Usage Effects on the Cognitive Routinization of Chinese Resultative Verbs

The present study adopts a corpus-oriented usage-based approach to the grammar of Chinese resultative verbs. Zooming in on a specific class of V-kai constructions, this paper aims to elucidate the effect of frequency in actual usage events on shaping the linguistic representations of resultative verbs. Specifically, it will be argued that while high token frequency results in more lexicalized V-kai complex verbs, high type frequency gives rise to more schematized V-kai constructions. The routinized patterns pertinent to V-kai resultative verbs varying in their extent of specificity and generality accordingly serve as a representative illustration of the continuum between lexicon and grammar that characterizes a usage-based conception of language

The structures of depictive and resultative constructions in chinese

In this paper I firstly argue that secondary predicates are complement of v, and v is overtly realized by Merge or Move in secondary predication in Chinese. The former option derives the de-construction, whereas the latter option derives the V-V construction. Secondly, I argue that resultatives are hosted by complement vPs, whereas depictives are hosted by adjunct vPs. This complement-adjunct asymmetry accounts for a series of syntactic properties of secondary predication in Chinese: the position of a secondary predicate with respect to the verb of the primary predicate, the co-occurrence patterns of secondary predicates, the hierarchy of depictives, the control and ECM properties of resultative constructions, and the locality constraint on the integration of secondary predicates into the structure of primary predication. Thirdly, I argue that the surface position of de is derived by a PF operation which attaches de to the right of the leftmost verbal lexical head of the construction. Finally, I argue that in the V-V resultative construction, the assumed successive head-raising may account for the possible subject-oriented reading of the resultative predicate, and that the head raising out of the lower vP accounts for the possible non-specific reading of the subject of the resultative predicate

On how 'middle' plus 'associative/reciprocal' became 'passive' in the Bantu A70 languages

In this paper we show that the Bantu A70 languages did not preserve the passive morpheme inherited from Proto-Bantu (PB), but developed a new suffix. It is a morpheme that is compound in origin, consisting of two verbal derivation suffixes which still function independently in today's languages as a middle marker and an associative/reciprocal marker respectively, though with variable degrees of productivity. The genesis of a passive marker from the stacking of two pre-existing suffixes is a typologically rare evolution path, but it fits in with a wider Bantu phenomenon of double verb extensions which develop non-compositional meanings. Especially double extensions involving the Proto-Bantu associative/reciprocal marker *-an- tend to develop such idiosyncratic meanings. This suffix is also one of the constituents of the Bantu A70 passive marker Nevertheless, even within Bantu, the emergence of a productive passive marker from such double extension is unique. In this paper, we argue that the notion of co-participation may account for the rising of this passive meaning out of the stacking of the common Bantu associative/reciprocal suffix to a common Bantu middle suffix. The semantic development of this compound suffix fix (and its historical constituents) happened within the semantic continuum that links reciprocals, reflexives, middles and passives in many languages of the world, but did not necessarily follow the typologically common reflexive > reciprocal > middle > passive cline

The development of resultative and directional verb compounds in Cantonese-speaking preschool children

Also available in print.Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2007.A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2007.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Particle verbs and the conditions of projection

In this paper I discuss the properties of particle verbs in light of a proposal about syntactic projection. In section 2 I suggest that projection involves functional structure in two important ways: (i) only functional phrases can be complements, and (ii) lexical heads that take complements and project must be inflected. In section 3, I show that the structure of particle verbs is not uniform with respect to (i) and (ii). On the one hand, a particle always combines with an inflected verb; in this respect, particle verbs look like verb-complement constructions. On the other hand, the particle is not a functional phrase and therefore is not a proper complement, which makes the combination of the particle and the verb look more like a morphologically complex verb. I argue that syntactic rules can in fact interpret the node dominating the particle and the verb as a projection and as a complex head. In section 4, I show that many of the characteristic properties of particle verbs in the Germanic languages follow from the fact that they are structural hybrids

L2 Acquisition of English Present Perfect Interpretations

The present study investigates the role of first language (L1), in our case Cypriot Greek (CG) or Standard Greek (SG), in the second language (L2) acquisition of English present perfect in terms of form and meaning possibilities. With respect to native speakers of CG in particular, the primary goal is to determine whether transfer from the mother�‑tongue, in which present perfect has only a resultative reading and simple past a resultative, an existential or a definite reading, influences the acquisition of the English present perfect. It is assumed that L2 acquisition involves establishing connections between the semantic properties/overt markers for each reading and the English present perfect. Diagnostic tests proposed by Agouraki (2006) are employed in this study, based on the (in)compatibility of certain types of adverbial markers with the existential reading and the resultative reading, respectively, as well as on the distinct semantic properties of the two readings. Almost 400 participants took part in this research. The results show that there is a certain effect of L1 on the L2 acquisition of English present perfect by CG�‑ and SG�‑speaking pupils, which is argued to be mainly due to the different patterns of meanings and forms in CG, SG and English

Using Extra-Linguistic Material for Mandarin-French Verbal Constructions Comparison

International audienceSystematic cross-linguistic studies of verbs syntactic-semantic behaviors for ty-pologically distant languages such as Mandarin Chinese and French are difficult to conduct.Such studies are nevertheless necessary due to the crucial role that verbal constructions playin the mental lexicon. This paper addresses the problem by combining psycho-linguisticsand computational methods. Psycho-linguistics provides us with a bilingual corpus that fea-tures verbal construction associated with carefully built extra-linguistic material (short videoclips). Computational approaches bring us distributional semantic models (DSM) to measurethe distance between linguistic elements in the extra-linguistic space. These models allowsfor cross-linguistic measures that we evaluate against manually annotated data. In this pa-per, we discuss the results, potential shortcomings involving cultural variability and how tomeasure such bias

Resultatives and Unaccusatives: A Parametric View

This paper capitalizes on two peculiar properties of Mandarin Chinese resultative constructions that pose problems for a general theory of argument structure and parametric theory: (a) the widespread existence of unergative objectless resultatives, and (b) the possibility for both unaccusatives and unergatives to be causativized. It is proposed that these properties are reduced to the single possibility in Chinese (but not in English) for an unergative verb to merge as a manner modifier of an inchoative eventuality predicate BECOME in event structure. This parametric property is in turn reduced to a property of Chinese as a language of high analyticity. In opposition to certain recent models, the paper argues for the existence of a syntax-lexicon macro-parameter.Linguistic

How an idea germinates into a project or the intransitive resultative construction with entity-specific change-of-state verbs

This study discusses how seven of Levin's (1993) entity-specific change-of-state verbs (i.e. bloom, blossom, flower, germinate, sprout, swell, and blister) are subsumed into the intransitive resultative construction by highlighting and making use of the external and internal constraints proposed by the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM; Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal 2007). External constraints refer to cognitive mechanisms, such as high-level metaphor and/or metonymy whereas internal constraints are concerned with the encyclopedic and event structure makeup of verbs. The Internal Variable Conditioning constraint is at work when the information encapsulated by a predicate determines the choice of the Z element in an intransitive resultative construction. The semantic makeup of the verb swell and the entity undergoing swelling constrain the nature of the resultant entity Z which must be bigger in size or have a bigger value than the Y element (e.g. The work, which was originally meant to consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes)