The syntax of event structure in Chinese [microform] /

2003

This paper is concerned with the linking of arguments to syntax in Chinese resultative verb constructions. It is demonstrated that the linking principles based on event roles can account for the complementary distribution of the Ba-construction and the Verb-copying construction, because 'ba+NP' is associated only with the Locus of affect role (an entity that is involved in the endpoint), whereas 'a copied verb+NP' is associated only with the Target of activity role (an entity that undergoes the action). It is predicted that a resultative verb construction, which can occur in the Ba-construction, can have a corresponding Bei-construction, because both constructions involve the displacement of the Locus of affect role.

Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2017

Mandarin verbal reduplication is generally regarded as a phenomenon conveying an aspectual value since it temporally bounds the event expressed by the base verb, thus resulting in a (counter-iconic) 'diminishing' semantics. In this paper, we put forward a novel syntactic account of diminishing reduplica-tion in Mandarin, which derives the aspectual semantic properties of these constructs from the syntax of their event structure. In particular, we outline an analysis of reduplication as the spell out of two copies of the same lexical item, whereby the reduplicant is the lower copy sitting as the complement of the verbal head (higher copy), and displaying the distributional and inter-pretive properties of 'weak' verbal classifiers. Focusing on the status of the reduplicant, we present distributional, interpretive and diachronic evidence in support of our analysis. *

This work presents a theory of linguistic representation that attempts to capture the syntactic structure of verbs and their arguments. My framework is based on the assumption that the proper representation of argument structure is event structure. Furthermore, I develop the hypothesis that event structure is syntactic structure, and argue that verb meanings are compositionally derived in the syntax from verbalizing heads, functional elements that license eventive interpretations, and verbal roots, abstract concepts drawn from encyclopedic knowledge. The overall goal of the enterprise is to develop a theory that is able to transparently relate the structure and meaning of verbal arguments. By hypothesis, languages share the same inventory of primitive building blocks and are governed by the same set of constraints-all endowed by principles of Universal Grammar and subjected to parametric variations. Support for my theory is drawn from both Mandarin Chinese and English. In particular, the organization of the Mandarin verbal system provides strong evidence for the claim that activity and state are the only two primitive verb types in Chineseachievements and accomplishments are syntactically-derived complex categories. As a specific instance of complex event composition, I examine Mandarin resultative verb compounds and demonstrate that a broad range of variations can be perspicuously captured in my framework. I show that patterns of argument sharing in these verbal compounds can be analyzed as control, thus grounding argument structure in wellknown syntactic constraints such as the Minimum Distance Principle. Finally, I argue that cross-linguistic differences in the realization of verbal arguments can be reduced to variations in the way functional elements interact with verbal roots. Overall, my work not only contributes to our understanding of how events are syntactically represented, but also explicates interactions at the syntax-semantics interface, clarifying the relationship between surface form, syntactic structure, and logical form. A theory of argument structure grounded in independently-motivated syntactic constraints, on the one hand, and the semantic structure of events, on the other hand, is able to account for a wide range of empirical facts with few stipulations.

This paper investigates which nominal strategies are available in a language to encode the dot-like process, i.e., the one described by the features [Àdurative, þtelic]. A variety of solutions is available: clausal, phrasal and lexical. The language taken into consideration is Modern Standard Chinese, where lexical and phrasal solutions are used, both interestingly involving a characteristic use of classifiers. Three (plus one) different types of lexicaliza-tions are identified for the encoding of dot-like processes in Chinese. The paper also suggests an affinity between such nominals and classifiers and corroborates the claim that operations such as nominalization spread through typologically different languages.

2012

Natural and non-natural kinds have significant differences. This paper explores the subclasses of each kind and establishes the type system for event nouns. These nouns are divided into natural types, artifactual types, complex types (including natural complex types and artifactual complex types). This new classification not only enriches the Generative Lexicon theory, but also helps us to capture the properties of different types of event nouns.

