Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese

Other than subcategorized argument locative PPs (e.g. 放在桌子上 fàng zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘put on the table’), the postverbal position in Modern Mandarin Chinese can only be filled by limited types of adjunct locative prepositional phrases (e.g. 跳在桌子上 tiào zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘jump onto the table’). Among thes...

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Main Authors: Peck, Jeeyoung, Lin, Jingxia
Other Authors: School of Humanities
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2020
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/136907
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1369072020-03-07T12:07:50Z Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese Peck, Jeeyoung Lin, Jingxia School of Humanities Humanities::Language Postverbal Locative PP Scale Other than subcategorized argument locative PPs (e.g. 放在桌子上 fàng zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘put on the table’), the postverbal position in Modern Mandarin Chinese can only be filled by limited types of adjunct locative prepositional phrases (e.g. 跳在桌子上 tiào zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘jump onto the table’). Among these postverbal adjunct locative PPs, only a small set of PPs permits the incorporation of the preposition into the preceding verb to form a V-P compound (“preposition incorporation”), yielding their previous prepositional object to surface as the object of the compound verb V-P. Previous studies claim that adjunct phrases which quantify an event, such as event delimiters, may behave like arguments (“the delimiter hypothesis”). Yet, our observation of Chinese finds that adjunct locative PPs that are not an event delimiter (e.g. directional 向 xiàng/往 wǎng ‘toward’ PPs or non-directional 在 zài ‘at’ PPs) can also allow their prepositional object to appear as the verbal object. This thus calls for a modification of the widely accepted delimiter hypothesis. We argue that the semantic characterization of the postverbal locative PPs permitting PI can be generalized as being associated with the denotation of a scalar result. Specifically, we understand “result” from the perspective of “scale structure” proposed in recent studies and argue that in addition to delimiting an event (that is, introducing a closed scale to the event from the scalar perspective), such PPs can also add directional information (an open scale) to the event that they modify or further specify scalar information for the event denoted by the VP. This work not only provides a unified analysis of most types of preposition incorporation that involve the postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese, but is also the first study that provides a comprehensive analysis of the scalar properties and functions of Chinese locative PPs. Our findings from the Chinese data will also contribute to the cross-linguistic semantic generalization of internal adjuncts and the domain of extended direct case assignment. MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore) Accepted version 2020-02-05T02:09:15Z 2020-02-05T02:09:15Z 2019 Journal Article Peck, J., & Lin, J. (2019). Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 20(1), 85-130. doi:10.1075/lali.00030.pec 1606-822X https://hdl.handle.net/10356/136907 10.1075/lali.00030.pec 1 20 en Language and Linguistics © 2019 Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. All rights reserved. This paper was published in Language and Linguistics and is made available with permission of Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. 39 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Humanities::Language
Postverbal Locative PP
Scale
spellingShingle Humanities::Language
Postverbal Locative PP
Scale
Peck, Jeeyoung
Lin, Jingxia
Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese
description Other than subcategorized argument locative PPs (e.g. 放在桌子上 fàng zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘put on the table’), the postverbal position in Modern Mandarin Chinese can only be filled by limited types of adjunct locative prepositional phrases (e.g. 跳在桌子上 tiào zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘jump onto the table’). Among these postverbal adjunct locative PPs, only a small set of PPs permits the incorporation of the preposition into the preceding verb to form a V-P compound (“preposition incorporation”), yielding their previous prepositional object to surface as the object of the compound verb V-P. Previous studies claim that adjunct phrases which quantify an event, such as event delimiters, may behave like arguments (“the delimiter hypothesis”). Yet, our observation of Chinese finds that adjunct locative PPs that are not an event delimiter (e.g. directional 向 xiàng/往 wǎng ‘toward’ PPs or non-directional 在 zài ‘at’ PPs) can also allow their prepositional object to appear as the verbal object. This thus calls for a modification of the widely accepted delimiter hypothesis. We argue that the semantic characterization of the postverbal locative PPs permitting PI can be generalized as being associated with the denotation of a scalar result. Specifically, we understand “result” from the perspective of “scale structure” proposed in recent studies and argue that in addition to delimiting an event (that is, introducing a closed scale to the event from the scalar perspective), such PPs can also add directional information (an open scale) to the event that they modify or further specify scalar information for the event denoted by the VP. This work not only provides a unified analysis of most types of preposition incorporation that involve the postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese, but is also the first study that provides a comprehensive analysis of the scalar properties and functions of Chinese locative PPs. Our findings from the Chinese data will also contribute to the cross-linguistic semantic generalization of internal adjuncts and the domain of extended direct case assignment.
author2 School of Humanities
author_facet School of Humanities
Peck, Jeeyoung
Lin, Jingxia
format Article
author Peck, Jeeyoung
Lin, Jingxia
author_sort Peck, Jeeyoung
title Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese
title_short Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese
title_full Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese
title_fullStr Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese
title_full_unstemmed Semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative PPs in Mandarin Chinese
title_sort semantic constraint on preposition incorporation of postverbal locative pps in mandarin chinese
publishDate 2020
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/136907
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