論漢語「自」動詞的生成: 反身及狀語類型

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(1)國立台灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 論文. Master’s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University. 論漢語「自」動詞的生成: 反身及狀語類型 Deriving Zi-verbs in Mandarin Chinese: Reflexive and Adverbial Types. 指導教授: 丁仁博士 Advisor: Dr. Jen Ting 研究生: 蕭瑜薇 Graduate: Yu-Wei Hsiao 中華民國一零六年七月 July 2017.

(2) 摘要本論文探討現代漢語「自」動詞的生成方式，以反身及狀語類型做為討論的主軸。在文獻上, 反身類型的「自」動詞的生成方式主要是把「自」動詞分析為在詞彙層形成的不及物動詞, 詞綴「自」在此種分析中被視為改變動詞詞彙性質的功能詞 (Kao 1993, Chief 1998, Lin 2010)。至於狀語類型的「自」動詞, 這類型的動詞都是在詞彙層形成 (Lin 2010)。然而，在新語料的檢驗下，我們發現部份的「自」動詞無法以詞彙途徑構成。本研究以句法途徑來生成現代漢語的「自」動詞，並將新的語料納入分析，得到所有可能的生成方式。在我們的句法分析裡，「自」動詞的生成方式有兩種: 一是透過反身性的「自」語素來生成，二是透過狀語類型的「自」語素來形成。反身類型的「自」語素被分析為一個動詞的內部論元, 而反身類的「自」動詞是透過「自」語素和動詞的併合而成。另外, 狀語類型的「自」語素被分析為一個可以增加動詞語義的成份; 狀語類「自」動詞是透過「自」語素在句法上加接到動詞的中心語上。除了以上兩類自動詞的生成方式，本論文也提出了有些自動詞(如: 自以為)是可以透過兩種類型的「自」來生成。最後，我們也提出了一項新發現:有些自動詞(如:自備)在不同語境中,「自」會產生有兩種不同的解讀, 而這兩種解讀下的「自」動詞則分別由兩種不同類型的「自」(反身及狀語類型)所生成的。. 關鍵字: 「自」動詞、反身動詞、論元結構、名詞併合、詞彙層次加接. i.

(3) ABSTRACT The thesis studies the derivations of zi-verbs in Mandarin Chinese, including reflexive and adverbial types. In the literature (Kao 1993, Chief 1998, Lin 2010), reflexive zi-verbs are derived in the lexicon, which analyzes zias a functional element, serving as a trigger of lexical operations in the lexicon. As for adverbial zi-verbs, the previous analysis (Lin 2010) derives them in the lexicon. With more facts examined, the study finds that some zi-verbs cannot be derived under the lexical approach. We propose a syntactic approach to deriving zi-verbs in Mandarin Chinese and present possible derivations for existing facts in the syntax. Under our syntactic approach, the derivations of zi-verbs fall into two ways: (i) by the reflexive zi- and (ii) by the adverbial zi-. The reflexive zi- is analyzed as an internal argument of a verb and the reflexive zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ are derived by noun incorporation. On the other hand, the adverbial zi- is analyzed as a morpheme that contributes an extra meaning such as ‘by oneself’ to the verb and the adverbial zi-verbs are derived by word-level adjunction. Moreover, under our syntactic approach, it is found that some zi-verbs such as zi-yiwei ‘consider oneself’ have two possible derivations – by the reflexive zi- or the adverbial zi-. Lastly, new observations about zi-verbs are made in the thesis that some zi-verbs have two interpretations, which result from two possible derivations: reflexive and adverbial types.. Keywords: zi-verb, reflexive verb, argument structure, noun incorporation, word-level adjunction. ii.

(4) Acknowledgements The process of doing research is a long and strenuous journey. For me, the thesis is an important milestone of this journey, which cannot be done singlehandedly. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my academic advisor, Prof. Jen Ting. She has been strongly encouraging and supportive of me. I’m greatly indebted to her for the feedback and thought-provoking comments on my papers and thesis. Thanks also to my committee members, Prof. Hsiao-hong Wu and Prof. Rui-heng Huang for their precious time and comments. It’s also immensely grateful to the linguistics faculty members of the Department of English at NTNU, who have inspired me a lot: Prof. Jen-i Li, Prof. Hsiao-hong Wu , Prof. Huishan Lin, and Prof. Miao-hsia Chang. Finally, I would like to thank my husband Tai-hwa Chen and my three lovely kids Jingyu Chen, Jing-zhong Chen, and Jing-may Chen. I appreciate their great support and I also apologize to them for my being so busy working and studying and thus not spending much time with them. Once again, I dedicate this thesis to those who have supported me with my deepest gratitude.. iii.

(5) Table of Contents Chinese Abstract ………………………………...……………………………………………i English Abstract …………………………………..………………………………………….ii Acknowledgements ……………………………….…………………………………………iii Table of Contents….…………………………………………………………………………iv List of Tables.…...….…………................................................................................................v Chapter 1. Introduction ……………………….…………………………….................. 01. Chapter 2. Literature Review. ……………….………………………………………04. 2.1 Previous analyses of French se …………….………….…………………………..05 2.1.1 Grimshaw’s (1990) unaccusative analysis ………………………………...05 2.1.2 Reinhart and Siloni’s (2005) unergative analysis…………………………..06 2.1.3 Transitive analyses ………………………………….………….……….…13 2.2 Kao (1993) ……………………..………………………………………..……...…15 2.2.1 Two ways of deriving reflexive zi-verbs….…………….……….…………16 2.2.2 Summary and issues …………………………………………….…………20 2.3 Lin (2010) …...………………………...……………………………….………….21 2.3.1 Reflexive zi-verbs …………………………………………………………21 2.3.2 Adverbial zi-verbs …………………………………………………….…...23 2.3.3 Summary and issues …………………………………….…………………25 2.4 Problems and issues …………………………………………………………….…26 Chapter 3. Derivations of zi-verbs under the syntactic approach …………….…….. 30. 3.1 Aldridge’s (2009) analysis of zi-verbs in Old Chinese…………………………… 30 3.2 Reflexive zi-verbs ……...………………………………………………….………34 3.2.1 Derivation of reflexive zi-verbs … ……………………...............................35 3.2.2. Issues …..………………………………………………………………....36. 3.2.3 Summary .………………...………………………………………….…….48 3.3 Adverbial zi-verbs ………...………………………………………….…...….……49 3.4 Zi-renwei: reflexive or adverbial type? …………….…..……………………..…... 57 3.5 New observations ……………………………………………………………….…64 3.5.1 Huang’s (2007) give-type and rob-type verbs ……………………….....…66 3.5.2 Derivation of the newly-observed type of zi-verbs ……….…………….... 72 3.5.3 Summary ………………………………………………………………..…78 3.6 Chapter summary ……………………………….…………………………………..78 iv.

(6) Chapter 4. Conclusion ………………….……………………………………………… 79. References …………………………………………………………………………………...83. v.

(7) List of Tables Table 1. Summary of the three approaches of French se ..…………………………………15. Table 2 Reflexive and adverbial zi-verbs ……………………………….…...…………….28 Table 3 Analyses of reflexive zi-verbs in the literature .………………..……….…………28 Table 4 Analyses of adverbial zi-verbs in the literature …………...………….…...………29 Table 5. Optional and obligatory adverbial zi-verbs …...…………………………………..56. vi.

(8) Chapter 1. Introduction. The study aims to explore the derivations of zi-verbs in Mandarin Chinese and their meanings. There is a free morpheme counterpart ziji ‘oneself’, which has two meanings: reflexive and adverbial, as in (1) and (2).1. (1) Reflexive ziji Zhangsan. nue-dai. ziji.. Zhangsan. torture. oneself. ‘Zhangsan tortured himself.’ (2) Adverbial ziji Zhangsan. ziji. xue. zhongwen.. Zhangsan. oneself. learn. Chinese. ‘Zhangsan learns Chinese by himself.’. Like ziji, zi- also has two meanings, examples of which are shown in (3) and (4).. (3) Reflexive zi-verbs Zhangsan. zi-nue.. Zhangsan. SELF-torture. ‘Zhangsan tortured himself.’. 1. For more details on the comparison of zi and ziji, consider Tang (1992), Kao (1993), Aldridge (2008), and Lin (2010). As for the study of ziji, consider Tang (1989), Xu (1994), Liu (1999) , Huang and Lin (2001), Tsai (2006), Aldridge (2008), Xue (2013). 1.

(9) (4) Adverbial zi-verbs Zhangsan. zi-xue. zhongwen.. Zhangsan. SELF-learn. Chinese. ‘Zhangsan learns Chinese by himself.’. Conceptually, reflexive zi-verbs are known as verbs denoting an action that the agent performs an action direct at itself, or in certain languages, a state of mind the experiencer has with regard to itself (Reinhart and Siloni 2005: 390). Take (3) for example, Zhangsan is both the agent and the theme of the nue ‘torture’ event. Such verbs as zi-nue ‘torture oneself’ will be referred to as reflexive zi-verbs. The adverbial zi- , on the other hand, contributes an extra meaning such as ‘by oneself’ or ‘without any help’ to the predicate in (4). Verbs like zi-xue ‘learn by oneself’ are called adverbial zi-verbs. It is also worth noting that the number of zi-verbs is considerably small in Mandarin Chinese, which suggests that the lexical items that are compatible with zi- are quite limited. Lists of reflexive and adverbial zi-verbs are exemplified in (5) and (6) respectively.. (5) Reflexive zi-verbs zi-sha ‘kill oneself’, zi-lian ‘love oneself’, zi-shou ‘confess oneself’, zi-fen ‘burn oneself’,. zi-ai ‘love oneself’, zi-xin ‘believe oneself’, zi-da ‘boast oneself’, zi-fu ‘pride. oneself’. 2.

(10) (6) Adverbial zi-verbs zi-xue ‘learn by oneself’, zi-zhuan ‘rotate spontaneously’, zi-chuang ‘create something by oneself’, zi-bao ‘explode spontaneously’. The derivation of zi-verbs has been a hot issue in Chinese linguistics; however, empirical facts suggest that previous analyses of zi-verbs (Kao 1993 , Lin 2010) fail to explain all the facts. The purpose of this thesis thus aims to fill the gaps in the present research of reflexives and explain all existing data under the syntactic approach. The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 2 reviews previous analyses of zi-verbs and points out issues in each analysis. Chapter 3 demonstrates our analyses of zi-verbs based on the syntactic approach. Chapter 4 provides the conclusion.. 3.

(11) Chapter 2. Literature review. This Chapter reviews previous studies of derivation of zi-verbs in modern Chinese: reflexive and adverbial types. Reflexive zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ are mainly derived by the lexical approach (Kao 1993, Chief 1998, Lin 2010). Under the lexical approach, zi- is regarded as an element that is able to change the lexical properties of a verb and reflexive ziverbs are derived in the lexicon; afterwards, the reflexive zi-verbs are selected as a word into the syntax. With regard to adverbial zi-verbs,2 the derivations are argued in the literature to occur in the lexicon (Lin 2010), where zi-verbs are derived by adding an emphatic meaning such as ‘by oneself’, ‘independently’, or ‘spontaneously’ to the predicate. Interestingly, it is observed that previous analyses of reflexive zi-verbs are inspired by the analyses of reflexive se-verbs in French: Kao (1993) follows Grimshaw’s (1990) and Lin (2010) follows Reinhart and Siloni’s (2005). Therefore, we will first demonstrate previous analyses of reflexive se-verbs in section 2.1, and then Kao’s (1993) and Lin’s (2010) analyses are shown. 2. Tang (1992: 331) also proposes an analysis of adverbial zi-predicate, under which, adverbial zi-predicates are semantically the same as its counterpart formed by ziji as in (i) and (ii). The derivation of adverbial zi-predicates is achieved in morphology, not in the syntax. Like Lin (2010), Tang’s analysis cannot explain all the facts such as zi-bei ‘to prepare oneself’, which we argue in this thesis has two interpretations. Consider Lin (2010) for the review of Tang’s analysis. (i) Zhangsan ziji xue-le yi-zhong yuyian. Zhangsan SELF learn-Asp one-Cl language ‘Zhangsan learned a langauge by himself.’ (ii) Zhangsan zi-xue-le yi-zhong yuyian. Zhangsan SELF-learn-Asp one-Cl language ‘Zhangsan learned a language by himself.’ 4.

(12) in section 2.2 and 2.3 respectively. Section 2.4 sums up the chapter.. 2.1 Previous analyses of French se The derivations of French se-verbs have been extensively discussed and the analyses of se-verbs fall into at least three main analyses: the unaccusative analysis (Bouchard 1984, Grimshaw 1990, Marantz 1984 and many others), the unergative analysis (Chierchia 1989, Reinhart and Siloni (henceforth referred to as R&S) 2004, 2005) and the transitive analysis (Kayne 1975, Rizzi 1986, Roberts 1997, cf. Hong and Shin 2008). The section reviews previous analyses of French se-verbs since previous analyses of Chinese zi-verbs seem to be inspired by those of French se. The unaccusative analysis by Kao (1993) based on Grimshaw (1990) is presented in 2.1.1; the unergative analysis in Lin (2010) inspired by Reinhart and Siloni (2005) is demonstrated in 2.1.2. Lastly, the transitive analysis is shown in 2.1.3.. 2.1.1 Grimshaw’s (1990) unaccusative analysis Generally speaking, the unaccusative analysis of French se (Bouchard 1984, Marantz 1984, cf. Hong and Shin 2008, Grimshaw 1990, and many others) regards the clitic se as a valence-reducing morpheme and the subject of a se-verb is an underlying object. Under the unaccusative analysis (Grimshaw 1990, cf. Kao 1993), reflexive se-verbs are formed in the lexicon, where the affixation of se- triggers a lexical binding of two arguments of the verb and suppresses the external argument. As can be seen in (7a), the reflexive verbs se 5.

(13) tuer ‘kill himself’ is derived by the binding relation shown in (7b), where the external argument is bound to the internal argument. Consequently, the external argument is unavailable to the syntactic process. The verb se-tuer ‘kill oneself’ loses its Case-assigning ability, which forces the object DP to move to the specifier of T in order to get a nominal case. As a result, a reflexive se-verb turns into an unaccusative verb, whose grammatical subject is the internal argument.. (7) a.. Le frere du juge. se. tuer.. ‘The brother of the judge kills himself.’ b.. tuer (x (y))  se tuer (x = y (y)) (Grimshaw 1982, cf. Kao 1993). (8)3. 2.1.2 Reinhart and Siloni’s (2005) unergative analysis Under the unergative analysis (Chierchia 2004, R&S 2004, 2005), the subject of a reflexive verb is the external argument rather than internal argument. Reflexive verbs, argued. 3. Grimshaw (1990) does not propose a strucutre of se-verbs; the tree in (8) is based on her theory. 6.

(14) by R&S (2005), are crosslinguistically unergative verbs as in (9) and (10),4 including French se-verbs. Under R&S’s framework, se is not an argument but a reflexive morpheme that triggers lexical operations and manipulates lexical properties of a verb.. (9) Jean Jean. se. lave.5. SE washes. ‘Jean washes.’ (R&S 2005: 404) (10). With regard to operations on theta-roles, different from the traditional view that valencechanging operations occur in the lexicon, R&S (2005) develop a parameter theory in (11),. 4. R&S (2005) have shown many diagnostics against the unaccusative derivation of reflexive verbs. Readers can consider R&S (2004, 2005) for more details. 5 R&S (2005) do not make it explicit what is the syntactic structure of se-verbs in (9). Thus, the tree in (10) is what we take to be the structure based on their discussion. 7.

