Activity and Stativity

Before we proceed to discuss each of the subcategories of verbs in Chinese, we should point out the importance of the traditional distinction of active versus stative verbs. Although this distinction does not fit in our scheme of the syntactic subcategorization of verbs in terms of grammatical functions, this distinction, which is semantic in nature, is very useful to account for verbs' gradability and ability to be marked with aspect particles, as we shall explicate

below. However, such a simple distinction between stativity and activity may not be adequate for Mandarin verbs and therefore the commonly held assertions that 1) active verbs may be marked with aspect while stative verbs may not and 2) stative verbs may take degree adverbs while active verbs may not are not entirely accurate (e.g. Chang et al 1988:416). We shall adopt a finer distinction using two binary features, ACTIVE and PROCESS, proposed by Her (1985-6), where ACTIVE is said to indicate the initialization of an action or event and PROCESS the change of state. Four subcategories of verbs are recognized: state, process, action, action-process. Note that the following table depicts the four subcategories and there is no theoretical significance attached to the higher and lower branching.

Table 3.1

Semantic Subcategories of Mandarin Verbs Mandarin Verbs

┌────────────┴────────────┐

[ACTIVE -] [ACTIVE +]

┌─────┴─────┐ ┌─────┴─────┐

[PROCESS -] [PROCESS +] [PROCESS -] [PROCESS +]

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

State V's Process V's Action V's Action-Process V's

gao1 bing4 pao3 sha1si3 'tall' 'sick' 'run' 'kill' cong1ming2 si3 qu4 zhang3da4 'smart' 'die' 'go' 'grow up' que4ding4 chen2 (intran.) gong1zuo4 fa1fu2 'sure' 'sink' 'work' 'become fat' xiang3nian4 kai1 shuo1 da3kai1 'miss' 'open' (intran.) 'say' 'open' (tran)

We thus set up four feature inheritance (FI) entries for these four classes:

VERBSUBCATEGORIZATIONINMANDARINCHINESE 81

FI-V-STATE:

[ FS [ ACTIVE - PROCESS -

]

]

FI-V-PROCESS:

[ FS [ ACTIVE -

PROCESS +

] ]

FI-V-ACTION:

[ FS [ ACTIVE + PROCESS -

]

]

FI-V-ACTPRO:

[ FS [ ACTIVE + PROCESS +

] ]

In terms of gradability, only a state verb, [ACTIVE - PROCESS -], may be gradable, or to be modified by adverbial degree elements such as hen3 'very', comparative [bi3 NP] and geng4 'more', and superlative zui4 'most'. As we can see in the following examples, only state verbs are gradable.

1. a. Ta1 hen3 xiang3nian4 ni3. `state V he very miss you

‘He misses you very much.’

b.*Ta1 hen3 bing4-le. `process V he very sick LE

‘He is very ill.’

c.*Ta1 hen3 qu4 Tai2wan1. `action he very go Tai2wan1.

‘*He very goes to Taiwan.’

d.*Ta hen3 da3kai1 men2. `action-process he very open door

‘*He very opens the door wide.’

A certain degree of idiosyncracy however still exists among state verbs regarding their ability to be modified by degree adverbs. It seems that not all state verbs are gradable. Yao4 'want', for instance, is semantically very similar to xiang3 'want' in a pivotal construction and yet the former can never co-occur with degree adverbs. Likewise, although ren4wei2 'think' and xiang3 'think' are semantically equivalent when they take a sentential complement, the latter cannot be modified by degree adverbs. Such idiosyncracies of course still need to be accounted for in the lexical entries of individual verbs.

2. a. Wo3 hen3 xiang3 qu4.

I very want go

‘I want to go very much.’

b.*Wo3 hen3 yao4 qu4.

I very want go

‘I want to go very much.’

c. Wo3 hen3 bu4 ren4wei2 ta1 hui4 lai2.

I very not think he will come

‘I really don't think he will come.’

d.*Wo3 hen3 bu4 xiang3 ta1 hui4 lai2.

I very not think he will come

‘I really don't think he will come.’

While most verbs may be marked with aspect markers perfective le (i.e., postverbal le, not the sentence-final le) and experiential guo4, only verbs with

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[ACTIVE +] or [PROCESS +] may be marked with the progressive aspect zhe, or the adverb zheng4zai4 'progressively'. In other words, only state verbs may not be marked with progress aspect, as illustrated with the examples below.

3. a. Ta1 xian4zai4 cong1ming2-le. `state V he now smart LE

‘He is now smart.’

a' Ta1 mei2you3 cong1ming2-guo4 he not smart GUO ‘He has never been smart.’

a"*Ta1 cong1ming2-zhe.

he smart ZHE ‘He is being smart.’

b. Chuan2 chen2-le. `process V

ship sink LE

‘The ship has sunk.’

b' Chuan2 chen2-guo4.

ship sink GUO

‘The ship has sunk before.’

b" Chuan2 chen2-zhe.

ship sink ZHE

‘The ship is sinking.’

c. Ta1 shuo1-le ni3 hui4 lai2. `action V he say LE you will come

‘He has said that you would come.’

c' Ta1 shuo1-guo4 ni3 hui4 lai2.

he say GUO you will come

‘He has said before that you would come.’

c" Ta1 shuo1-zhe ni3 hui4 lai2.

he say ZHE you will come

‘He is saying that you will come.’

d. Ta1 fa1fu2 le. `action-process he become-fat LE.

‘He has become fat.’

d' Ta1 yi3qian2 fa1fu2 guo4.

he before become-fat GUO.

‘He has become fat before.’

d" Ta1 na4 shi2hou4 zheng4zai4 fa1fu2 zhe.

he that time progressively become-fat GUO.

‘At that time he was becoming fat.’

This semantic classification may also be relevant to the description of the morpholexical process of resultative compounding, where an action verb, [ACTIVE + PROCESS -], which may be either transitive or intransitive, is joined by an [ACTIVE -] verb, i.e., either a state verb or a process verb, to form an action-process verb, [ACTIVE + PROCESS +]. For instance,

[V1] + [V2] = Resultative Compound da3 'hit' kai1 'open' da3kai1

ti1 'kick' po4 'broken' ti1po4 zha4 'bomb' chen2 'sink' zha4chen2

--- Action verbs Process Verbs Action-Process Verbs

VERBSUBCATEGORIZATIONINMANDARINCHINESE 85

[V1] + [V2] = Resultative Compound pao3 'run' lei4 'tired' pao3lei4

zhang3 'grow' gao1 'tall' zhang3gao1 kan4 'see' qing1chu3 'clear' kan4qing1chu3 --- Action verbs State Verbs Action-Process Verbs

Similarly, in the syntactic construction of a verb joined by an adverbial phrase maker such as wan2 'finish' and qi3 and qi3lai2 'start' (Cheng 1990 and personal communication), the verb has to be an action verb, thus [ACTIVE + PROCESS -], as shown in the following examples.

3. a. Ta1 kan4 wan2 le shu1.

he read finish LE book

‘He finished reading the book.’

b. Ta1 kan4 qi3 le shu1.

he read start LE book

‘He started reading the book.’

Among the four verb classes here, no doubt finer distinctions can still be made and subclasses identified according to other semantic features, and derivational relations may exist among these semantic verb classes (Her 1985-6). The detailed study of such derivational relations and the co-occurrence restrictions and requirements between the semantic verb subcategories and elements of other syntactic and semantic categories would be beyond the scope of this study; however, such a study as well as the further exploration of the interaction between the semantic classification and the syntactic subcategorization of grammatical functions should be an essential part of the description of Mandarin verbs.