Ⅴ. ANALYZING THE VERBS IN THREE TYPES OF V-SHANG
5.2 Verbs in V-shang Patient
5.2.2 The argument structure of V-shang Patient
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b. 喜歡上 網際網路 xihuan-shang wangjiwanglu like internet
‘(Someone) like(s) the internet.’
Also, sense verbs in stative verbs, as in (76), can be used with shang, and the actor becomes the Experiencer. Therefore, the constraint in [V-shang Patient] becomes
more flexible than the constraint in [V-shang Ground].
(76) 他的眼睛 盯上 了 兩個 龐然大物 Ta-de-yanjing ding-shang le liangge pangrandawu his eyes stare at ASP two huge things
‘He stared at two huge things.’
5.2.2 The argument structure of V-shang Patient
A Patient role portrays the ‘undergoer’ of the action or event denoted by the predicate.When the NP complement is Patient rather than Locative as the thematic role of V-shang, the phrase presents the resultative meaning. If shang is omitted in the sentence, it is still a grammatical sentence. In the sentence in (77), dai4 ‘put on’ 戴 as
a verb requires two thematic roles: Agent and Patient.
(77) a. 李四 戴 帽子 了。
Lisi dai maozi le Lisi put on cap ASP
‘Lisi put on the cap.’
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b. tai < x y > (x= ag, y=pt) IC: [-r]
DC:
S/O/… S/O UMP: S O
Here is the test that the argument structure of shang remains <th, loc>, because the subject would be a Theme which undergoes the action with no change of state. As a proto-patient, the incremental theme, is assigned [-r] in IC, and the Agent is unmarked.
On the basis of the UMP, the Agent is mapped to the subject, and the Theme to the
object. The suppression device based on LMT is conducted in (78).
(78) 李四 戴 上 帽子 了。
Lisi dai shang maozi le Lisi put on cap ASP
‘Lisi put on the cap.’
V1: dai <ag, pt>
V2: shang <th, loc>
VV: dai-shang < x y > (x= ag, y=pt) IC: [-r]
DC:
S/O/… S/O UMP: S O
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The argument structure <ag, loc> makes an ungrammatical sentence; for example,
*Lisi dai shang luo ‘Lisi put on (the hat) and go upstairs’ *李四戴上樓了. However, if we change dai4 ‘put on’ 戴 to dai4 ‘carry’ 帶, it will be a grammatical sentence, because dai4 ‘carry’ 帶 requires three thematic roles <ag, th, loc>. Dai4 ‘carry’ 帶 is the same as tui ‘push’ 推. As mentioned in 5.1, these kinds of verbs belong to V-shang with Ground or V-shang with Patient. However, dai4 ‘put on’ 戴 only requires two thematic roles, so only <ag, pt> is the best result.
In the category of V-shang with Patient, the subject position needs an actor to finish the behavior, so an Agent role can be mapped to the subject position. For the object position, the Patient role is the ‘undergoer’ of the action denoted by the V-shang. Patient is attributed from V1.
The above sentence (78) can express the accomplishment of the action, and it also can indicate that the ‘hat’ has been put on the head. V-shang with Patient conducts the resultative meaning, which is similar to the sense in RVCs. In an RVC, there is a group of compounds which need the combination between the two thematic roles from V1 and Theme from V2. For example, examples of V2 in RVCs are hao3
‘finished’好, jian4 ‘see’見, zhe 著, tiao4 ‘drop’掉, zhu4 ‘live’住, and dong4 ‘move’動 (Wang, 1995). Especially, hao3 ‘finished’好 can take the place of shang, and a possible pair is shown in (79) in which (79a) and (79b) express the same sense.
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(79) a.李四 穿 上 衣服 了。
Lisi chuan-shang-yifu -le Lisi wear-up-clothes-asp ‘Lisi put on the clothes.’
b.李四 穿 好 衣服 了。
Lisi chuan-hao-yifu -le Lisi wear-well-clothes-asp ‘Lisi put on the clothes.’
5.3 Verb types in V-shang Extent
5.3.1 Verb types in V-shang Extent
There seems to be no restriction on the types of verb which may fill in V1 of V-shang with Extent, such as time phrase yitian ‘a day’ 一天 or frequency phrase liangquan ‘two circle’ 一圈. Stative verbs are seldom used in this pattern, even
though grammatical sentences, such as the sentence of ta xihuan zhegeren xihuan-shang yinien le ‘He likes this person for a year’ 他喜歡這個人喜歡上一年了
can be made. The physical motion verb, pao3 ‘run’, is usually used in V-shang with Extent like the example in (80a). Some activity verbs like baoyuan ‘complain’ in (80b) can also attach to Extent. That V-shang replaces a location with an Extent complement indicates the time spent in the performance of the action of V1.