(15) arguing that cross-linguistically UG allows valence-changing operations to take place in the lexicon or the syntax in accordance to the parametric setting of a certain language as in (12).. (11) The lex-syn parameter Universal Grammar allows thematic arity operations to apply in the lexicon or syntax. (12) Lexicon setting: Hebrew, Dutch, English, Russian, Hungarian Syntax setting: Romance (e.g. French), German, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Greek (R&S 2005: 408). Reflexivization, also a type of valance-changing operation in a sense defined by R&S (2005), can occur in the lexicon or the syntax. The effect of reflexivization is that two thetaroles of a verb bundle together as a complex theta-role and it is assigned to the external argument as in (13).. (13) Reflexivization bundling [θi] [θj]  [θi – θj], where θi is an external role. (R&S 2005: 400). As can be seen in (11), the parameter of French is set to the syntax; that is to say, the operation in (13) occurs in the syntax. Before we get into the derivation of French reflexive severbs, let us demonstrate how reflexive verbs in lexicon languages are derived under R&S’s parameter theory. 8.

(16) When a language is set to the lexicon parameter, the bundling operation in (13) applies directly to the verb’s grid, bundling a θ-role with external θ-role. Reflexivization in the lexicon is summarized in (14) by R&S (2005). As for the Case, R&S assume that accusative case assigning ability is also removed in the lexicon.6. (14) Reflexivization in the lexicon a. Bundling: Operation in (3) applies on the verb’s grid. b. Case: The accusative Case feature of the verb is reduced. (R&S 2005: 401). Let’s see how reflexivization works in a lexicon language such as English. Applying (14) to English transitive verb wash in (15a), the reflexive counterpart is derived in (15b). The new entry has only one complex (bundled) θ-role and it will be assigned upon merging with an external argument, as in (15c).. (15) a. Verb entry: washacc [Agent] [Theme] b. Reflexivization output: wash [Agent-Theme] c. Syntactic output: Max [Agent-Theme] washed. (R&S 2005: 401). Now turn back to French whose parameter is set to the syntax. The reflexivization of a 6. R&S (2005) assume that the accusative case feature is associated with the base transitive verb in the lexicon. 9.

(17) syntax languages is summarized as in (16). Different from lexicon languages, syntax languages do not apply the bundling operation directly to the verb’s grid; instead, it applies to unassigned θ-roles, which, according to R&S (2005), are retained on the verbal projection, until an external θ-role is merged.. (16) Reflexivization in the syntax a.. Case: Case is reduced by the appropriate morphology (such as the clitic se).. b.. Bundling: Operation in (13) applies to unassigned theta-roles, upon merger of the external theta-role. (R&S 2005: 404). Let us demonstrate reflexivization of French se-verbs in (17) by R&S (2005). The derivation includes a two-place verb laver ‘wash’ (with Agent and Theme roles), the clitic se, and the DP Jean. First, the affixation of French se gives rise to the reduction of the verb’s ability to check accusative case as in (17a). Since the bundling does not apply to the verb’s grid, the theta roles of the verb will not be assigned and retained in VP as in (17b). The derivation proceeds. Upon merger of the external argument Jean, the bundling operation applies to two unassigned roles and the bundled role is then assigned to the external argument as in (17c). The interpretation is shown in (17d).. 10.

(18) (17) a. Jean Jean. se. lave.. SE. washes. ‘Jean washes.’ b. VP: [se lave θi-Agent, θk-Theme] c. IP:7 [Jean <θi, θk> [se lave j [VP t j]]] d. ∃[wash (e) & Agent (e, Jean) & Theme (e, Jean)] (R&S 2005: 404). At this stage, one may wonder what distinguishes the syntax languages and the lexicon languages. One crucial distinction is that syntax languages allow ECM reflexives, but lexicon languages do not. Consider the ECM (Exceptional Case-Marking) construction in (18a) and its reflexive counterpart in (18b). Traditionally, reflexivization involves linking two arguments and identifying them and the operation only applies to θ-roles of the same predicate in the lexicon. If the traditional concept of lexical operations were on the right track, the construction in (18b) would be unacceptable, which is contrary to the fact. Therefore, the reflexive ECM construction in French is a piece of evidence for R&S’s parameter theory that lexical operations can take place in the syntax.. 7. Here IP, according to R&S(2005) is a defective (EPP-deficient) TP. 11.

(19) (18) a. Jean. considère. Pierre intelligent.. Jean. considers. Pierre intelligent. b. Jean Jean. se. considère. intelligent.. SE considers. intelligent. ‘Jean considers himself intelligent.’ (R&S 2005: 394). Now consider the derivation of the ECM reflexives in French in (19).. (19) a. Jean Jean. se. voit. [ laver. SE sees. wash. Marie ]. Marie. ‘Jean sees himself wash Marie.’ b. Embedded IP: c. Next VP:. [IP [laver <θi> Marie θg]] [ VP se voit <θk>. [IP [laver <θi> Marie θg]] θf]. d. Top IP: [IP Jean θk + θi [ VP se voit. [IP [laver. Marie θg]] θf]] (R&S 2005: 405). As seen in (19b), the theme role is assigned to Marie, while the external θ-role of the embedded verb laver ‘wash’ is not assigned; 8 rather, it is retained on the verb and can be carried along according to R&S (2005). The derivation goes on to the next VP in (19c). The. 8. Unassigned roles appear in angle brackets. 12.

(20) higher verb se voit ‘see oneself’ has no ability to assign accusative case because of the affixation of se. At this stage, the verb has to assign its theme role to the IP clause (θf) but retain its Agent role (θk) as in (19c). Upon merger of the external argument Jean, the bundling operation applies to θk and θi, and bundles them into a single complex role. Finally, it is assigned to the subject Jean. In shrot, under R&S’s framework, French se-verbs are syntactically derived and the reflexivization of se-verbs can occur in the syntax.. 2.1.3 Transitive analyses Under the transitive analyses (Kayne 1991, Fontana and Moore 1992,. Dobrovie-Sorin. 1998, D’Alessandro 2001, cf. Hong and Shin 2008), the clitic se is considered as an object clitic, which is reminiscent of object pronominal clitics as in (20).. (20) Jean Jean. lei. lave. himcl. washes. ti .. ‘Jean washes him.’ (R&S 2005: 392). The verbs with se are derived in a way analogous to that of deriving verbs with pronominal clitics as in (21).. 13.

(21) (21) Jean. sei. lave. Jean. SE. washes. ti .. ‘Jean washes himself.’ (R&S 2005: 392). Under the transitive analyses, ECM verbs with a clitic can be derived by noun incorporation as in (22). The pronominal clitic le ‘him’ is extracted from the subject position of the small clause and incorporates with the matrix verb. Similarly, ECM reflexive se-verbs can be derived by noun incorporation as well in (23). French se is underlyingly located in the subject position of the embedded small clause, moves to the matrix domain and incorporates with the matrix verb.. (22) Je I. lei. considère. himCL. consider. [SC [NP [N ti]] fidèle]. honest. ‘I consider him honest.' (Kayne 1991, cf. den Dikken 1995:14). (23) Jean. sei. considère. Jean. SE. consider. [SC [NP [N ti]]. intelligent]. intelligent. ‘Jean considers himself intelligent.’ (R&S 2005: 394). Taken together, each analysis of French se has their own claims and arguments. In this 14.

