A Study On Chinese Unaccusative Verbs And Their Syntactic Projections

Unaccusative Hypothesis has always been a hot issue in syntax studies. Many scholars havemade a lot of studies on Chinese unaccusative verbs. However, many problems haven’t beensolved yet. For example, as for Chinese intransitive verbs with objects, lots of scholars havegiven different explanations on it: case theory and light verb theory, but they can not be used inall languages. In Chinese unaccusative verbs with objects constructions, there is a NP in the front,besides the postverbal patient argument. The traditional grammar can not assign proper thematicroles to NPs. The study shows those sentences belong to two-place unaccustive series whichcontain middle and internal arguments. NPs before the unaccusative verbs play the role of theexperiencer, which are in the standard position of subjects in syntactic constructions. They areformed by base-generated, not by movement.Huang (2007) points out not only one-place but also two-place and three-place predicatescan be classified into unaccusatives and unergatives. Therefore, all the verbs belong tounaccusative series and unergative series. In Chinese ditransitive constructions,“gei, yu” typeand “tou, qiang” type, the former belongs to unaccusative series and the latter belongs tounergative series. The study shows “gei, yu” type is a three-place unaccusative constructionwhich is made up of one object (theme) and two subjects (causer and experiencer), whereas “tou,qiang” type is a three-place unergative construction which contains one subject (agent) and twoobjects (patient and affectee).Passive verbs are also considered as derived unaccusatives which are made up of transitiveverbs. The external argument of original transitive verbs are inhibited, meanwhile, the verbs lossoriginal transitivity. Therefore, the original transitive verbs become intransitive verbs afterpassivization. Objects formed by passivization remain in the original position which is anotherevidence for Chinese surface unaccusativity. The study shows that the postverbal NPs areincapable of receiving unaccusative cases from the preceding unaccusative verbs, but they cantake the nominative case from the vacant subjects. It is possible for a Chinese unaccusativesentence to have a sentence-initial professor NP while keeping the argument NP in situ. Thepossessor NP is analyzed as a base-generated marked topic licensed by a semantic variable in thecomment. Raising the argument NP into the vacant subject position will produce apatient-subject sentence.