V2 as Head

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

‘What happened in the dream made him cry himself awake.’

Again, V1 in the resultative compound ku-xing ‘cry awake’ indicates an action.

Instead of entering a transitive-unergative category or the opposite category as the

compound in (51), the whole compound ku-xing ‘cry awake’ is realized in a mixed

category, the transitive pattern given in (52a) and the causative one presented in (52b).

This evidence implies that an activity-denoting V1 does not necessarily block

stative-related ergative and causative patterns for its compound.

Despite V1’s activity event type, one compound is still able to form an

ergative-causative pattern. The aspectual and event type of V1 roughly generalizes the

possible aspectual and event type of the whole compound, not precisely predicting it.

Therefore, the ground for determining V1 as the head based on this aspectuality/event

type account may be shaky.

4.2 V2 as Head

4.2.1 Shen’s Analysis (1992)

The V2-as-head hypothesis is supported by Shen (1992), who counters the

V1-headed view (Li, 1990, 1995, 1999) by asserting that the logical subject of V2, not

that of V1, is realized as the subject of the entire compound. Examples are given in

(53) and (54).

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

(53) a. shoupa ku-shi-le

handkerchief cry-wet-ASP

‘The handkerchief was wet with tears.’

b. *ta ku-shi-le

he cry-wet-ASP

Intended: ‘He cried and made something wet.’

(54) a. yanjing kan-hua-le

eye look-blurred-ASP

‘Someone read so much that his eyes got blurred.’

b. *ta kan-hua-le

he look-blurred-ASP

Intended: ‘He read and made something blurred.’

In these sentences, neither the external argument of ku ‘cry’ nor that of kan ‘look’

is allowed to surface as the subject of the whole compound. Instead, it is the external

argument of V2 that is realized as the subject of the entire compound. Given that the

external argument of the head should be projected, Shen (1992) then concludes that

‧

resultative compounds are headed by V2. Nevertheless, this argument can be

disproved because compounds with V1’s external argument realized are still available

as shown in the previous section 4.1. Therefore, it is inappropriate to postulate this

V2-as-head argument when counterexamples exist.

4.2.2 Tai’s Analysis (2003)

From a relatively semantic perspective, one study (Tai, 2003) presumes that V2

is the head of a resultative compound because it holds the main meaning of a

predicate. For many compounds, V1 specifies how an action is done or a state is

achieved, while V2, as the “center of predication,” demonstrates the semantic focus of

the compound.

Tai (2003) provides several verb compounds consisting of si ‘die’ as the second

verb to illustrate that V2 is the “semantic prime,” the semantic focus, of the

compound. First, he justifies his position by comparing Mandarin verb compounds

with si ‘die’ to their equivalent English verb ‘kill.’ For example, nian-si ‘grind-die,’

da-si ‘hit-die,’ e-si ‘starve-die’ can all be translated into ‘kill’ in English. In this sense,

V2 indeed functions as the center of predication, relating the semantic focus to si

‘die.’ As for V1, it serves more as a manner adverb, explaining the manner that causes

dying. Thus, it is plausible to regard V2 as the head of the compound.

However, Cheng and Huang (1994) refuted this hypothesis, offering other strings

‧

of examples such as ti-kai ‘kick-open,’ ti-dao ‘kick-fall,’ ti-bian ‘kick-flat.’ These

compounds with ti- ‘kick’ describes the results caused by the action ti ‘kick.’ After

comparing compounds with -si ‘die’ to those with ti- ‘kick,’ we observe that manners

of killing are highlighted for the former and that results from kicking are emphasized

for the latter. Based on these examples, Cheng and Huang conclude that this

semantic/conceptual analysis can only show the semantic composition of compounds.

The issue of headedness is not even involved.

Rejecting both Tai’s and Cheng and Huang’s stances, we discover that the

concept of semantic prime as the head is too context-dependent. The semantic focus

of one compound can be either V1 or V2 based on the context or the focus a speaker

aims to convey. Take ti-bian ‘kick-flat’ for instance. It is allowed to appear in a

sentence like wo mei-you ti-bian-le guan-zi, wo ya-bian-le guan-zi ‘I didn’t kick the

can flat. I squashed it.’ to show the manner of making the can flat is the focus. In this

case, V1 is the semantic focus. Nevertheless, if a sentence like wo mei-you ti-bian-le

guan-zi, wo ti-kai-le guan-zi ‘I didn’t kick the can flat. I kicked it open.’ is presented,

it is clear that the semantic focus lies in V2, the result from kicking. The example of

ti-bian ‘kick-flat’ indicates that this semantic perspective relies much on the context and that the head varies too easily as the context changes.

Second, from a syntactic perspective, the sentence from (55) in which V2 can

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

stand alone but V1 cannot (Tai, 2003) implies that V1 does not have to be a verb when

used independently, supporting the observation which V1 functions like a manner

adverb. A similar assumption has been made by Li (1984), who points out that V1 can

be omitted but V2 cannot. By presenting this evidence, Li (1984) and Tai (2003) both

imply that V2 should be the head.

(55) ta-de yanjing ku-xia-le

he-GEN eye cry-blind-ASP

‘He cried so much he could barely see.’

Unfortunately, this analysis is not tenable. Counterexamples can be easily found,

with an erasable V2, both erasable V1 and V2, and both inerasable V1 and V2, as

demonstrated in (56), (57), and (58), respectively.

(56) Zhangsan da-si-le Lisi

John hit-die-ASP Lee

‘John hit Lee to the extent of making Lee die.’

(57) Zhangsan xiao-feng-le

John laugh-crazy-ASP

‘John laughed so much it seemed like he went crazy.’

‧

‘That book made his eyes blurred (from reading it).’

The examples from (56) to (58) prove that resultative compounds can be

left-headed, double-headed, and headless, weakening the analysis proposed by Tai

(2003) and Li (1984) in which resultative compounds are right-headed only.

Consequently, this V2-headed analysis is undesirable.

4.3 Double-headedness