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ta pao-shang yitian/ liangquan he run a day/ two circle‘He ran all day/ two laps.’
b. 這件事 張三 抱怨 上 一年 了 Zhejianshi zhangsan baoyuan- shang -yi-nian le This thing zhangsan complain - one year ASP
‘Zhangsan has complained of this thing for one year.’
Some special verbs used in this category are the consuming verbs, such as hua ‘spend’
花 and fei4 ‘spend’ 費 in (81). The quantity of time points out the period of the
consumed time. The time spent on performing the action does not indicate the action of V1 but other predicates like (81a); the women spent several hours on working.
(81) a. 有些女人 會 花上 幾個小時 一起 工作 youxie-nuren hui hua-shang jige-xiaoshi yiqi gongzuo some women will spend several hours together work
‘Some women spent several hours working together.’
b. 形成 往往 要 費上 好幾年 的 時間 xingcheng wangwang yao fei-shang haojinian de shijian development usually need spend several years time
‘It usually takes many years to develop (something). ’
The time expressed by Extent depends on different kinds of V1 to show the semantic meanings. V-shang with Extent represents the state of the action and conveys the resultative meaning.
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5.3.2 The argument structure of V-shang Extent
Apart from the first and second type of shang in V-shang, Extent is required by shang in V-shang Extent. The scope of degree can be attached to V-shang to convey
the meaning of resultative quantity. According to Dowty (1991) and Her (2009), the thematic role is called Extent. And, Extent should be at the same level as Location, which is the least prominent role in the thematic hierarchy (Huang, 1993) in (82); that is, it has to be assigned the feature of [+r] as a Locative.
(82) Revised thematic hierarchy:
ag > ben > go/exp > inst > pt/th> loc/ext
Because most kinds of V1 occurring in V-shang Ground and V-shang Patient can also be used in this category, it can be seen that the argument structure of shang is changed from the Locative to the Extent, on a basis of the consistent structures of V1. Thus, shang here has the structure of <th, ext>. The evidence from the Chinese historical
novel, <Jingpingmei> 金瓶梅4, shows that shang as a predicate attaches to the
quantity, the girl’s age, as follows.
(83) 青梅 年 約 不 上 二九 Qingmei nian yue bu shang erjiu Qingmei age about not shang eighteen ‘Qingmei is not over 18 years old.’
4 The data are from Academic Sinica Tagged Corpus of Early Mandarin Chinese (中央研究院近代漢 語標記語料庫): http://db1x.sinica.edu.tw/cgi-bin/kiwi/pkiwi/pkiwi.sh
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According to the θ-Criterion, the mapping between thematic roles and syntactic
arguments must be strictly one-to-one, so the composite role has to suppress one of its thematic roles when it is mapped to a grammatical function (Her, 2009). The complement NP changes from Ground to Extent, so the thematic role varies from
Location to Extent. In the example of pao-shang ‘run’ in (84):
(84) a. 他 跑上 兩圈。
ta pao-shang liangquan he run two circle ‘He ran two laps.’
b. V1: pao3 <th, loc>
V2: shang4 <th, ext>
VV: pao-shang < th, ext > or <th, loc >
pao-shang < x y > (x= th, y=ext)
IC: [ -r ] DC: [+r]
S/O/… OBL/OBJΘ UMP: S OBL
A Theme is assigned the feature of [ -r ] in IC, and the Extent is assigned the feature [+r] in DC. According to the UMP, the Theme is mapped to the subject, and the Extent is to the OBL. The suppression happens in the composite roles. The result shows that an Extent or a Locative is able to fill the object position. This result can be
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associated with the first category of V-shang with Ground. That is, when the thematic roles of shang show the structure of <th, ext>, it gives V-shang the ability to attach to an Extent. The sentence (85) presents another test, of the verb chuan ‘wear’ 穿, which would need two thematic roles <ag, th>. An Agent role for volitional actor, and a Patient role for the undergoer of the action. Extent is chosen to map to the object
position of V-shang.
(85) a. 這件事 張三 穿 上 一年 了 Zhejianshi zhangsan chuan- shang -yi-nian le This thing zhangsan wear - one year ASP
‘Lisi has worn (something) for one year.’
b. V1: chuan <ag, pt>
V2: shang4 <th, ext>
VV: chuan-shang < th, ext >
chuan-shang < x y > (x= th, y=ext)
IC: [ -r ] DC: [+r]
S/O/… OBL/OBJΘ UMP: S OBL
From the above three categories, the first verbs (V1) in V-shang with Ground are motion verbs in physical verbs, and they mostly show the argument structure of <th,
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loc>. In the category of V-shang Patient, there are [+Path] verbs with the behavior of
‘attachment,’ and the argument structure is <ag, pt>. And, the last category is flexible of collocating with the first verb in V-shang. The verbs occurring in the first and second category can adjoin to shang in V-shang Extent.
