In Liu et al. (2012), it is proposed that when the Deictic of Motion co-occurs with a Loc-NP, it can precede or follow the Loc-NP, as the examples below show:
(1) a. 回 [來/去]Deictic [學校]Loc-NP
huí lái/qù xuéxiào return come/go school
‘come/go back to school’
b. 回 [學校]Loc-NP [來/去]Deictic
huí xuéxiào lái/qù return school come/go
‘come/go back to school’
Besides the different positions that lái 來 ‘come’/ qù 去 ‘go’ can fit in, some distributional constraints are also observed in the following examples. Some verbs allow the Deictics of Motion lái 來 ‘come’/ qù 去 ‘go’ to occur either before or after the Loc-NP, as in (2), while other verbs only allow lái 來 ‘come’/ qù 去 ‘go’
to appear after the Loc-NP as in (3). There are also cases that prefer lái 來 ‘come’/
qù 去 ‘go’ to precede the Loc-NP as in (4):
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(2) V+ Loc-NP +來/去 & V+來/去+ Loc-NP a. 它跳桌上来了！
tā tiào zhuōshàng lái le 3SG jump table.top come PRF
‘It jumped onto the table.’
(Google 2012/10/08)
b. RIO 喜歡跳來桌上看我打電腦，
RIO xǐhuān tiào-lái zhuōshàng kàn wǒ dǎ diànnǎo NM like jump-come table.top watch 1SG play computer
‘RIO likes to jump onto the table to watch me play the computer.’
(Google 2012/10/08) c. 寒風夾雪撲進門來，
hánfēng jiá xuě pū-jìn mén lái cold-wind bring snow flap-enter door come
‘The cold wind bring the snow into the house.’
(Sinica Corpus)
d. 外國資本家可以堂而皇之進來大陸，
wàiguó zīběnjiā kěyǐ tangérhuángzhī jìn-lái dàlù foreign capitalist MOD make.no.secret enter-come mainland
‘Foreign capitalists can make no secret of their entering into the mainland.’
(Sinica Corpus)
(3) V+ Loc-NP +來/去 vs. *V+來/去+ Loc-NP a. 我到中國來已經快一年了，
wǒ dào zhōngguó lái yǐjīng kuài yì nián le
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1SG arrive China come already almost one year PRF
‘I have come to China for almost a year.’
(Sinica Corpus) b. *到來/去中國
dào-lái/qù zhōngguó arrive-come/go China
c. 你不往熱鬧流行的地方去，就沒有機會上電視。
nǐ bù wǎng rènào liúxíng de dìfang qù jiù méi you NEG toward bustling popular REL place go then NEG yǒu jīhuì shàng diànshì
have chance up TV
‘If you don’t go to bustling and popular places, you won’t have a chance to show up on TV programs.’
(Sinica Corpus)
d. *往來/去熱鬧流行的地方
wǎng-lái/qù rènào liúxíng de dìfang toward-come/go bustling popular REL place (4) ?V+ Loc-NP +來/去 vs. V+來/去+ Loc-NP
a. 其中一次單車的飛起來降來地面後，我單車的後胎又爆了。
qízhōng yí cì dānchē de fēiqǐlái jiàng-lái dìmiàn
among one time bicycle GEN fly.up.come descend-come ground hòu wǒ dānchē de hòutāi yòu bào le
after 1SG bicycle GEN back.tire again burst PRF
‘Once, after my bicycle flew up and landed, its tire on the back burst again.’
(Google 2012/12/11) b. ?降地面來/去
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jiàng dìmiàn lái/qù descend ground come/go
c. 氫氣球用細線牽好，用它的上升力把禮物吊在氣球上，升去 2 樓。
qīng qìqiú yòng xì xiàn qiān hǎo yòng tā de hydrogen balloon use thin thread tie solid use 3SG NOM shàngshēnglì bǎ lǐwù diào zài qìqiú shàng shēng-qù èrlóu rise.ascend.force BA gift hang ZAI balloon above ascend-go two.floor
‘Tie the hydrogen balloon with a thin thread and hang the gift on it, so that its buoyance can take the gift to the second floor.’
(Google 2012/12/11) d. ?升 2 樓來/去
shēng èrlóu lái/qù ascend two.floor come/go
In sum, there are two basic sentence patterns in the above examples: “V+
Loc-NP +來/去” and “V+來/去+ Loc-NP”. The difference of the patterns lies in the position of the Deictics of Motion. As we can see, lái 來 ‘come’/ qù 去 ‘go’ can precede or follow the Loc-NP. Some motion verbs such as tiào 跳 ‘jump’ and jìn 進
‘enter’ fit in both positions, while other motion verbs do not. Verbs such as dào 到
‘arrive’ and rù 入 ‘enter’ are incompatible with lái 來 ‘come’/ qù 去 ‘go’
following them immediately, and those such as jiàng 降 ‘descend’ and shēng 升
‘ascend’ are rarely found in the sentence pattern “V+ Loc-NP +來/去”.
From the observations above, there are still some issues to be further investigated:
1) What are the distributional patterns of the Mandarin Deictics of Motion lái 來 ‘come’/ qù 去 ‘go’ with different sequence of motion?
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2) What are the syntactic and semantic constraints on deictic marking in terms of sequence principles and semantic compatibility?
3) What are the preferred motion sequences with deictic marking? And why?
To account for these issues, this study focuses on the interaction between Mandarin Deictics of Motion and self-motion verbs, attempting to provide a detailed analysis on the sequences.