A Minimalist Approach To Chinese Vi-Va Type RVCs Allowing Ba-conversion

Chinese RVCs are such complex and widely used structures that they have become one of the hottest focuses in Chinese syntax studies. This dissertation just concentrates upon one type of Chinese RVCs, that is, those RVCs convertible to Ba-sentences with an intransitive main verb and adjectival verb after the main verb. In the previous syntactic studies, there left such problems as the causative meaning in Chinese RVCs, the syntactic status of the noun after RVCs and word order in causative verb uses. All these problems seem difficult to be solved with theories other than generative theory because they are descriptive in nature. In this dissertation the author makes effort to answer these problems with the newly developed generative theory. Chomsky's minimalist approach as adopted in this dissertation is the latest development of generative theory. It keeps standing on the internalist point of view, seeking cognitive biological grounding for human languages and thus is explanatory. With new concepts proposed, the generative theory becomes more powerful to explain language phenomenon. In this dissertation, the author introduces some key concepts such as VP-shells, features of Core Functional Categories (CFCs) and particularly those of the light verb v into the study, and makes a detailed study of causative uses of both English ergative verbs and Chinese adjectival verbs. It is proved there exists the light verb v in Chinese causative uses. A new syntactic structure for Chinese causative uses is advocated, and the change of the word order as well as the causative meaning are justified under the influence of the light verb v. The research objects, the Vi-Va type Chinese RVCs allowing Ba-conversion, are closely and directly related to Chinese causative structures. After a detailed analysis, the author finds that the research objects and the Chinese causative structures share the same core functional category: the light verb v. On the basis of such an analysis, the author proposes a new syntactic structure for the research objects and illustrates syntactic derivation process, giving some tentative answers to the problems left in the previous studies.