Also, there is the variation of argument structure of shang. The argument structure of shang of <th, loc> or <th, ext> determines the structure of V-shang. The first type of <th, loc> is presented in [V-shang Ground] and [V-shang Patient]; <th, ext> is presented in [V-shang Extent]. From Chapter 4, the semantic meanings of V-shang present the variation of directional movement in [V-shang Ground], result in [V-shang Patient] and abstract sense in [V-shang Extent]. And, the difference between three categories can be explained by polysemy approach.
5.4 Polysemy
From above result, the study found the change of semantic meanings and argument structures in three categories. However, the characters in three categories are related. According to Lu (2011)’s study of analyzing shang in V-shang within the cognitive approach, Lu has suggested that the extended senses of shang should project from the proto meaning into two ways. The researchers use the assignation of spatial relation to describe a vertical motion. The TR of higher-than-LM position is
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designated as the prototypical sense of shang in Mandarin Chinese (Tyler and Evans, 2003; Kim, 2005).
Figure 4 demonstrates the relationship between the extended sense of shang in V-shang, so it shows the schema of polysemy rather than homonym. Polysemy indicates a group of words which have same spelling, pronounciation and related senses. For example, the word ‘mouth’ means either the orifice on one's face or the opening of a river. Homonym represents a group of words which also have same spelling and pronounciation but unrelated senses, such as the word desert meaning ‘to abandon’ or indicating ‘arid region.’ And, from Lu’s study, shang is similar to polysemy.
Figure 4. The organization of the core sense of shang (Lu, 2011)
Lu (2011) claims six senses of shang. The prototypical sense of shang refers to
‘vertically attained,’ which describes both the vertical motion and the resultative state of that figure in arriving at a concrete surface. This meaning is defined by V1 of a
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vertical elevation that involves effort, such as pa-shang ‘climb’ 爬上, and the following noun phrases associated with a (near-)horizontal surface. Another feature of
‘vertically higher’ portrays the vertical elevation of a primary figure as the most important element in the conceptual scene. A verb of vertical elevation involves relatively less physical effort in ‘vertically higher’ than verbs of ‘vertically attained’
such as fei ‘fly’ 飛 below.
(86) 連人帶傘 飛上 天空 lian-ren-dai-san fei-shang tiankong
with-person-bring-parachute float-shang sky
“(He) floated up onto the sky along with his parachute.”
‘Forward’ develops from ‘vertical attainment’ to express non-vertical motion, such as gan-shang ‘follow up’ 趕上. ‘Vertically higher,’ ‘vertically attained’ and ‘forward’
from Lu’s analysis are matched to the category of [V-shang Ground]. Shang profiles an upward orientation within different levels of a trajectory. The direction is from the vertical to the horizontal.
‘Attained’ encodes the resultant state of a figure being attached to a surface. For example, shua-shang ‘brush’ 刷上 portrays a human agent applying a brush to a SURFACE to produce a result on it. The fifth sense is ‘completive.’ This sense notes the final state of a primary figure being in contact with another entity, as a result of the verbal process, such as guan-shang ‘close’ 關上. Guan-shang damen ‘close the
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door’ 關上大門 profiles the endpoint of the process of closing and the contact between two entities. Because shua-shang ‘brush’ and guan-shang ‘close’ require a Patient complement, they are in the category of [V-shang Patient] presenting a resultative meaning. In Lu’s study, the last sense is ‘inceptive,’ which describes the beginning of a mental state, collocating with the verbs of mental contiguity, such as ai4 ‘love’ 愛. ‘Inceptive’ is adopted from ‘completive,’ and the sense is highly
schematic in an abstract domain
Lu’s research analyzes the semantic meaning of V1 to portray the figure of shang.
The development of meanings originates from the prototypical vertical movement in two directions. One way is the change in the movement orientation, while the other is the contact with the surface of the complement. The location of the former is concerned with the ending point, and the latter emphasizes the contacted surface; thus, the argument structure of shang remains the Locative role. As we mentioned in the last chapter, Extent includes duration and quantity, and expresses the consumed action time from V1 in V-shang, which is metaphorical usage from space to time (Lakoff &
Johnson, 2003), so the lexical semantics projects to thematic roles from the Locative to the Extent. Thus, the related senses present the polysemy character of shang. Also, the collocation in the three categories of V-shang can be observed in classical novels in Chinese history.