(22) study, we will not judge these analyses; rather, we demonstrate possible analyses of reflexives as a reference when we review previous analyses of zi-verbs in Chinese in the following subsections. Table 1 summarizes the three approaches to French se.. Table 1 Summary of the three approaches of French se The status of French se. Reflexivity. Unaccusative analyses Se is a non-argument.. Reflexivity is achieved by. (Grimshaw 1990). lexical binding as in (7b).. Unergative analyses. Se is a non-argument.. (R&S 2005). Reflexive verbs are formed by reflexivization as in (16).. Transitive analyses. Se is an argument (an object Reflexivization is achieved by clitic).. binding as exemplified in (21). 2.2 Kao (1993) Kao’s analysis of zi-verbs is about reflexive types, which covers lexically derived and syntactically derived ones as shown in (24) and (25) respectively.. (24) Lexically derived reflexive verbs a. Bill Bill. zi-sha-le. self-kill-Asp. ‘Bill killed himself.’. 15.

(23) b. Lisi dui zhe-jian shi Lisi for this-Cl. hen. zi-ze.. matter very SELF-blame. ‘Lisi blamed himself for this matter.’ (Kao 1993: 192) (25) Syntactically derived reflexive verbs a. Mali Mali. zi-ren. hen. congming.. SELF-consider. very. smart. ‘Mali considers herself to be very intelligent.’ b. Wo I. zi-xin. neng. tongguo. kaoshi.. SELF-believe. can. pass. exam. ‘I believe that I can pass the exam.’ (Kao 1993: 192). Zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ in (24) are derived in the lexicon where zi- is regarded as a manipulator of lexical properties of a verb, while syntactic zi-verbs as in (25) such as ziren ‘consider oneself’ as in (25) are derived by syntactic movement. The derivations of zi-verbs in (24) and (25) by Kao (1993) are shown in 2.2.1.. 2.2.1 Two ways of deriving reflexive zi-verbs The analysis of reflexive zi-verbs in Kao (1993) follows Grimshaw’s (1990) unaccusative analysis of French se. That is, Kao also analyzes zias a clitic. When cliticization takes place, 16.

(24) zi then triggers binding of the two arguments of a verb, which is called Lexical Binding (Grimshaw 1990, cf. Kao 1993), a lexical operation in the lexicon. This operation makes the external argument bound by the internal one, as shown in (26).. (26) sha ‘kill’ (x (y))  zi-sha ‘to kill oneself’ (x = y (y)) (Kao 1993: 200). After binding of the two arguments, the verb thus becomes a one-place predicate semantically. With regard to Case, Kao (1993) proposes that the cliticization of zi- also removes the case-assigning ability of the verb; therefore, the underlying object obligatorily moves to the grammatical subject position to get a nominal case. Reflexive zi-verbs are thus unaccusative verbs.9 The unaccusative analysis of zi-verbs is argued by Kao (1993) because zi-verbs in (27a) seem to pattern with si ‘die’ in a presentative construction as in (27b). It is observed that ziverbs allow their internal argument to remain in a postverbal position.10. 9. The unaccusative analysis of reflexive zi-verbs is also supported by Chief (1997, 1998), which mainly focuses on the internal structures and semantic composition of reflexives under the framework of Lexical Mapping theory (LMT) (Bresnan and Zaenen 1990 and Zaenen 1994) . That is, zi-verbs in his analysis are also lexically derived. 10 Kao (1993) provides several unaccusative diagnostics to support her analysis of zi-verbs; later, Chief (1997, 1998) and Lin (2012) have reviewed Kao’s unaccusative diagnostics. Readers can refer to these works for more details about unaccusative diagnostics of Chinese zi-verbs. Most diagnostics provided by Kao (1993) and Chief (1998), such as the participle adjective conversion test (Kao1993: 210) and the capability of taking a durative marker -zhe (Kao 1993:208, Chief 1998:55), are not valid for the unaccusative syntactic configuration in Chinese (Lin 2012). Only the presentative construction test (Kao 1993, Chief 1998) seems to be a piece of evidence that zi-verbs are unaccusative verbs because zi-verbs allow postverbal NPs. However, in this thesis, we propose a different analysis on this construction in a discourse perspective. More details are in section 3.2. 17.

(25) (27) a.. Zai. nei-chang. canju-zhong，zi-sha-le. liang-ge. ren.. at. that-Cl. tragedy-LOC SELF-kill-Asp. two-Cl. person. ‘Two people killed themselves in that tragedy.’ b.. Zai. nei-chang. canju-zhong， si-le. liang-ge. ren.. at. that-Cl. tragedy-LOC die-Asp. two-Cl. person. ‘Two people were dead in that tragedy.’ (Kao1993: 203). The other type of zi-verbs by Kao (1993) is derived by syntactic movement. The examples and the sentences of this type provided by Kao are shown in (28) and (29). Kao analyzes zi- of this type as an argument in the embedded subject position.. (28) syntactically derived reflexive zi-verbs zi-yiwei, zi-ren(wei) ‘consider oneself’, zi-zhi ‘know oneself or be aware of something that is related to oneself’ (29) Bill Bill. zi-renwei. hen. congming.. SELF-consider. very. smart. ‘Bill considers himself to be very intelligent.’ (Kao 1993: 234). 18.

(26) As can be seen in (30a), the structure provided by Kao shows the D-structure of the sentences in (29), where zi- and ziji are seen as arguments, located in the specifier of IP. The derivation of this type of zi-verb is illustrated in (30b), where zi- moves to the matrix verb because of its bound nature.. (30) a.. (Kao 1993: 224). b.. (Kao 1993: 236). 19.

(27) Such a movement in (30b) is regarded as a special type of noun incorporation, which is similar to the derivation of French se mentioned in (22) and (23).11. 2.2.2 Summary and issues Kao’s (1993) analysis of zi-verbs is about reflexive verbs, which as reviewed, fall into two types: lexically-derived and syntactically-derived zi-verbs. However, it is easily found that there is a theoretical gap in her analysis as to why reflexive types are derived in two ways. Specifically, reflexives in a monoclausal construction such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ are derived in the lexicon, while ECM reflexive verbs such as zi-yiwei ‘consider oneslef’ are derived in the syntax. Moreover, Kao’s proposal for derivation of syntactically-derived zi-verbs such as zirenwei ‘consider oneself’ is based on the assumption that zi- is an external argument of an ECM predicate. Although such a derivation may theoretically exist, it is empirically found that in some cases, zi- cannot be extracted from the embedded clause. As seen in (31) and (32), the subject position can also be filled by constituents rather than left empty, which indicates that in some cases, zi-verbs cannot be derived from the movement of zi- from the embedded subject position.. 11. Baker (1988, cf. den Dikken 1995: 12) argues that the head of ECM subjects can be incorporated with their governors; that is to say, the subject of embedded subjects in an ECM predicate can move to the matrix clause and gets incorporated with the matrix verb. 20.

(28) (31) Mali Mary. zi-ren. (ta). nuer. hen congming.. SELF-consider. (her). daughter. very smart. ‘Mary considers her daughter to be smart.’ (32) Mali. zi-ren. meiren hui jie. zhe-ge. miti ，. Mary. SELF-consider. no-one can solve. this-Cl. puzzle. zhiyou. ta. hui.. only. she. can. ‘Intended: Mary doesn’t think that anyone could solve the puzzle; she is the only one that could solve it’. 2.3 Lin (2010) 2.3.1 Reflexive zi-verbs Adopting R&S’s (2005) theory, Lin suggests that reflexive zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ are unergative verbs and according to Lin (2010), Chinese is set to be a lexicon language, so the reflexivization of zi-verbs takes place in the lexicon. When reflexivization takes places in the lexicon, the unified effects on Case and the theta roles are shown in (13) and (14), repeated here in (33) and (34).. (33) Reflexivization bundling [θi] [θj]  [θi – θj], where θi is an external role. (R&S 2005: 400) 21.