2001

In Amadar Medean, the majority control of the plaintiff and defendant corporations had come into the hands of the same group of people by the time the case reached the Supreme Court. The Court therefore refused to consider the merits, but reversed and remanded for further proceedings to protect the interests of the minority stockholders. Id. at 301-02. 894 [Vol. 32:893 1991] UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES 895 found the same principle in the Constitution's case-or-controversy requirement. 2 The talismanic "a person cannot sue herself" collapses, however, when the "person" is the United States government. In practice, different parts of the government often end up on opposing sides of the same lawsuit. Although a caption as frank as United States v. United States is uncommon, courts have rarely hesitated to hear intragovernmental disputes. The United States has sued the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for approving railroad rates charged to the federal government 4 and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for setting long distance telephone rates that were too high. 5 The Department of Justice (DOJ) has challenged mergers and rate agreements that other federal agencies explicitly approved and defended in court. 6 The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) is in constant litigation with other agencies over labor practices. 7 The Secretary of the Interior has sued the Federal Power Commission (FPC) for licensing a dam, 8 and the Secretary of Commerce has gone after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for not preparing an environmental impact statement. 9 The Secretary of 2. U.S. CONST. art. 111, S 2, cl. 1. 3. 417 F. Supp. 851 (D.D.C. 1976) (three-judge district court), affld sub nom. National Classification Comm. v. United States, 430 U.S. 961 (1977) (Department of Defense (DOD) challenge to Interstate Commerce Commission order increasing the cost of transporting automobiles by truck). 4. United States v. ICC, 337 U.S. 426 (1949); see also Ford Motor Co. v. ICC, 714 F.2d 1157, 1159 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (DOD's petition for review of the ICC's refusal to award reparations for alleged overcharges by "market dominant" railroads). 5. See United States v. FCC, 707 F.2d 610 (D.C. Cir. 1983). 6. E.g., United States v. Marine Bancorp., Inc., 418 U.S. 602 (1974) (challenge to bank merger approved by Comptroller of the Currency); United States v. ICC, 396 U.S. 491 (1970) (challenge to ICC approval of railroad mergers); United States v. Federal Maritime Comm'n, 694 F.2d 793 (D.C. Cir. 1982) (challenge to Federal Maritime Commission approval of rate-fixing agreement among ocean carriers); United States v. FCC, 652 F.2d 72 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (challenge to FCC order allowing Comsat/IBM joint venture to construct communications satellites; FTC filed an amicus brief); United States v. Civil Aeronautics Bd., 511 F.2d 1315 (D.C. Cir. 1975) (challenge to Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) approval of airlines' capacity reduction agreements).

Event nouns can lexically encode eventive information. Recently these nouns have generated considerable scholarly interest. However, little research has been conducted in their morphological and syntactic structure, qualia modification, event representing feature, and information inheritance characteristics. This study has these main findings. 1) Morphologically, the modifier and the head is either free or bound morpheme. Syntactically the modifier is a nominal, adjectival, verbal or numeral morpheme, while the head is a nominal morpheme.

