the wind untie the ribbon?’ 那个小丑折断了那根胡萝卜吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-duan-le na gen huluobo ma? That CL clown cut-broken-PERF that CL carrot Int ‘Did the clown cut the carrot?’ 那个爆炸杀死了那只白色的老鼠吗？ Na ge baozha sha-si-le na zhi baise de laoshu ma? That CL explosion kill-die-PERF that CL white DE mouse Int ‘Did the explosion kill that white mouse?’ 那个小丑碎了那个玻璃杯吗？ Na ge xiaochou sui-diao-le na ge bolibei ma? That CL clown break-down-PERF that CL glass Int ‘Did the clown break the glass?’ 那个海盗解开了那个气球吗? Na ge haidao jie-kai-le na ge qiqiu ma? That CL pirate untie-open-PERF that CL ballon Int ‘Did the pirate untie the balloon?’ 那阵风吹开了那个柜子吗？ Na zhen feng chui-kai-le na ge guizi ma? That CL wind blow-open-PEF that CL cupboard Int ‘Did the wind open the cupboard?’ 那个海盗关上了那扇门吗？ Na ge haidao guan-shang-le na shan men ma? That CL pirate close-up-PER that CL door Int ‘Did the pirate close the door ?’ 那个小丑折断了那根树枝吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-duan-le na gen shuzhi ma? That CL clown cut-broken-PERF that CL branch Int

273

‘Did the clown cut the branch?’ 那个爆炸杀死了那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge baozha sha-si-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL explosion kill-die-PERF that CL spider Int ‘Did the explosion kill the spider ?’ 那个爆炸折断了那根树枝吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-duan-le na gen shuzhi ma? That CL explosion cut-broken-PERF that CL branch Int ‘Did the explosion cut the branch?’ 那个海盗埋好了那只拖鞋吗？ Na ge haidao mai-hao-le na zhi tuoxie ma? That CL pirate bury-good-PERF that CL flipflop Int ‘Did the pirate cover the flipflop ?’ 风解开了那个气球吗？ Feng jie-kai-le na ge qiqiu ma? Wind untie-open-PERF that CL balloon Int ‘Did the wind untie the balloon?’ 那个小丑杀死了那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-si-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL clown kill-die-PERF that CL spider Int ‘Did the clown kill that spider ?’ 那阵风熄灭了那根蜡烛吗？ Na zhen feng xi-mie-le na gen lazhu ma? That CL wind blow out-extinguish-PERF that CL candle Int ‘Did the wind blow out the candle?’ 那个爆炸杀死了那只白色的老鼠吗？ Na ge baozha sha-si-le na zhi baise de laoshu ma? That CL explosion kill-die-PERF that CL white DE mouse Int ‘Did the explosion kill that mouse?’ 那个小丑碎掉了那个玻璃杯吗？ Na ge xiaochou sui-diao-le na ge bolibei ma? That CL clown break-down-PERF that CL glass Int ‘Did the clown break the glass?’ 那个海盗解开了那个气球吗? Na ge haidao jie-kai-le na ge qiqiu ma? That CL pirate untie-open-PERF that CL ribon Int ‘Did the pirate untie the ballon?’ 那阵风吹开了那个柜子吗？ Na zhen feng chui-kai-le na ge guizi ma? That CL wind blow-open-PEF that CL cupboard Int ‘Did the wind close the window?’ 那个海盗关上了那扇门吗？ Na ge haidao guan-shang-le na shan men ma? That CL pirate close-up-PER that CL door Int ‘Did the pirate close the window?’ 那个小丑折断了那根树枝吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-duan-le na gen shuzhi, shi ma? That CL clown cut-broken-PERF that CL branch Int ‘Did the clown cut the branch?’ 那个爆炸杀死了那只蜘蛛吗？