(29) (34) Reflexivization in the lexicon a. Bundling: Operation (33) applies on the verb’s grid. b. Case: The accusative Case feature of the verb is reduced. (R&S 2005: 401). Now, let’s see how reflexive zi-verbs are derived by Lin (2010). In Lin’s analysis of reflexive zi-verbs, zi- is analyzed as a reflexive marker, which reflexive-marks a given predicate. Semantically, zi- serves a lexical function, triggering an arity operation called theta bundling operation as in (34) when it attaches to the verbs in the lexicon. By this lexical operation, the theta roles of the verb will be bundled and turned into a single complex role (Reinhart 2002, R&S 2005). Consider the derivation of zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ in (35).. (35) a. lexical entry: sha [agent], [theme] b. Arity operation: Zi-reflexivization bundling (sha [agent], [theme])  zi-sha [[agent]-[theme]] c. Syntactic output: Zhangsan <agent-theme> zi-sha-le ‘Zhangsan suicided.’ d. Semantic interpretation: ∃e [kill (e) ⋀ Agent (Zhangsan) ⋀ Theme (Zhangsan)] (Lin 2010: 45). First in (35a), a two-place verb sha ‘kill’ with two theta roles (agent and theme) is selected in the lexicon. In (35b), when zi- is affixed to the verb, the bundling operation applies to theta 22.

(30) roles of the verb and a complex theta role is formed; meanwhile, the case-assigning ability is removed here. Now, a one-place reflexive verb zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ is formed as an unergative verb. In (35c), the verb zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ appears in the syntax with its complex theta-role discharged to the external argument ‘Zhangsan’. The semantic interpretation is illustrated in (35d), which suggests that in the killing event, the referents of the agent and the theme are identical.. 2.3.2 Adverbial zi-verbs The previous subsection shows that the reflexive zi- is a functional element, which serves as a trigger of a lexical operation and manipulates the argument structure of a verb. In addition, Lin (2010) sees the adverbial zias a trigger of a different lexical operation. Unlike the reflexive zi-, the affixation of zi- in adverbial zi-verbs contributes an additional meaning ‘by oneself’ to the predicate. The function of adverbial zi- is shown in (36).. (36) ZiADV reflexive-marks a given predicate ZiADV (P(X)) = λ x [P(x) ⋀ BY(X)] (Lin 2010: 86) Let’s see how adverbial zi-verbs are derived. Consider the sentence in (37a) and the derivation of the verb zi-bei ‘prepare by himself’ in (37b). According to Lin, the adverbial zi-. 23.

(31) reflexive-marks the predicate by adding an additional P predicate in the semantic interpretation, where the variable in the P predicate is saturated by a λ-operator.. (37) a.. Zhangsan. zi-bei-le. Zhangsan. SELF-prepare-Asp. [NP yi-ding one-Cl. maozi]. hat. ‘Zhangsan prepared a hat by himself.’ b.. ZiADV (prepare a hat(x))= λx [prepare a hat (x) ⋀ BY (x)] = Zhangsan λx [x prepare a hat ⋀ BY x] = Zhangsan prepared a hat by himself. (Lin 2010: 92). Furthermore, Lin (2010) observes that some adverbial zi-verbs have a possession relation12 as in (38). The object zuixing ‘crime’ in (38a) must be committed by the subject Zhangsan, while the object xuewen ‘knowledge’ must belong to the subject Zhangsan; otherwise, the sentences would be ungrammatical.. 12. Readers may refer to Tsujimura and Aikawa 1999 and Kishida 2011 for possession relations observed in Japanese zi-verbs. 24.

(32) (38) a.. Zhangsan. zi-bai-le. ziji de. / *bieren. Zhangsan. SELF-confess-Asp self DE / someone.else. de. zuixing.. DE crime. ‘Zhangsan confessed about the crime of himself.’ b.. Zhangsan. hen. xihuan zi-kua. Zhangsan. very like. SELF-boast. ziji /*bieren. de. xuewen.. self / someone.else DE knowledge. ‘Zhangsan likes to boast about the knowledge of himself.’ (Lin 2010: 98). 2.3.3. Summary and issues. We’ve demonstrated Lin’s analysis of reflexive zi- in 2.3.1 and adverbial zi in 2.3.2. On the whole, Lin analyzes zias a reflexive marker in the lexicon and it plays two roles (i) the trigger of manipulation of the argument structure of a verb (ii) the trigger of adding an extra meaning such as ‘by oneself’ to the predicate. However, with careful scrutiny, two problems arise. First, the morpheme zi- in his lexical analysis sometimes has a meaning, and sometimes does not. When it comes to how the adverbial zi-verbs such as zi-xue ‘learn by oneself’ are derived, zi- has meanings such as ‘by oneself ‘or ‘spontaneously’; on the other hand, when reflexive zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ are derived, zi- has no meanings, being merely a function morpheme, manipulating lexical properties of a verb in the derivation.. 25.

(33) Second, in Lin’s analysis, there are two types of adverbial zi-verbs.13 As stated in 2.3.2, the first type of verbs denotes no possession relation between the subject and the object such as zi-xue ‘learn by oneself’, while the other type does as in (39) such as zi-bai ‘confess oneself’ and zi-kua ‘boast oneself’. However, with close examination, it is found that the sentences in (38) cannot be derived under Lin’s analytic framework of deriving adverbial zi-verbs if zi- is analyzed as adding an emphatic meaning as in (36). It is noticed that zi- in (38a,b) has no emphatic meaning such as ‘by oneself’ as stated in (36); instead, take the sentence in (38a) for example, it should be interpreted as Zhangsan confessed to the crime of himself.. 2.4 Problems and issues In this chapter, previous studies on zi-verbs are reviewed. In the literature, the derivations of reflexive zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ are mostly inspired by the derivation of Romance reflexives (e.g. French se-verbs), which sees a reflexive morpheme as a manipulator of lexical properties of a verb (Grimshaw 1990, R&S 2005). However, analyzing zias French se is improper because zi- in Chinese has meanings when reflexivity is derived, but French se does not. With regard to the derivation of adverbial zi-verbs, empirical facts show that lexical derivations cannot account for all the facts. Considering the sentence in (39), we notice that 13. See footnote 2.. 26.

(34) there are two possible interpretations of the sentence. There’s no doubt that the interpretation (b) arises due to adverbial zi-, but obviously it is not the case for reading (b). Moreover, it is noticed that the sentence denotes a possession relation between the theme argument liwu ‘gift’ and the subject Awei. Under the lexical approach (Lin 2010), it is not clear how such a relation between the subject and the DO is derived.. (39) Awei Awei. zi-bei-le. liwu.. SELF-prepare-ASP. gift. a. ‘Awei prepared gifts without any help and the gifts are for someone else.’ b. ‘Awei prepared gifts for himself.’. Taken together, there are at least two types of zi-: the reflexive zi- and athe dverbial zias shown in Table 2.. 27.

(35) Table 2. Reflexive and adverbial zi-verbs. Type. Selected examples. Reflexive zi-verbs. zi-sha ‘to kill oneself’, zi-ai ‘to love oneself’ , zi-lian ‘to be obsessed with oneself’, zi-xin ‘to believe oneself’, zi-jin ‘to kill oneself’, zi-jiu ‘to save oneself’, zi-bao ‘to defend oneself’, zi-lu ‘to discipline oneself’, zi-bei ‘to despise oneself’ zi-nue ‘to torture oneself’, zi-fen ‘to burn oneself’, zi-da ‘to pride oneself’. Adverbial zi-verbs. zi-xue ‘to learn by oneself’, zi-chuang ‘to create by oneself’ zi-zhuan ‘to rotate by oneself’, zi-zhi ‘make by oneself’, zi-ying ‘to operate by oneself’, zi-xuan ‘choose by oneself’, zi-bian ‘to compile by oneself’, zi-po ‘to analyze by oneself’. Lastly, the summary of the previous studies of zi- are illustrated in Table 3 and Table 4 respectively. Table 3 shows that Kao’s (1993) two ways of deriving reflexive zi-verbs and Lin’s (2012) analysis of zi-verbs. Table 4 demonstrates the work of adverbial zi-verbs by Lin (2010).. Table 3 Analyses of reflexive zi-verbs in the literature. The status of zi-. Kao (1993). Lin (2010). a. a trigger of a lexical rule. a trigger of a lexical rule. b. an argument of a verb The locus of. a. lexicon. derivation. b. syntax. lexicon. 28.

