Title

A Transformationalist Approach to the Rise of RVCs in Chinese

Author

T.-H. Jonah Lin

Genre

Article  

Pages

221-256

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Language

English

Key words

coordination, adjunction, event structure, historical syntax of Chinese

Abstract

    This work argues for a specific analysis for the rise of the resultative verbal compounds in Chinese, with a focus on the decline of coordination of verbal elements in the history of Chinese. Though the RVCs in Chinese have attracted much attention in the researchers of Chinese syntax, it is shown that earlier proposals may not have provided satisfactory explanations for the decline of free coordination of verbal elements in Ancient Chinese and its correlation with the rise of the RVCs. Mei’s (2002) insightful hypothesis is adopted, according to which the phrase structure of Chinese has undergone a major change from dominantly coordinating to dominantly subordinating. A formal account is proposed, and it is argued that the free coordination of verbal elements in Ancient Chinese was in fact a case of (multiple) adjunctions of VP to the main predicate of the sentence. This account enjoys a number of advantages, as it provides a basis for capturing the right-headedness of verbal complexes in Ancient Chinese, and makes possible a unified structural analysis for the coordination structures and modification structures in Ancient Chinese. This work further suggest that the decline of free coordination of verbal elements in the history of Chinese resulted from the pressure for the one predicate to host one and only one case of event quantification. This pressure suppressed VP adjunction as a legitimate means for structure building and eventually led to the RVCs of the present form.