2007

2011

This book (henceforth referred to by the acronym 'HLL', based on the authors' initials), published in the Cambridge series devoted to the theoretically well-grounded description of the syntax of individual languages, is the first serious attempt, in English, at such a comprehensive work on Mandarin Chinese: while the linguistic community has seen various descriptive and reference grammars, these never strove to base their data-level observations consistently on a coherent theoretic framework-which is the clear intention of the current volume, even if this comes at the price of giving up somewhat on full coverage, as the Introduction openly admits it (p. 3). Instead, the authors focus on those data, constructions, and issues related to them that have received sufficient attention, and/or satisfactory analyses, in the realm of generative linguistics, in the past 30 years or so. And in fact, all three authors are, and have been for some time now, among the best-known, most central, most renowned figures of Chinese generative grammar, which immediately guarantees a certain level of quality, but also sets the readers' expectations high, at the same time. The book is organized into nine chapters, the first two of which lay the general foundations for the rest, discussing issues concerning the syntactic category system of Mandarin, and the predicate-argument relations, thereby acquainting the readers (especially those who are not well-versed in current generative theory) with many concepts and considerations that will become crucial in understanding and fully appreciating the oncoming analyses. The seven subsequent chapters then treat specific chunks of the syntax of Mandarin one by one, with particular attention devoted to those phenomena that have triggered the most heated (or most fruitful) debates within the generative literature, such as the ba-and bei-constructions, the structure of interrogatives, or the patterns of anaphora. Generally speaking, the overall structure of the book suits the chief goals well, the authors manage to keep good proportions among the topics, as well as between theory and description. If there is anything to be critical of at this general level, it is a clear sense of indecision on behalf of the authors as to how deeply they should go into explaining the underlying theory: sometimes (especially in the first half of the book) these 'background clarifications' are frequent and lengthy (occasionally to the extent that the text almost sounds like an introductory textbook in syntactic theory), while in many other cases (mostly in the second half) the delicacies of technical explanations run so wildly profound that no one without a solid basis in recent Chomskyan linguistics stands the slightest chance to be able to follow them. In other words, I would be hard-pressed to determine the real target audience of this book: for the theoretical linguist interested in Chinese, many explanatory parts are superfluous (a particularly obvious such case is the discussion of theta theory in Chapter 2), while for someone interested in Mandarin grammar, but without a firm background in generative theory, certain sections must be extremely difficult (if not outright impossible) to cope with, e.g., the discussion of beipassives (esp. 134ff.), or the treatment of the relative construction (esp. 221ff). That basically leaves us Chomskyan syntacticians with a stake in Chinese as the well-targeted readership-not a huge crowd, I am afraid. In what follows, I will treat the chapters' contents, one by one, pointing out the particular strengths and weaknesses therein. The content part of the book sets out with the groundwork of establishing the inventory of syntactic categories of Mandarin: Chapter 1 (Categories). In the domain of lexical categories, besides the obvious noun $ verb distinction, we find three issues of notable peculiarity discussed: the classification of (so-called) localizers, the question of the independent category of adjectives, and the definition of the category of prepositions in this language. Concerning localizers, one traditional debate was about the categorial unity vs. duality of monosyllabic and disyllabic localizers (e.g., N(-de) li-bian 'N (-DE) inside-side' vs. N-li 'N-inside') and another one about whether they are basically nouns or postpositions. The conclusion here is that while disyllabic ones are nouns (though on the verge of losing their nominal identity), the monosyllabic ones constitute a minor independent category of some sort: 'noun deviates'. While the arguments against them being either nouns or prepositions proper are sound, the categorization offered is really just a nicer way of saying 'we don't know', and since for expository purposes the localizers are called and labeled as 'localizers (L)' throughout the discussion, anyway, they might as well have been assigned to a genuinely independent category by this name. On the question of adjectives as an Lingua 121 (2011) 313-319

Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information, and Computation, 2010

This paper presents an event semantics-based investigation of Japanese complex predicates of the form V1+V2, to clarify their syntactic and semantic constitution. The Japanese V1+V2 formation primarily exploits the aspectual modification of a core event; of particular interest here are complex predicates composed of intentional active verbs with te-form + the existential verb a-ru; this complex pattern is known to be ambiguous between what is usually termed a 'resultative' and a 'preparative' reading. One major problem of the "V-tea -ru" construction is retrieving the semantic relation linking their components, which is (partially) implicit on the surface. To date, no uniform analysis has been developed to formally account for these facts. The main goal of this study was to develop a uniform analysis of their meaning representations, using Davidson's (1967) event semantics as a reference model. Basic data revealed some interesting findings, indicating some asymmetry in event structure. This could help identify the semantic relations of components and clarify the semantic representation of a given syntactic paradigm.