274

Na ge baozha sha-si-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL explosion kill-die-PERF that CL spider Int ‘Did the explosion kill the spider?’ 那个爆炸折断了那根树枝吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-duan-le na gen shuzhi ma? That CL explosion cut-broken-PERF that CL branch Int ‘Did the explosion cut the branch?’ 那个海盗埋好了那只拖鞋吗？ Na ge haidao mai-hao-le na zhi tuoxie ma? That CL pirate bury-good-PERF that CL flipflop Int ‘Did the pirate cover the flipflop?’ 风解开了那个气球吗？ Feng jie-kai-le na ge qiqiu ma? Wind untie-open-PERF that CL balloon Int ‘Did the wind untie the ballon?’ 那个小丑杀死了那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-si-le na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL clown kill-die-PERF that CL spider Int ‘Did the clown kill that spider?’ 那阵风熄灭了那根蜡烛吗？ Na zhen feng xi-mie-le na gen lazhu ma? That CL wind blow out-extinguish-PERF that CL candle Int ‘Did the wind blow out the candle?’ 那个小丑杀死了那只老鼠吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-si-le na zhi laoshu ma? That CL clown kill-die-PERF that CL mouse Int ‘Did the clown kill the mouse?’ 那个爆炸折断了那根萝卜吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-duan-le na gen luobo ma? That CL explosion cut-broken-PERF that CL carrot Int ‘Did the explosion cut the carrot ?’

275

Table 45: Testing sentences in order in the 3rd Experiment+ hǎojǐcì Testing Sentences 那个小丑碎了好几次那个碟子吗？ Nage xiaochou sui-le-haojici na ge diezi ma? That clown break-PERF-several times that CL plate Int ‘Did the clown break the plate several times?’ 那个海盗开了好几次那个篮子吗？ Na ge haidao kai-le-haojici na ge lanzi ma? That CL pirate open-PERF-several times that CL basket Int ‘Did the pirate open the basket several times?’ 风关了好几次那扇门吗？ Feng guan-le-haojici na shan men ma? Wind close-PERF-several times that CLdoor Int Did the wind close the door several times? 那个小丑熄了好几次那支蜡烛吗？ Xiaochou xi-le-haojici na zhi lazhu ma? Clown blow out-PERF-several times that CL candle Int Did the clown blow out the candle several times? 风解了好几次那条丝带吗 Feng jie-le-haojici na tiao sidai ma? Wind untie-PERF-several times that CL ribbon Int ‘Did the wind untie the ribbon several times?’ 那个小丑折了好几次那根胡萝卜吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-le-haojici na gen huluobo ma? That CL clown cut-PERF-several times that CL carrot Int ‘Did the clown cut the carrot several times?’ 那个爆炸杀了好几次那只白色的老鼠吗？ baozha sha-le-haojici na zhi baise de laoshu ma? explosion kill-PERF-several times that CL white DE mouse Int ‘Did the explosion kill that white mouse several times?’ 那个小丑碎了好几次那个玻璃杯吗？ Na ge xiaochou sui-le-haojici na ge bolibei ma? That CL clown break-PERF-several times that CL glass Int ‘Did the clown break the glass several times?’ 那个海盗解了好几次那个气球吗? Na ge haidao jie-le-haojici na ge qiqiu ma? That CL pirate untie-PERF-several times that CL ribon Int ‘Did the pirate untie the the balloon several times?’ 那阵风开了好几次那个柜子吗？ Na zhen feng kai-le-haojici na ge guizi ma? That CL wind open-PEF-several times that CL cupboard Int ‘Did the wind open the cupboard several times?’ 那个海盗关了好几次那扇门吗？ Na ge haidao guan-le-haojici na shan men ma? That CL pirate close-PER-several times that CL door Int ‘Did the pirate close the door several times?’ 那个小丑折了好几次那根树枝吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-le-haojici na gen shuzhi ma? That CL clown cut-PERF-several times that CL branch Int

276

‘Did the clown cut the branch several times?’ 那个爆炸杀了好几次那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge baozha sha-le-haojici na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL explosion kill-PERF-several times that CL spider Int ‘Did the explosion kill the spider several times?’ 那个爆炸折了好几次那根树枝吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-le-haojici na gen shuzhi ma? That CL explosion cut-PERF-several times that CL branch Int ‘Did the explosion cut the branch several times?’ 那个海盗埋了好几次那只拖鞋吗？ Na ge haidao mai-le-haojici na zhi tuoxie ma? That CL pirate bury-PERF-several times that CL flipflop Int ‘Did the pirate cover the flipflop several times ?’ 风解了好几次那个气球吗？ Feng jie-le-haojici na ge qiqiu ma? Wind untie-PERF-several times that CL balloon Int ‘Did the wind untie the balloon several times?’ 那个小丑杀了好几次那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-le-haojici na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL clown kill-PERF-several times that CL spider Int ‘Did the clown kill that spider several times ?’

