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Chapter 6 Conclusion
It has been argued in the present study that resultative compounds in Mandarin Chinese can be a difficult issue when it comes to analyzing the interactions between the arguments from the verb components of the compounds. It is an even more intricate task to pin down the exact argument realizations of the compounds and their corresponding interpretations. Research on the derivational ground has been done in an attempt to solve the issues of argument realization and verb predication of
resultative compounds. Unfortunately, it has been shown in this thesis that the accounts given by the derivational researchers have insufficiencies and erroneous outcomes in obtainging the argument realizations and sentence interpretations of Chinese resultative compounds. Moreover, some of the resultative compounds convey causativity which alters the argument realization pattern of the compounds. And the derivational account fails to recognize that there are indeed two types of causativity, internal causativity and external causativity, which are responsible for the alternations of the causative resultative compounds.
The focus is then shifted to the lexicalist account that also aims to break down the puzzles posed by Chinese resultative compounds. The account inspected is the theory of Her’s (2007), which utilizes the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) as an
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instrument to solve the problem of resultative compounds. It has been proven that the LFG account does a better job in reaching all possible interpretations of the
compounds with its mechanisms of argument-function remapping that lead to multiple compound argument realizations. There is only one missing link in the LFG account proposed by Her (2007); i.e. the documentation of the resultative compounds that incorporate external causativity and end up having an extra argument from neither of the verb components of the compounds.
Great effort has been put in this thesis to try to account for how the resultative compounds with external causativity come into play. A rule of Causative Resultative Compounding, based on the concept of Romance complex predicates in LFG, has been provided to fill up the missing link. The result is rather satisfactory for now the LFG account is available to Chinese resultative compounds of all verb categories one could possibly encounter. A thorough demonstration of the argument-function
remapping process is later given to check the substantiality of the compounding rules and the mapping mechanisms in the LFG account. Again, the satisfactory results of the demonstration comfirm the strengths of the LFG account in dealing with Chinese resultative compounds.
Finally, some scholars claim that the V2s in some of the resultative compounds are to be seen as Extent because they function like the adverbs that describe degree.
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The claim would jeopardize the theory in this thesis if it were true, because being Extent, the V2s would not have the ability to assign any argument and would ultimately deform the compounding rules for argument realization. Therefore, as a response to the claim, the V2s have been given a dual status of being Result
syntactically and Extent functionally. This way, it eliminates the threat the claim of V2s being Extent poses to the present theory and further explicates the exclusivity of V2s to adverbs of degree along with the meaning of extremity when in certain contexts.
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