Existential Structure And Unaccusativity-with Special Reference To Yi Yang Dialect

This thesis investigates the syntactic properties of the existential structure in Yi Yang dialect with the aim of finding out the possible account for the asymmetry usage of the agentive manner of motion verbs in the existential structure between Yi Yang dialect and Mandarin Chinese and confirming the unaccusativity hypothesis of the existential verbs.There is a strange phenomenon concerning the existential structure in Yi Yang dialect compared with Mandarin Chinese. Generally speaking, agentive manner of motion verbs can not co-occur with the existentials with such structure as "Locative Phrase + V + zhe + NP". Thus in Yi Yang dialect, sentences such as Lushang pao zhe yi Hang che 'There is a car running on the road' and shuili you zhe yi tiao yu 'There is a fish swimming in the water' are ungrammatical (at least abnormal). Intuitively, the native Yi Yang people would change the order of these sentences to Yiliang che zai lushang pao 'there is a car running on the road' and Yitiao yu zai shui li you 'there is a fish swimming in the water'. As a sub-class of Mandarin Chinese, why is there such a difference as to the existentials in Yi Yang dialect?Following Levin&Rappaport-Hovav 1995, we argue that existential structures in Chinese are only limited to unaccusative verbs, just as that in English. Some unergatives, more specifically, agentive manner of motion verbs can co-occur with the existential structure across languages because they undergo some lexical rule that changes the argument structure of the verbs in question into that of unaccusatives. In Yi Yang dialect, however, although all the conditions needed for the changing are met, the operation would never occur so that agentive manner of motion verbs can occur in existentials on no account. Basing on the detailed comparison with the syntax of the existential structure between Yi Yang dialect and Mandarin Chinese, we propose that the ineffectiveness of the rule is mostly due to the semantics of zhe. Unlike in Mandarin Chinese, the semantic features of zhe in Yi Yang dialect are mainly divided into two parts, one [ +durative +dynamic -stative] and the other [ +durative -dynamic +stative]. In the light of Pan 1996's zhe deletion rule, we further argue that the semantics of tsa³⁴ and tcy²¹ +durative +dynamic -stative] in Yi Yang dialect isincompatible with Levin&Rappaport-Hovav(1995)'s lexical argument changing rule and they prevent the unergative verbs in question from being changed into...