The constructionalization of antonymous compounds

In this talk, we will consider Mandarin Chinese resultative compounds in the light of the micro-parametric approach proposed by Son & Svenonius (2008) and Son (2008). Son & Svenonius (2008) show the inadequacy of a macro-parametric approach (e.g. Snyder’s 2001, Beck & Snyder’s 2001), pointing out that the crucial issue is not only if a language allows (e.g. English) or not resultatives (e.g. Spanish), but what kind of resultatives are allowed: weak vs. strong resultatives (Washio 1997), taking apart spurious resultatives. Son & Svenonius (2008) and Son (2008) propose that the cross-linguistic variation depends upon the kind of lexical items available in the lexicon of a language. Building on Ramchand (2008), on the assumption of a tight correlation between the morphosyntax and the semantics of event structure, they assume a fine-grained functional structure, which is taken to be universal. Each node in the functional structure must be licensed by lexical insertion (see Fábregas’s ‘exhaustive lexicalization’, 2007). According to Son & Svenonius, the variation in the availability of resultatives depends on the availability of lexical items able to lexicalize res (optional lower component of verbal meaning responsible for a result state entailment) and pred (uppermost predicative layer for the state). Accordingly, a language like Japanese has morphemes, e.g. く –ku, that can lexicalize pred but not res, thus it allows only resultatives with verbs that independently lexicalize res (weak resultatives). In contrast, Korean has a functional item, 게-key, able to lexicalize both res and pred, thus allows process verbs to form resultatives (strong resultatives). English has a null counterpart (phonologically empty lexical item) to Korean 게-key. In this talk, we will take into account Mandarin Chinese data from corpora, literary works as well as the literature on the topic and we will analyse resultative compounds adopting the above-described framework. We will argue that in Mandarin resultative compounds it is the second constituent itself which is able to lexicalize both res and pred, along with the resultant state AP. In the literature, the second constituent of Mandarin resultative compounds is often considered a verbal element. Actually, most of the V2s able to appear in resultative compounds are adjectival items, e.g. 干 gān ‘dry’, 干净 gānjìng ‘clean’, 累 lèi ‘tired’, 湿 shī ‘wet’, that can act as intransitive change of state predicates and possess dynamic features (e.g. Sybesma 1997, Xiao & McEnery 2004, Liu 2010); thus we argue that they are items endowed with both adjectival and verbal features. Moreover, non-adjectival verbs too, mainly unaccusatives (e.g. 死 sǐ ‘die’, 断 duàn ‘break’, 坏 huài ‘ruin’, 醒 xǐng ‘wake up’) can appear as V2s of resultative compounds. Since the V2 of a resultative compound is a verbal item which specifies a change of state, it is able to lexicalize both res and pred. This would account for the existence of strong resultatives in Mandarin. However, Mandarin seems to allow even more freedom in the formation of resultative compounds than in English: for instance, Mandarin freely allows V2s such as 湿 shī ‘wet’, 脏 zāng ‘dirty’, 断 duàn ‘break’ as V2s, whereas English generally does not allow adjectives as wet, dirty, broken (Goldberg 1995, Wechsler 2005); unlike English, Mandarin allows V2s that contradict (or even have nothing to do with) the result implied by V1, e.g. 洗脏 xǐzāng ‘wash-dirty’, 洗破 xǐpò ‘wash-torn’ or 洗皱 xǐzhòu ‘wash-wrinkled’ (Talmy 2000, Chen 2008). Given these and other differences that we will point out, it can be hypothesized that the greater flexibility in Mandarin is linked to the use of V2s that lexicalize both res and pred, along with the resultant state, without resorting to any other specific lexical item to lexicalize the intermediate projections (cf. Korean and English). Finally, we will show that this kind of analysis based on a syntactic decomposition of the event structure also enables us to support the position that Mandarin resultative compounds are left-headed (e.g. Cheng & Huang 1994) due to structural reasons. References BECK, S. & SNYDER (2001). Complex predicates and goal PP’s: Evidence for a semantic parameter. In A.H.J. Do, L. Domínguez & A. Johansen (eds.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, vol. 1, pp. 114–122. CHEN, J. (2008). The Acquisition of Verb Compounding in Mandarin Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation, Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit. CHENG, L.L.S. & HUANG, C.T.J. (1994). On the Argument Structure of Resultative Compounds. In M.Y. Chenand and O.L. Tzeng (eds.), In Honour of William S-Y. Wang: Interdisciplinary Studies on Language and Language Change. Taipei: Pyramid Press, 187-221. FÁBREGAS, A. (2007). An exhaustive lexicalization account of directional complements. In M. Bašíc, M. Pantcheva, M. Son & P. Svenonius (eds.), Tromsø Working Papers on Language and Linguistics: Nordlyd 34.2, Special issue on Space, Motion, and Result. Tromsø: University of Tromsø, pp. 165–199. Available at http://www.ub.uit.no/baser/nordlyd/. GOLDBERG, A. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press. LIU, C.S.L. (2010). The positive morpheme in Chinese and the adjectival structure. Lingua 120:1010-1056. RAMCHAND, G.C. (2008). Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A First-Phase Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SNYDER, W. (2001). On the nature of syntactic variation: Evidence from complex predicates and complex word-formation. Language 77:324–342. SON, M. (2008). Resultatives in Korean, Japanese and English: Revisited from a Micro-Parametric Approach to Linguistic Variation. Paper presented at the 18th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference (JK18), The Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY), Manhattan, November 13-15, 2008. SON, M. & SVENONIUS, P. (2008). Microparameters of cross-linguistic variation: Directed motion and resultatives. In N. Abner & J. Bishop (eds.), Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla, 388-396. SYBESMA, R.P.E. (1997). Why Chinese verb-le is a resultative predicate. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 6 (3):215-261. TALMY, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive semantics: Tipology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT press. WASHIO, R. (1997). Resultatives, compositionality and language variation. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 6:1–49. WECHSLER, S. (2005). Resultatives under the ‘event-argument homomorphism’ model of telicity. In N. Erteschik-Shir and T. Rappoport (eds.), The Syntax of Aspect. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 255–273. XIAO, R. & McENERY, R. (2004). Aspect in Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus-based Study. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