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5.5 Historical viewpoints on V-shang
Before the Chin and the Han Dynasty, no V-shang compound appears in the Sinica corpus of Old Mandarin Chinese5. Shang functioned as a verb and parallelled the other verb. A ‘Verb -Verb’ structure occurred in this period. The only possible construction in Chin (秦) was niu yang xia lai ‘the cows and goats came down.’牛羊 下來 (Pan, 1980; Zhao, 2010), and most researchers regard it as the structure of paralleled verbs which can be added a conjunction between xia4 ‘down’ 下and lai2
‘come’來.
The period from the end of Han dynasty (漢) to Song dynasty (宋) represents the period of Middle Mandarin Chinese. In this long period, the Tang dynasty (唐) marks a division point in history. Before the Tang Dynasty, from the final part of the Han Dynasty (漢) to the Weijing (魏晉), V-shang with a NP complement was not used frequently. In <Shishouxinyu>世說新語, only one example of V-shang is given, tiao-shang-shuan ‘jump on to the boat’ 跳上船, and it shows [V-shang Ground]
structure with the meaning of directional movement.
5 Academic Sinica Tagged Corpus of Old Chinese (中央研究院上古漢語標記語料庫):
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(87) 行 百里 不 去 , 遂 跳上船 <世說新語>
Xing baili bu qu, sui tiao-shang-chuan walk hundred miles not leave then jump on baot
‘(The monkey) walked in a hundred miles. It did not leave (where). Finally, it jumped on the boat.’
According to Pan (1980) and Zhao (2010), in the Tang Dynasty (唐), there was an abundance of patterns of V-shang with Patient in the texts. Also, in the Song Dynasty (宋), people frequently used V-shang with Patient NP. Some standard examples from classical novels in ancent history are presented as follows. The complements of V-shang in (88a) and (88b) are fronted, while the complement in (88c) follows
V-shang.
(88)a.以草敷上,遂生此坐 <祖堂集>
yi cao fu-shang, sui sheng ci zuo use straw put on then person this sit
‘(Someone) put the straw on (the …) and sat on it.’
b. 今 畫 現圖 一鋪 送上<入唐求法尋禮行記>
jin hua xiantu yipu song-shang now draw painting together give
‘(Someone) drew the painting and gave it to (someone).’
c. 身穿金甲,接上頭牟<敦煌變文選>
shen chuan jinjia , jie-shang toumou body wear armor put on helmet
‘(Someone) put on a suit of armor and a helmet.’
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d. 吹上寒枝 <全宋詞>
chui-shang han zhi
blow cold branches of the plant
‘The cold wind blew the branches of the plant.’
Another sentence in (88d) shows the ambiguous use of V-shang Ground or V-shang Patient, because the branches of the plant may indicate the endpoint of the process of being blown by the wind, or that the branches of the plant are blown by the wind.
In the Early Mandarin Chinese of the Yuan (元), Ming (明) and Chin (清) Dynasties, there are 2112 items of data in the Sinica corpus, and there are 303 data in Yuan, 792 data in Ming, and 1028 data in Chin6. Thus, the increasing number shows the mature development of [V-shang NP]. There is a high percentage of occurrence of [V-shang Patient], but [V-shang Ground] rarely appears in the texts. That is to say, the resultative meaning makes great influence on the [V-shang NP] structure. In the Yuan, there are 303 items of data, and we see V-shang in references like <Yuankanzaju>元 刊 雜 劇 , <Guanhanqingxiquji>關漢卿戲曲集, and <Shuihuchuan>水滸傳, etc.
V-shang with Patient is present to a high percentage. They are tested by omitting shang, and they are grammatical, as in guanfangmen ‘close the door’ 關房門 in
(89a). The patterns of V-shang in (89) are still used in the modern Chinese corpus.
6 Academic Sinica Tagged Corpus of Early Mandarin Chinese (中央研究院近代漢語標記語料庫):
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(89) a. 關上房門 便要睡 (關漢卿戲曲集) Guan-shang fangmen bianyao shui close door then sleep ‘(Someone) closed the door and then slept.’
b. 穿上 束帶朝章(元刊雜劇) chuan-shang shudaichaozhang put on clothes
‘(Someone) put on the clothes.’
c. 莊客 點上燈火 (水滸傳) zhuangke dian-shang denghuo guest light up light
‘The guest lit the light.’
In the Ming, references from <Yongledaxixiquji>永樂大戲戲曲集, <Xiyouji>西遊記,
<Jinpingmei>金瓶梅 and <Pingyaochuan>平妖傳 contain 792 items of data of
<Jinpingmei>金瓶梅 and <Pingyaochuan>平妖傳 contain 792 items of data of