(36) Table 4. Analyses of adverbial zi-verbs in the literature. The status of zi-. Kao (1993). Lin (2010). N/A. an adverbial reflexive marker of a predicate. The locus of. N/A. lexicon. derivation. 29.

(37) Chapter 3. Derivations of zi-verbs under the syntactic approach. In chapter 2, we have reviewed previous analyses of the derivation of zi-verbs: Kao (1993) and Lin (2010). Since intransitive analyses of reflexive zi-verbs cannot account for all the facts, we will explore the transitive analysis and propose derivations of zi-verbs in the syntax. To see how a syntactic approach can possibly work, we will first review Aldridge’s (2009) study in Old Chinese. The organization of this chapter is as follows. First in section 3.1, we review the analysis of zi-verbs in Old Chinese derived in the syntax (Aldridge 2009). Next in section 3.2, we present our analysis of reflexive zi-verbs. Section 3.3 demonstrates the derivation of adverbial zi-verbs. Later in section 3.4, we turn to some special cases such as zirenwei ‘consider oneself’. In section 3.5, we present some new facts of zi-verbs and derive them under the syntactic approach. Finally, this chapter is summarized in 3.6.. 3.1 Aldridge’s (2009) analysis of zi-verbs in Old Chinese Aldridge’s (2009) studies on the derivation of zi-verbs in Old Chinese, which also categorize zi-verbs into two types: the reflexive types as in (40) and (41) and adverbial types as in (42).. 30.

(38) (40). 多. 行. 不. 義,. 必. 自. 斃. Duo. xing. bu. yi, ei. bi. zii. bi.. much. do. NEG. right. certain. SELF. kill. ‘Having done much wrong, he will certainly kill himself.’ (Aldridge 2009: 3) (41). 夫子. 自. 道. 也. Fuzii. zii. dao. ye.. master. self. speak. DECL. ‘The master is speaking of himself.’ (Aldridge 2009: 3) (42)14. 然則. 非. Ranze. fe. thus. not.be. ei. 自. 殺. 之. 也. zii. sha. zhi. ye.. self. kill. OBJ. DECL. ‘Thus, it is not that (one) kills him oneself.” (Aldridge 2009: 4). Under the syntactic approach, Aldridge (2009) analyzes reflexive zias an internal argument of a verb and it is an anaphor locally bound by its antecedent. Morphologically, it is. 14. Note that here zi- in zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ has an adverbial use because it can take an object pronoun zhi. Additionally, Aldridge argues that such types of zi- cannot be a subject. Consider Aldridge (2009) for more details. 31.

(39) a bound form and must move.15 As can be seen in (42), zi- is base-generated in the object position, and then it moves to the V head (and upward to merge with v head) to form a reflexive zi-verb.16. (43) reflexive zi-. (Aldridge 2009: 9). In addition, Aldridge (2009) argues that zi- is not a subject because it never occurs in the subject position, its position being strictly adjacent to the verb, which is not true for a subject.17 The other type of zi- in Aldridge’s analysis is adverbial. Unlike the reflexive zi-, according to Aldridge (2009:9): “When zi- functions as an adverbial zi, we can analyze it as adjoined either to v or to v’.”. 15. Following the phase theory (Chomsky 2001), Aldridge defines the licensing condition of zias in (i), where zimust be bound in a spell-out domain. The spell-out domain is defined as the complement of a phase head or the root clause. (i) zimust be bound within its spell-out domain. (Aldridge 2009: 9) 16 Aldridge (2009) argues that zi- doesn’t behave like a typical clitic pronoun in Old Chinese. 17 In support of her argument that zi- is not a subject, Aldridge provides several syntactic tests to show that zi- is not the grammatical subject. Refer to Aldridge (2009) for more details. 32.

(40) (44) Adverbial zi-. (Aldridge 2009: 10). In conclusion, according to Aldridge’s (2009) analysis of zi-verbs in Old Chinese, the reflexive zi- is an anaphoric element, located in the internal argument position of a verb and locally bound by the subject. As to the adverbial zi-, it is adjoined to v or v’. We contend that zi- in modern Chinese has different functions from French se, which means zi- is not an element that triggers lexical operations; therefore, it is not appropriate to adopt Kao’s and Lin’s analyses. We then turn to the syntactic approach to the derivation of ziverbs because zi- indeed contributes a reflexive meaning, and is not just a trigger of a certain lexical operation. In what follows, we will demonstrate the derivations of zi-verbs under the transitive analysis.. 33.

(41) 3.2 Reflexive zi-verbs In this section, we discuss the derivation of reflexive zi-verbs under the syntactic approach, examples of which are shown in (45). As stated in chapter one, they all denote an event whose agent performs an action directed at itself or a state of mind the experiencer has regarding to itself (R&S 2005: 390), as exemplified in (46).. (45) reflexive zizi-sha ‘kill oneself’, zi-lian ‘love oneself’, zi-shou ‘surrender oneself’, zi-fen ‘burn oneself’, zi-ai ‘value oneself’, zi-xin ‘introspect oneself’, zi-da ‘pride oneself’, zi-fu ‘think highly of oneself’18 (46) Xiaoming zi-sha-le. Xiaoming SELF-kill-Asp ‘Xiaoming killed himself.”. In addition to the derivation, we will show that some zi-verbs (such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’) occur in the subject postposing construction, but some (such as zi-lian ‘love oneself’) don’t (Lin 2010). We also demonstrate that some verbs can cooccur with degree words such as hen ‘very’.. 18. More examples are shown in Table 2. 34.

(42) This section is organized as follows. First, in section 3.2.1, under the syntactic approach, we demonstrate the analysis of reflexive zi-predicates. In 3.2.2, we address remaining issues under the syntactic approach and provide the summary.. 3.2.1 Derivations of reflexive zi-verbs Under the syntactic approach, we analyze zias the internal argument of the predicate it attaches to. As shown in (47), zi- is base-generated in the object position of the verb sha ‘kill’ and is locally bound by its antecedent Xiaoming to achieve reflexivity. As a bound morpheme, zi- has to move and merges with V and a reflexive zi-verb is thus formed.. (47). 35.

(43) In fact, noun incorporation is not specific to the derivation of zi-verbs under our syntactic approach.19 Another example of noun incorporation in Chinese can be seen in (48) provided by Zhang (2007). It is assumed that the verb gen-zong ‘follow’ in (48a) is derived by the movement of zong ‘trace’ from the object position and then adjoins to the verb gen ‘follow’ as in (48b).. (48) a.. Ta. zai. gen-zong. wo.. he. PROG. follow-trace. I. ‘He is following me.’ b.. Ta. zai. gen-zongi. [wo ti]. Zhang (2007: 176). 3.2.2 Issues Consider the sentence in (49). Under our transitive analysis, zi-verbs are formed by moving the object zi- to the verb; therefore, the postverbal position should not be available for NPs because it is already occupied by a trace of zi-.. 19. Thanks to Prof. Rui-heng Huang and Prof. Hsiao-hong Wu for the comments that more examples of noun incorporation in Chinese has to be included in the thesis to make our analysis more convincing. 36.

