The Argument Structure Of Chinese Deverbal Construction

The thesis aims to undertake an empirical examination of Chinese deverbal constructions and establish some generalized patterns. On the basis of these empirical facts, I go on to tentatively propose a research sketch that roughly outlines the reasoning of how the derivation of Chinese deverbal constructions can be accounted for within the framework of Phase Theory.Nominalization is a ubiquitous phenomenon across human languages. Rich variations in terms of nominalization patterns exist both within certain languages and across languages. Chinese distinguishes itself from other languages by having the invariant surface structure of deverbal constructions that is found in no other languages: “Agent(External Argument) + dui + Patient/Goal(Internal Argument) + de + Head Noun.” That is, in Chinese, arguments together with other nominal elements like demonstratives, numerals, classifiers, quantifiers, and modifiers, uniformly precede the Head Noun and the nominalized Head Noun is homonymous to the original verb. Nominalization as a syntactic process makes it possible for ambivalent nominal and verbal properties co-occur in a single construction. Thus, nominalization, especially Chinese nominalization, can make significant contribution to the development of generative grammar that assumes a universal principle.A classification of Chinese verb types is first conducted based on the criteria for event structure as borrowed and revised from Lin(2004). It is found that only verbs of the following event types are suitable for nominalization: disyllabic psych verbs, disyllabic simple activity verbs, and disyllabic complex activity verbs of the “Activity + Activity +(endpoint?)” type. Next, an empirical survey of Chinese deverbal constructions is carried out under the strict guidance of syntactic and semantic theories by Koptjevskaja-Tamm(1993) and Grimshaw(1990). It reveals that Chinese deverbal constructions are more “noun-like” for being compatible with demonstratives, numerals, quantifiers, and classifiers; yet, they also retain event reading and license a complete argument structure.Finally, I briefly propose a syntactic approach to nominalization. It is argued that the nominalizer n? assigns to the whole construction nominal categorial features and introduces further functional nominal layers. I also propose a research sketch which speculates that there must be some phasal heads with topic/focus features in the higher structure, triggering the arguments to prepose to the front.