ISSUES IN THEARGUMENTSTRUCTURE OFMANDARINCHINESE by ZenghongJia A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillmentoftherequirementsforthedegreeofDoctorofPhilosophyinLinguistics Fall 2015 (cid:13)c 2015 ZenghongJia AllRightsReserved ProQuest Number: 10014797 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ProQuest 10014797 Published by ProQuest LLC (2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346 ISSUES IN THEARGUMENTSTRUCTURE OFMANDARINCHINESE by ZenghongJia Approved: BenjaminBruening, Ph.D. ChairoftheDepartmentofLinguisticsandCognitiveScience Approved: GeorgeH. Watson,Ph.D. Dean oftheCollegeofArtsand Science Approved: AnnL. Ardis,Ph.D. InterimViceProvostforGraduateand ProfessionalEducation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the aca- demicand professionalstandard required bytheUniversityas adissertationforthe degreeofDoctorofPhilosophy. Signed: Benjamin Bruening,Ph.D. Professorin chargeofdissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the aca- demicand professionalstandard required bytheUniversityas adissertationforthe degreeofDoctorofPhilosophy. Signed: Satoshi Tomioka,Ph.D. Memberofdissertationcommittee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the aca- demicand professionalstandard required bytheUniversityas adissertationforthe degreeofDoctorofPhilosophy. Signed: Peter Cole, Ph.D. Memberofdissertationcommittee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the aca- demicand professionalstandard required bytheUniversityas adissertationforthe degreeofDoctorofPhilosophy. Signed: HaihuaPan, Ph.D. Memberofdissertationcommittee ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Iam immenselyindebtedto all fourmembers ofmy dissertationcommittee,without whosekindhelpthisdissertationwouldnothavebeenpossible. BenjaminBruening,myad- visorand chairofthecommittee,has read each draft ofthisdissertationand givenmemany insightfulsuggestionsforimprovement. Ithankhimforalwaysfindingtimetomeetanden- couragingmeto digdeeper intotheissues. SatoshiTomiokahas givenmealotofhelp with the semantic analyses and generously shared with me his thoughts on the Inalienable Pos- sessionConstructionsinKoreanwhichisadirectinspirationformyanalysisoftheExternal Possession Constructions in Mandarin. Peter Cole gaveme many invaluablecomments that helped me clarify the cross-linguistic significance of my theory, especially my analysis of the A-not-A questions. Haihua Pan raised important questions and brought to my attention Mandarinexamplesthatare directlyrelevantforimprovingmyanalysis. I also want to thank the Delaware linguisticcommunity. I am especially indebted to Renee Dong, Yuqian Ding, Huan Luo, Xiaole Sun and Jiao Wang for always being avail- able to discuss the Mandarin sentences with me. For discussions on languages other than Mandarin (although some did not make it to this dissertation), I thank David Rubio, Manex Agirrezabal,JustinRill,YugyeongParkandJooyoungKim. IamalsoindebtedtoMaryEllen Cathcart for comments on an early draft of the chapter on A-not-A questions and Amanda Payneforproofreading. I am also grateful to Jane Creswell for her administrative work and kind help since thedayIarrived inNewark. Last but not least, my thanks go to my family. I thank my husband Ontario Lau for his patience, love and unfailing support. I thank my parents, Zhenhua Jia and Xiuqin Dai, foralways havingconfidencein meand allowingmetobeas ambitiousas Iwant. iv TABLE OFCONTENTS ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 TheoriesofArgumentStructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 A-not-AQuestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3 TheBei-Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.4 TheExternal PossessionConstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1.5 TheStructure ofThisDissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2 A-NOT-A QUESTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.2 Factsand PreviousAnalyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.1 Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.2.2 DistributionofAdjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.2.3 IndefiniteObjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.2.4 Quantified NPs as Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.3 TheAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.3.1 Reduplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.3.2 TheNegativeMorpheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.3.3 CompositionalSemantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2.3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.4 EvidenceForand AgainstMovement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.5 ExplainingtheFacts thatSeem toImplicateMovement . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.5.1 DistributionofAdjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 v 2.5.2 IndefiniteNPs as Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 2.5.3 Quantifiers as Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 2.5.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.6 Cross-LinguisticVariationinA-not-A Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 2.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 3 THE BEI-CONSTRUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 3.2 A-MovementAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 3.3 EvidenceforA-Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 3.3.1 A-MovementAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.3.2 AccountingfortheFacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 3.3.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3.4 PreviousAnalyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.4.1 Long Bei-Constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.4.2 Short Bei-Constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 3.4.3 TheSubject ofBei . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 3.4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 3.5 AnalysisofBei-ConstructionswithPronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 3.5.1 TheAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 3.5.2 AccountingfortheFacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 3.5.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 4 THE EXTERNAL POSSESSION CONSTRUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 4.2 TwoTypes ofExternal Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 4.3 TheAnalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 4.3.1 EPCs inBei-Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 4.3.2 Part-WholeEPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 4.3.3 Losing-EventEPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 4.3.4 ExtendingtheAnalysisto OtherLanguages . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 vi 4.3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4.4 OtherExternal PossessionConstructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 4.4.1 ThePossessiveUnaccusativeConstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 4.4.2 ThePossessiveBa-Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 4.4.3 TheSource DoubleObjectConstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 4.4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 5 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 vii ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I investigate the argument structure of Mandarin Chinese with a focus on the syntactic heads that introduce non-core arguments of the sentence. Three con- structionsinvolvingsuch syntacticheads are examined in detail: the A-not-A questions,the Bei-Constructions and the External Possession Constructions. I show that three syntactic argument-introducing heads are involved. The beneficiary/locative/instrumental adjunct in- volvesasyntactichead belowVoicePand aboveVP, whichcan bepronounced;theExternal Possession Construction also involves a syntactic head below VoiceP and aboveVP, but the syntactic head does not have any phonological content. The Bei-Construction differs from theprevioustwoconstructionsinthat ithasan argument-introducinghead (aboveVoicePor PassP)and ispronouncedas bei. viii Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Theories ofArgument Structure Argument structure refers to how lexical items realize their arguments. The lexical item is typically a verb, but can also be an adjective or a preposition. In the English phrase ate an apple, for instance, the verb ate takes an apple as an internal argument. In the theo- reticalframeworkofGovernmentandBinding,theinternalargument,anapple,issaidtobe selected as acomplementby ate. Thisis formallyrepresented bythetreestructurein(1). (1) VP V NP ate an apple NativespeakersofEnglishknowthattheinformationinateanappleisnotcomplete because it is unknown who ate the apple. In traditional grammar, (1) is said to be lacking a subject, or ”external argument” in the terminology of generative grammar. The external argument was once believed to be associated with the verb. And the sentence John ate an appletakes theformin (2). (2) VP NP V John V NP ate an apple Recent linguistics theories have made a lot of advancements in the understanding of the argument structure in the world’s languages. For instance, many linguists observe that 1