(44) (49). Zi-sha-le. wu. ren.. SELF-kill-Asp. five. people. ‘Five people killed themselves.’. Recall that in 2.2, Kao (1993) takes the structure in (49) as crucial evidence to support her unaccusative analysis of reflexive zi-verbs because they seem to pattern with si ‘die’ in a presentative construction in (27), allowing their internal argument to remain in a postverbal position. However, in such constructions like (27) or (49), we notice that the postverbal NP in Chinese can also be an external argument as in (50), where haoduo-zhi haiou ‘lots of seagulls’ appears after the verb fei ‘fly’.20 Given (49) and (50), the postverbal NP may well be either the internal argument or the external argument.. (50) Tiankong. shang. fei-zhe. haoduo-zhi. haiou.21. sky. above. fly-Asp. many-Cl. seagull. ‘There are many seagulls flying in the sky.’. 20. In Chinese linguistics, fei ‘fly’ is categorized as an unergative verb; other examples of unergative verbs in Chinese are as follows (Lu 1987, cf. Huang 1989): Unergative verbs: xiao ‘laugh’, ku ‘cry’, tiao ‘dance, jump’ 21 http://liangzi.me/?p=2008 37.

(45) Levin et al. (1995: 265) have a similar observation in the discussion on the locative inversion construction in English where the postverbal NPs are identified as either an external or internal argument, which suggests that the locative inversion construction is not an unaccusative diagnosis as seen in (51) and (52).. (51) …out of the house came a tiny old lady and three or four enormous people… (Levin et al. 1995: 221) (52) Around the fire danced the women. (Bresnan 1993: 63, cf. Levin et al. 1995: 232). As shown by the facts in English and Chinese, the construction containing a postverbal NP is not an unaccusative diagnostic. We claim that the postverbal NP in the construction results from subject postposing as schematized in (53), where the subject NP moves from the subject position to the postverbal position. Consider the examples in (54) and (55),22 where (54b) and (55b) are derived from (54a) and (55a).. (53) Subject Postposing Construction (SPC) a. [NP VP ]. 22. . b. [ ____i. VP. NPi]. The sentence we discuss here is not a locative inversion construction. The locative phrase tiankong shang ‘in the sky’ is not located in the subject position. Readers can consdier Lin (2008) and Tang (2013) for the properties of the locative construction in Chinese. 38.

(46) (54) a.. b.. Henduo. ren. si-le.. many. people. die-Asp. Si-le. henduo. ren.. die-Asp. many. people. ‘Quite a lot of people died.’ (55) a.. b.. Tian-kong. zhong. haoduo-zhi. haiou. fei-zhe.. sky. in. many-Cl. seagull. fly-Asp. Tian-kong. zhong. fei-zhe. haoduo-zhi. haiou.. sky. in. fly-Asp. many-Cl. seagull. ‘There are many seagulls flying in the sky.’. A question arises as to the driving force of the postposed NP. Levin et al. (1995) suggest that postposing NPs are triggered by discourse function (Bolinger 1977, Guéron 1980, Penhalluric 1984, Rochemont 1986, Bresnan and Kanerva 1989, Birner 1992, 1994, , Bresnan 1993, cf. Levin et al. 1995). From a discourse perspective, Lu (2010) mentions that the driving force of subject-postposing comes from the purpose of changing the information system of a sentence in the discourse. Take (55) for example, the speaker chooses the alternative sentence (b) instead of (a) in order to emphasize or to enhance the newness of the subject NP haoduozhi haiou ‘many seagulls’. Kim (2011: 230-234) 23 also discusses the driving force for 23. From a discourse perspective, Kim (2011) studies the postposing construction in Korean with colloquial data, which focuses on the driving forces leading to an argument, i.e. subject and object, to move post-predicatively. 39.

(47) postposing an element. The reason for a speaker to postpose the subject NP to the postverbal position in a discourse is that the preceding element is more accessible or urgent at the time of utterance than the postposed element; otherwise, the speaker would utter the sentence in a canonical word order. Taken together, from the discourse perspective, the si ‘die’ event in (54b) or the fei ‘fly’ event in (55b) is something that the speaker considers to be more accessible or shared in the discourse and the subject NP is postposed in order to enhance the newness. Let’s turn to reflexive zi-verbs. Under the syntactic derivation, we propose that the postverbal NP is an element postposed from the subject position to meet the pragmatic requirement. Take the sentence (56) for example. First in (56a) zi- moves to the verb sha ‘kill’ to form a reflexive verb and merges with the subject henduo ren ‘many people’. Then in (56b), the subject NP henduo ren ‘many people’ moves from the subject position to the postverbal position to convey new information. As a result, henduo ren ‘many people’ become a new piece of information after being postposed.. (56) a.. b.. Henduo ren. zii-sha-le. ti. many. people. SELF-kill-Asp. tj. zi-sha-le. hen-duo. ren j .. SELF-kill-Asp. many. people. ‘Many people killed themselves.’. Now, we can derive the construction like (56b) as in (57). 40. ..

(48) (57). In the subject postposing construction, the subject NP is postposed to the post-verbal position – here we assume that the landing site is in the CP layer – to achieve a different interpretation in the discourse, resulting in a non-canonical word order. Note that adopting Huang et al.’s (2009) framework, the aspectual suffix -le occurs with V instead of occupying in the Asp position and the verb with the suffix -le then raises to Asp head at LF. However, such a derivation in (57) cannot apply to the sentence as in (58), where the subject of zi-lian ‘be obsessed with oneself’ cannot move postverbally as in (58) and (59), 41.

(49) which shows that not all reflexive zi-verbs can enter SPCs.. (58). (59) *. Henduo. ren. zi-lian-le.. many. people. SELF-love-ASP. Zi-lian-le. henduo. ren.. SELF-love-ASP. many. people. ‘Many people are obsessed with themselves.’. So, it seems that there are restrictions on deriving SPCs, which concern (i) what type of subject NPs can be postposed and (ii) what type of predicate doesn’t allow SPCs. We suggest that only positive weak NPs can be postposed in SPCs.24 Weak NPs are the noun phrases formed with weak determiners such as plural numeral NPs (Yang 2007: 7), singular numeral NPs, NPs with henduo ‘many’ or xuduo ‘several’, as exemplified in (60).. (60) a.. Si-le. san-ge. ren.. die-Asp. three-Cl people. ‘Three people died.’. 24. As pointed out by Prof. Hsiao-hong Wu, it is odd that the emphasized elements in the SPCs are weak NPs because traditionally, the emphasized NPs are definite, to which my explanation is that the SPCs are relatively marked constructions, where only the weak NPs are licensed to be emphasized. 42.

(50) b.. Si-le. yi-ge. ren.. die-Asp. one-Cl. people. ‘One person died.’ c.. Si-le. xuduo. ren.. die-Asp. many. people. ‘Many people died.’. We observe that other elements such as definite NPs in (61) , strong NPs in (62)~(64), and negative NPs in (65) and (66) cannot be postposed.. (61) a. * Zi-sha-le SELF-kill-Asp. Zhangsan.. [proper names]. Zhangsan.. ‘Zhangsan killed himself.’ b. * Zi-sha-le SELF-kill-Asp. naxie. ren.. those. people. [demonstrative NP]. ‘Those people killed themselves.’ c. * Zi-sha-le SELF-kill-Asp. ta.. [referring pronoun]. he. ‘He killed himself.’ 43.

(51) d. * Zi-sha-le SELF-kill-Asp. tade. tongxue.. his. classmate. [possessive NP]. ‘His classmate killed himself.’ (62) a.. Suoyou ren. dou. zi-sha-le.. all. all. SELF-kill-Asp. b. * Dou all. people zi-sha-le. suoyou. ren.. SELF-kill-Asp. all. people. ‘All the people killed themselves.’ (63) a.. Duoshu ren. dou. zi-sha-le.. most. all. SELF-kill-Asp. people. b. * Zi-sha-le. duoshu ren.. SELF-kill-Asp. most. people. ‘Most people killed themselves.’ (64) a.. Mei-ge. xiaohai. dou. zi-sha-le.. every-Cl. child. all. SELF-kill-Asp. zi-sha-le. mei-ge. xiaohai.. SELF-kill-Asp. every-Cl children. b. * Dou all. ‘Every child killed themselves.’. 44.

