The Chinese Resultative Construction
A Cognitive Constructional Analysis
Ronald Fong
University of Macau
This study examines the structure and functions of the Chinese resultative construction. Specifically, it makes an attempt to integrate the form and function, the syntax and semantics, Chinese and English, and formal and functional perspectives. The interface between syntax and lexical semantics has intrigued researchers in linguistics and related fields more than ever. Argument structure has been postulated to capture the relationship between syntax and semantics.
Resultative verb compounds in Chinese have been shown to provide insights into the theory of argument structure as the syntax-semantics interface. In particular, this work examines the verb classes that enter into the resultative construction in Chinese and proposes an innovative analysis of the construction based upon the insights from contemporary studies such as Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006) and Huddleston and Pullum (2002). Further, this study incorporates typological evidence and argues that the resultative construction signals the concept of subordination. The idea and the analysis is then extended to the language-particular phenomenon in Chinese – the ba-construction, which shows further usefulness of the proposed analysis. In fact, the current framework demonstrates the interesting results of the interaction between the ba-construction and the resultative construction in Chinese.
ISBN 9783862902194 (Hardcover). LINCOM Studies in Chinese Linguistics 14. 180pp. 2020.
