Chinese NP1+Vi+NP2 Construction And The Unaccusative Theories

This thesis studies the Chinese NP1+Vi+NP2 Construction(special focus will be on Chinese existential sentence(CES) and the "external possession" construction(EPC)) under the framework of Generative Grammar.The aim of the thesis is to provide explanation of the idiosyncrasies of the syntax and semantics of the construction.It is widely accepted that the verbs in existential sentences(ES) and EPC are unaccusative verbs.In the relevant literature on CES,two types of verbs in CES are subject to debate,that is, intransitive verbs such as you 'swim',fei 'fly' and pa 'crawl' and some transitive verbs like xie 'write',zhu 'cook',yan 'perform' and qiao 'beat".The former type is considered typical unergative verbs cross-linguistically,and the latter type is transitive.Basically,the unaccusative-unergative dichotomy is restricted to intransitive verbs.So it is not unusual that these verbs are under debate.What is more,in many languages,these two types of verbs are banned from ES.What is the nature of these two types of verbs in CES? After a thorough examination,we find that these two types of verbs in CES are different from their counterparts in other constructions.Syntactically and semantically,all these verbs exhibit unaccusative properties and thus belong to unaccusative series while their counterparts in other constructions exhibit unergative properties.Based on our observation,we propose that it is the event predicate that determines the unaccusativity of the verbs in CES.Following Huang(1997),we propose that the event predicate in CES is "OCCUR".It represents the event type of CES and it is the syntactic projection of the event place.The judgment form and the event type of CES have been discussed.We hold that CES expresses thetic judgment and represents a patient-centered event or situation.This study shows that the unaccusative/unergative dichotomy in its essence represents two types of events which provides evidence to Huang(2007).Our study provides answers to the problem of the status of the postverbal NP in certain Chinese existential sentences like he-li you-zhe yi-tiao yu 'there is a fish swimming in the river'. It has long been a point of contention,ever since the Great Discussion of 1950's.The most prominent view about the status of the postverbal NP held in the domestic linguistic circle is that it is agentive object.According to our study,it is problematic both theoretically and empirically to take it as agentive object.Our study shows that the theta-role of the postverbal NP is none-agentive theme and syntactically it is in the object position.In the above chapters,it is argued and demonstrated that the verbs in both CES and EPC are unaccusative verbs.The following problems arise:Firstly,it is well known that unaccusative verbs have a sole argument.There are two arguments in Chinese NP1+Vi+NP2 Construction and this means one-too-many argument to be accommodated by the argument structure of the predicate.How to explain this? Secondly,according to Burzio(1986),the unaccusative verb can not assign accusative case.And according to Case Filter,NPs with phonetic form must have case. Though Chinese lacks inflectional features,it is generally believed that NPs in Chinese as well as other languages bear case features which are uninterpretable in LF and should be checked. How to explain the problem of case assignment of the NPs? The following chapter of this thesis attempts to provide answers to these questions.In the above chapter,the event type of CES has been discussed.It is argued that CES represents Theme-centered event.Given the general belief that there are correspondences between meaning and syntactic structure,we assume this event structure might have syntactic projection.In chapter 4,we hold that Chinese EPC belongs to CES and thus Chinese NP1 +Vi+NP2 Construction represents Theme-centered event.Following Huang's(1997) light verb syntax,we propose that the event predicate in Chinese NP1+Vi+NP2 construction is "OCCUR".It is the syntactic projection of the event type of the construction.This eventuality predicate may be phonetically empty categories,thus it should be lexically supported(or licensed) at S-structure.With the proposal of the abstract verb "OCCUR",the "one extra" argument could find a natural explanation:the unaccusative verb chooses NP2 as its complement and forms the lower VP.The lower VP is embedded in the upper VP the head of which is the abstract verb "OCCUR".NP1 is in the Spec position of the upper VP,and the lower VP is in the complement position.Because the abstract verb "OCCUR" is phonetically empty and should be lexically supported in S-structure,the unaccusative verb moves to the head position of the upper VP and merges with the abstract verb "OCCUR".Finally the S-structure of Chinese NP1+Vi+NP2 Construction obtains.According to this assumption,NP1 is based-generated in the Spec-position of the upper VP and this provides evidence to Gu's(1992) assumption.The problem of case assignment of NP2 has also been addressed.We follow Belletti(1988) and argue that NP2 bears partitive case.