Reflexive verbs in mandarin Chinese

這篇論文主要是探討漢語中反身動詞的語言現象。根據反身動詞的及物性，分成不及物反身動詞和及物反身動詞兩類。不及物反身動詞的主語含有兩種論旨角色的特性，也就是動作者和受事者。在詞彙照映理論的規範下，此篇論文主張，不及物反身動詞的主語是由一個組合性的論旨角色照映而來。此外，此一組合性的論旨角色帶有一個[-r]的特徵，藉此界定不及物反身動詞是一種述格動詞。這個結論是根基於對不及物反身動詞的句法行為、語意特性、和事件結構的觀察。至於及物反身動詞的語言現象，此篇論文在此類動詞的詞項中規定以下的特性。第一:、及物反身動詞帶有一個主語和一個句補語。第二、此句補語含有一個指涉主要主語的照應詞。第三、詞項中包含一個照應詞約束等式來描述這個照應詞本身的分佈、以及此照應詞如何經由某些路徑找其前行詞。The goal of this thesis is to explore the linguistics phenomena of reflexive verbs in Mandarin. The reflexive verbs are classified into two classes in terms of their subcategorization frame. The first is intransitive reflexive verbs such as zi-sha 'to commit suicide' and the second is transitive reflexive verbs such as zi-ren 'to think of oneself as'. The former has the meaning to do to oneself, and the latter the meaning to assert something about oneself. In addition, the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar is applied to describe the observed phenomena.The intransitive reflexive verbs, such as zi-sha 'to commit suicide', and zi-fen 'to burn oneself, are formed with a reflexive morpheme zi- 'self and a root verb. They are complex predicates in the sense that their semantics is compositional. It is evidently that some of these reflexive verbs can occur in the context where the unaccusative verbs can occur. On the other hand, the subject of these reflexive verbs possesses some agent properties. To account for the fact that the subject of intransitive reflexive verbs possesses patient properties as well as agent properties, we propose a morpholexical operation of lexical binding and assert that the Mandarin intransitive reflexive verbs are unaccusative verbs. In the morpholexical operation, the subject of the reflexive verbs is mapped from a composite role which has a [-r] feature showing the unaccusative status of the verbs. This operation is data-driven and based on the observation of the syntactic behavior of reflexive verbs, calculation of thematic properties of the subject of reflexive verbs, and the event structure of reflexive verbs. The present analysis offers additional evidence to support the idea that the distinction between thematic roles is not discrete and the thematic distinction between unaccusative and unergative is that of a continuum.The transitive reflexive verbs in Mandarin Chinese, which are formed with the reflexive prefix zi- 'self' and a transitive verb, subcategorize for a sentential complement instead of a nominal object. These reflexive verbs require their subject to bind with a certain grammatical function within the sentential complement. Thedata selected from the Sinica Corpus show the following facts. First, the embedded subject of the reflexive verbs is not necessarily empty. Second, the matrix subject can bind with any grammatical function in the complement besides the embedded subject. Furthermore, Mandarin reflexive verbs determine the referential properties of the embedded anaphor. In the proposed account, the grammatical information is encoded in the lexical entry of transitive reflexive verbs. The lexical entry encodes the following grammatical information. First, it states that transitive reflexive verbs subcategorize for a SUBJ and an SCOMP. Second, the SCOMP contains an anaphor whose antecedent is the matrix subject of the reflexive verbs. Third, the lexical entry contains an anaphoric binding equation which is proposed to constrain (i) the embedded anaphor's distribution, and (ii) how the anaphor finds its antecedent, and (iii) the path it can pass through. This analysis accounts for why various anaphors are neutralized in terms of their referential properties, the blocking effect raised by the presence of reflexive verbs, and the affected referential properties of each anaphor. In brief, the transitive reflexive verbs determine the referential properties of the embedded anaphor

What Can Near Synonyms Tell Us

This study examines near synonyms and tries to extract the contrasts that dictate their semantic and associated syntactic behaviors. A near synonym pair of Chinese verbs, fangbian and bianli, which mean `to be convenient', is under examination. Corpus data reveal some important but opaque distributional differences between this synonym pair that are hard to be recognized solely by intuition. This study demonstrates how the corpus data can be a useful tool that helps understanding the interaction between syntax and semantics. 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to find the semantic features that determine the relevant syntactic behaviors. Tsai et al (1996a; 1996b; 1997), in their recent studies of comparing near synonyms of Chinese verbs, claim that some basic semantic components or features can predict the different syntactic behaviors of near synonyms. One of the successful examples is the comparison of the near synonym pair gaoxing and kuaile `happy vs. glad'. They propose two ..