Download Result predication in Mandarin verb compound

Result predication in Mandarin verb compounds
Result predication may involve a change of state (1a) and change of spatial location (1b, c). In
Mandarin, both kinds of results may be expressed by a verbal compound, as (1a-c) show. This
paper argues that despite the apparent occurrence of stative morphemes as the second member of
the compound (V2), only cases in which V2 encodes change (of state or location) constitute actual
resultative compounds. In particular, I show (i) that V2 in the resultative verb compounds (RVCs)
such as (1a) has a change of state (COS) meaning, and (ii) the directional interpretation of the
verb-coverb compound (VCC) in (1c) arises from pragmatic factors. (A coverb is a prepositionlike morpheme with verb-like properties.) That is, I argue (1a,b) are resultative, but (1c) is not.
(1) a. laoshu yao-lan-le
tuoxie
b. laoshu pao-dao-le
shizhong-shang
mouse chew-tattered-PERF slipper
mouse run-arrive-PERF clock-upon
The mouse chewed the slipper to tatters.
The mouse ran onto the clock.
c. wuya fei-zai qiang-shang
crow fly-be.at wall-upon
The crow flew onto the wall.
(i) is not self-evident as the same form encodes both state (2a) and COS (2b) meanings in Mandarin
(e.g. Sybesma 1997). It is thus not obvious whether (2c) contains a stative or COS V2.
(2) a. ta hen pang
b. ta hui pang
c. bie chi pang
3sg very fat
3sg will plump
don’t eat fat
(S)he is (very) fat (State).
(S)he will become fat. (COS) Don’t eat (yourself) fat! (RVC)
Two arguments can be provided for (i). First, the compounds in (1a, b), but not that in (1c),
can participate in the “potential construction”, in which the negation morpheme bu ‘not’ or the
morpheme de ‘get’, is inserted into the verb compound to assert the (im)possibility of attaining the
relevant result:
(3) a. laoshu yao-bu-lan
zhuantou
b. laoshu pao-bu-dao shizhong-shang
mouse chew-not-tattered brick
mouse run-not-arrive clock-upon
The mouse can’t chew a brick apart.
The mouse isn’t able to run onto the clock.
c.*wuya fei-bu-zai qiang-shang
crow fly-not-be.at wall-upon
Intended: The crow isn’t able to fly onto the wall.
Second, RVCs such as that in (1a) and VCCs with dao ‘arrive/to’ as in (1b) are consistent in
their resultative interpretations, but the directional interpretation of V-zai compounds is not always
available, as (4) shows:
(4) you shihou fei zai kong-zhong de
wuya hui diao-xia-lai
have time fly be.at space-within ASSOC crow will fall-down-come
Sometimes, crows flying in the air would fall down. (locative)
These contrasts can be accounted for if we assume lan ‘tattered’ in (1a) has a non-stative COS
event structure, analogous to the change of location moprheme dao ‘arrive/to’ in (1b), but in contrast to the stativity of locative zai ‘be at’ in (1c). In further support of this conclusion, I provide
results from a corpus study showing that directional interpetations of manner of motion verb with
zai ‘be at’ are facilitated by four factors: (i) verbs that describe “short”, punctual motion, e.g. tiao
‘jump’; (ii) a less specific path description; (iii) a less specific manner of motion; (iv) occurrence of
the V-zai clause in a narrative sequence. These results support a pragmatic approach (e.g. Nikitina
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2008) towards the directional interpretation of (1c), distinguishing (1c) from (1b). This conclusion contrasts with approaches that posit lexical ambiguity as the source of directional readings in
motion sentences without a directional morpheme (e.g. Folli and Ramchand 2005).
The meanings of (1a, b) can be represented as (5a, b) respectively. ((1a, b) contrast in that (1a)
is causative while (1b) is not. I set this issue aside in this paper.) I represent the COS or change
of location meaning component of V2 in these compounds through the BECOME operator (Dowty
1979, von Stechow 1996). That both (1a, b) have achievement-type event structures is evidenced
by their inability to occur in the progressive aspect (6a, b). Building on Cresswell (1978), the PATH
function in (5b) applies to a motion event, and returns its location at each moment of its runtime.
(5b) says that (1b) is an event of the mouse arriving at the top of the clock, and there is also a
running event such that the path of the final part of this running event is a (not necessarily proper)
part of the path of the arrival event. The last conjunct of (5c) assures that the arrival event path has
as a subpart the path of no other motion event.
(5) a. λ e ∃ e’ [CAUS(e)(e� ) ∧ bite’(the.shoe)(the.mouse)(e� ) ∧ BECOME(tattered)(shoe)(e)]
b. λ e ∃ e� [run’(the.mouse)(e� ) ∧ BECOME[be.at’(top.of.clock)(the.mouse)(e)] ∧
PATH ( FIN (e� )) � PATH (e) ∧ ∀ e�� PATH (e�� ) � PATH (e) → e�� � FIN (e� ) ]
(6) a.*laoshu zai yao-lan
tuoxie
b.*laoshu zai pao-dao shizhong-shang
mouse PROG chew-tattered slipper
mouse be.at run-arrive clock-upon
The mouse is chewing the slipper tattered. The mouse is running to the top of the clock.
As argued above, the directional interpretation of (1c) arises through pragmatic inference. Semantically, I argue the V-zai compound in (1c) expresses THEME LOCATION. For current purposes, it
is sufficient to define theme as the participant of which location or motion is predicated (Fillmore
1968). I assume (1c) describes an event e of the crow flying, and a (not necessarily proper) subpart
e� of e, which contains the final part of e, is such that the crow is also on the wall during each
moment i of the runtime of this subevent (τ (e� )) (see (7)).
(7) λ e [fly� (the.crow)(e) ∧ ∃ e� [ e� � e ∧ FIN(e) � e� ∧ ∀ i ∈ τ (e� ) [be.at� (top.of.wall)(the.crow)
at i]]]
This kind of meaning for V-zai compounds is compatible with a locative interpretation, e.g. in (4),
in which case e� is simply equivalent to the motion event. If e� is interpreted as the the final part of
the motion event, however, a directional interpretation arises.
Numerous approaches have been proposed for the source of the resultative meaning in the equivalents of examples (1a-c) across languages. These include aspectual elasticity e.g. (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998), constructional means e.g. Higginbotham’s (2000) telic pair formation, lexical ambiguity in verbs and prepositions (Folli and Ramchand 2005), among others. The current
work shows that in Mandarin, “true” result predication requires the presence of a result-encoding
morpheme, and lexical ambiguity or aspectual elasticity is limited only to particular classes (here
non-locative predicates). This conclusion highlights the relevance of language-particular factors in
result predication.
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References
Cresswell, M.J. 1978. Prepositions and points of view. Linguistics and Philosophy 2.1–41.
Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.
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Harms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Folli, Rafaella, and Gillian Ramchand. 2005. Prepositions and results in Italian and English: an analysis from event
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Higginbotham, James. 2000. Accomplishments. In Proceedings of the Nanzan GLOW, 131–139.
Nikitina, Tatiana. 2008. Pragmatic factors and variation in the expression of spatial goals: The case of into vs.
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Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder, 97–134. CSLI.
Sybesma, Rint. 1997. Why Chinese verb-le is a resultative predicate. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 6.215–261.
von Stechow, Arnim. 1996. The different readings of wieder ‘again’: a structural account. Journal of Semantics
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