This is the second article in a two-part introduction to Chinese historical syntax. The previous article introduces aspects of pre-medieval grammar which differ markedly from modern Chinese varieties, specifically fronting of object NPs to preverbal position, the asymmetry between subject and object relative clause formation, and the encoding of argument structure alternations like active and passive. Each of these characteristics is related to morphological distinctions on nouns, verbs, or pronouns which are either overtly represented in the logographic writing system in Archaic Chinese or have been reconstructed for (Pre-)Archaic Chinese. In this second article, I discuss changes which took place in Middle Chinese and correlate these innovations with the loss of the (Pre-)Archaic Chinese morphology. The main goal of these articles is to highlight a common denominator, i.e. the morphology, which enables a systemic view of pre-medieval Chinese and the changes which have resulted in the striking differences observed in Middle Chinese and beyond.

Journal of linguistics, 2024

Contrast, adversative and corrective can all be represented by er in Classical Chinese, but they are lexicalized respectively by er, danshi and ershi in Modern Chinese. The two lexicalization systems suggest that the opposition relations have commonalities as well as differences. In the framework of relevance theory and 'three domains', this study argues that the three opposition relations are in different cognitive domains, at different representational levels, and trigger different inferences, which accounts for their diverse lexicalizations in Modern Chinese. The opposition relations also have cognitive or metaphorical connections with each other, which justifies their unified actualization in Classical Chinese. The pragmatics-cognitive framework could also account for interlinguistic data.

MICHAEL LACKNER CIRCUMNAVIGATING THE UNFAMILIAR: DAO'AN (314-385) AND YAN FU (1 852-1921) ON WESTERN GRAMMAR Finding a precise term for an unfamiliar phenomenon may only be the second step in the appropriation of new things and new ideas. Rather, describing the phenomenon. by means of paraphrases seems to be a more congenia1 way during the first phase of the integration of new knowledge into an existing taxonomic system. In nineteenth-century China, a huge thesaurus of words coined by missionaries and their collaborators became available for any Chinese interested in "new terms for new ideas". However, these words were not interesting by themselves until 也e very moment when the necessity arose to address the facts for which they were meant. In such cases, one would either use a term which had already been coined (not without discussing it, again by means of paraphrases) , or coin a new word ，时， very fre quently , resort to some kind of conceptua1 periplus ，往ying to circum navigate the phenomenon with paraphrases. Given the fact that traditional China had not developed an autoch thonous linguistic vocabulary for the pu叩ose of analyzing grammati cal and syntactica1 phenomena, the description of the special characte ristics of foreign languages seems of particular interest. Since the first full-fledged explicit grammar of Chinese appeared only in 1898 (the Mashi wentong 属民文通[Mr. Ma's Grammar])l , one might ask how differences in syntactical structure were described, conceptua1ized, and fina11y, put into terms. 1 am interested in the first step, that is, the phenomenologica1 description. When confronted, let us say , with a totally a1ien system of communication with almost no reference to our known languages: how would we proceed to put it into words, espe cia11y if we were unaware of or would not adhere to Chomskyan or, more genera11y , universa1 approaches to grammar?