那阵风熄了好几次那根蜡烛吗？ Na zhen feng xi-le-haojici na gen lazhu ma? That CL wind blow out-PERF-several times that CL candle Int ‘Did the wind blow out the candle several times?’

那个爆炸杀了好几次那只白色的老鼠吗？ Baozha sha-le-haojici na zhi baise de laoshu ma? Explosion kill-PERF-several times that CL white DE mouse Int ‘Did the explosion kill that mouse several times?’ 那个小丑碎了好几次那个玻璃杯吗？ Na ge xiaochou sui-le-haojici na ge bolibei ma? That CL clown break-PERF-several times that CL glass Int ‘Did the clown break the glass several times ?’ 那个海盗解了好几次那个气球吗? Na ge haidao jie-le-haojici na ge qiqiu ma? That CL pirate untie-PERF-several times that CL ballon Int ‘Did the pirate untie the ballon several times?’ 那阵风开了好几次那个柜子吗？ Na zhen feng kai-le-haojici na ge guizi ma? That CL wind open-PEF-several times that CL cupboard Int ‘Did the wind open the cupboard several times?’ 那个海盗关了好几次那扇门吗？ Na ge haidao guan-le-haojici na shan men ma? That CL pirate close-PER-several times that CL door Int ‘Did the pirate close the door several times ?’ 那个小丑折了好几次那根树枝吗？ Na ge xiaochou zhe-le-haojici na gen shuzhi, shi ma? That CL clown cut-PERF-several times that CL branch Int ‘Did the clown cut the branch several times?’

277

那个爆炸杀了好几次那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge baozha sha-le-haojici na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL explosion kill-PERF-several times that CL spider Int ‘Did the explosion kill the spider several times?’ 那个爆炸折了好几次那根树枝吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-le-haojici na gen shuzhi ma? That CL explosion cut-PERF-several times that CL branch Int ‘Did the explosion cut the branch several times?’ 那个海盗埋了好几次那只拖鞋吗？ Na ge haidao mai-le-haojici na zhi tuoxie ma? That CL pirate bury-PERF-several times that CL flipflop Int ‘Did the pirate bury the flipflop several times?’ 风解了那个好几次气球吗？ Feng jie-le-haojici na ge qiqiu ma? Wind untie-PERF-several times that CL balloon Int ‘Did the wind untie the ballon several times?’ 那个小丑杀了好几次那只蜘蛛吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-le-haojici na zhi zhizhu ma? That CL clown kill-PERF-several times that CL spider Int ‘Did the clown kill the spider several times?’ 那阵风熄了好几次那根蜡烛吗？ feng xi-le-haojici na gen lazhu ma? wind blow out-PERF-several times that CL candle Int ‘Did the wind blow out the candle several times?’ 那个小丑杀了好几次那只老鼠吗？ Na ge xiaochou sha-le-haojici na zhi laoshu ma? That CL clown kill-PERF-several times that CL mouse Int ‘Did the clown kill the mouse several times?’ 那个爆炸折了好几次那根萝卜吗？ Na ge baozha zhe-le-haojici na gen luobo ma? That CL explosion cut-PERF-several times that CL carrot Int ‘Did the explosion cut the carrot several times ?’

Table 46 4 gradable and 4 ungradable MCA verbs tested in Chapter 3 Gradable CoS Ungradable CoS 1 切 qiē’cut’ 点 diǎn ‘light on’

2 修 xiū’repaire’ 除 chú’get rid of’

3 拆 chāi ‘unpack’ 救 jiù’save’

4 清 qīng ‘clear 摘 zhāi ‘pick’

278

279

280