(52) (65) a.. Meiyou. xuesheng. zi-sha-le.. no. student. SELF.kill-Asp. meiyou. xuesheng.. no. student. b. * Zi-sha-le SELF-kill-Asp. ‘No students killed themselves.’ (66) a.. Henshao. xuesheng. zi-sha-le.. few. student. SELF-kill-Asp. henshao. xuesheng.. few. student. b. * Zi-sha-le SELF-kill-Asp. ‘Few students killed themselves.’. Simply put, one restriction of forming SPCs is that only positive weak NPs can be postposed. Next, let’s discuss what kind of predicate doesn’t allow postposing NPs. As indicated by Lin (2010), some reflexive zi-verbs can be compatible with SPCs as in (67). (67) a.. Zi-sha. wu. ren.. SELF-kill. five people. ‘Five people killed themselves.’. 45.

(53) b. * Zi-lian SELF-love. wu. ren.. five. people. ‘Five people were obsessed with themselves’. We propose that the contrast in (67) results from different categories of reflexive zi-verbs after incorporation. In fact, some reflexive zi-verbs are more like adjectives25 because they can occur with the degree word hen ‘very’, as in (68).. (68) a.. Zhangsan. hen. zi-lian.. Zhangsan. very. SELF-love. ‘Zhangsan is obsessed with himself.’ b. * Zhangsan Zhangsan. hen. zi-sha.. very. SELF-kill. ‘Zhangsan killed himself very much.’. The contrast in (68) suggests that some reflexive zi-verbs indeed behave like adjectives in Chinese. The degree word hen ‘very’ in Chinese26 can modify adjectives in (69a), adverbs in (69b), and stative verbs in (69c).. 25. Baker (2004:36) distinguishes stative verbs from other verbs by different structures they appear in a clausal domain; he also argues in his work that stative verbs are like adjective in terms of their structures. 26 Zhang (2014) has a thorough analysis of the degree word ‘hen’. 46.

(54) (69) a.. Dawei. hen. gao.. David. very. tall. ‘David is tall.’ b.. Dawei. pao. hen. kuai.. David. run. very. fast. ‘David runs very fast.’ c.. Dawei. hen. xihuan. ta.. David. very. like. he.. ‘David likes him very much.’. Precisely, under our syntactic analyses, we claim that some reflexive zi-verbs such as zilian ’be obsessed with oneself’ are further reanalyzed as adjectives after incorporation and such zi-verbs do not allow their subjects to be postposed as in (67b). In fact, the postposed subjects in SPCs are not possible with non-verbal predicates (Buell 2007, cf. Zeller 2011). As seen in (70) and (71), the adjectival or nominal predicates in Zulu cannot enter the locative inversion construction (Zeller 2011: 4); that is, the subjects cannot be postposed when the predicate is adjectival or nominal.. 47.

(55) (70) a.. Izinhlanzi. a-zi-zin-kulu. ku-lo mfula.. fish10. NEG-SM10-BP10-big in-DEM3 river 3. 'The fish aren't big in this river.' b. * Lo DEM3. mfula. a-wu-m-khulu. (i)zinhlanzi.. river3. NEG-SM3-BP3-big. fish10. Intended: 'This river is where the fish aren't big.' (Zeller 2011: 4) (71) a.. Izingane zi-ng-abafana. ku-lesi. child10 SM10-COP-boy 2 in-DEM7. sikole. school7. 'The children are boys at this school.' b. * Lesi DEM7. sikole. si-ng-abafana. izingane.. school7. SM7-COP-boy2. child10. Intended: 'This school is where the children are boys.' (Zeller 2011: 4). To summarize, some reflexive zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ allow their subject to be postposed, and some zi-verbs such as zi-lian ‘be obsessed with oneself’ don’t. This phenomenon might be explained under our claim that some zi-verbs might be reanalyzed as adjectives after incorporation and thus cannot enter the subject postposing construction.. 3.2.3 Summary The section presents the derivation of reflexive zi-verbs under the transitive analysis. We analyze zias an internal argument of a verb, and reflexive zi-verbs are derived by noun 48.

(56) incorporation. Furthermore, we observe that some reflexive zi-verbs such as zi-sha ‘kill oneself’ allow postverbal NPs and propose that such constructions, called subject postposing constructions (SPCs), are derived by postposing subject NPs for the pragmatic requirements. Lastly, we point out two restrictions on deriving SPCs: (i) concerning the types of subject NPs in SPCs, only positive weak NPs can be postposed; (ii) some zi-verbs such as zi-lian ‘be obsessed with oneself’ do not allow SPCs possibly because they have been reanalyzed as adjectives.. 3.3. Adverbial zi-predicates This section discusses the derivations of adverbial zi-verbs, which falls into. intransitive. or transitive ones, as exemplified in (72)~(73). As reviewed in Chapter 2, adverbial zi-adds an extra meaning to the predicate such as ‘without any help’, ‘by oneself’, or ‘spontaneously’ (Lin 2010).. (72) Transitive verb + NP a.. Xiaomei. zi-xue. fayu.. Xiaomei. SELF-learn. French. ‘Xiaomei learns French by herself.’. 49.

(57) b.. Lisi. zi-chuang -le. yi-shou. ge.. Lisi. SELF-create-Asp. one-Cl. song. ‘Lisi created a song by himself.’ (73) Intransitive verb a.. Tuoluo. zi-zhuan-le.. top. SELF-rotate-Asp. ‘The top rotated spontaneously.’ b.. Qiche. muoming. de. zi-ran-le.. car. without.a.reason. DE SELF-ignite-Asp. ‘The car ignited spontaneously.’. It is proposed by Aldridge (2009) that adverbial zi-verbs in Old Chinese can be derived under the syntactic approach, but we cannot fully adopt her model because the data in her analysis is from Old Chinese; in addition, facts show that zi- in Old Chinese is a free morpheme (Wei 1995:155-162, cf. Tang 1992, Aldridge 2009) and the adverbial zi- the following verb can be separated from the following verb by some constituents such as the negation ‘bu’ as in (74).. 50.

(58) (74). 風俗. 之美, 男女. 自不取於途……. Fengsu. zhi mei nannu. zi. bu qu yu. tu.. ‘The atmosphere in the society is rustic, so it is natural that men and women do not meet on the road.’ (Xun Zi, Zheng Lun). The adverbial zi- in modern Chinese, however, is very close to the verbal root it attaches to, which means zi- and the verbal root can’t be separated by any syntactic operations as in (75).. (75) * Xiaomei Xiaomei. zi. bu xue. fayu.. SELF. not learn. French. ‘Xiaomei doesn’t learn French by herself.’. Moreover, it is observed that the adverbial zi- can be optional or obligatory. Specifically, zi- is optional in some cases as in (76), where with the adverbial zi-, an extra meaning ‘by oneself’ or ‘independently’ is added to the predicates.. (76) a.. Zhangsan zi-xue-le. yi-ge. yuyan.. Zhangsan. one-Cl. language. SELF-learn-Asp. ‘Zhangsan learned a language independently’. 51.

(59) b.. Zhangsan. zi-chuang-le. yi-shou. ge.. Zhangsan. SELF-create-Asp. one-Cl. song. ‘Zhangsan composed a song without any help.’ c.. Shouji. zi-bao-le.. cellphone. SELF-explode-Asp. ‘The cellphone exploded spontaneously.’ d.. Women. zi-zu-le. dushuhui.. we. SELF-organize-Asp. study.group. ‘We organized a study group by ourselves.’. Interestingly, without zi-, the core meaning of the predicate still holds as seen in (77).. (77) a.. Zhangsan xue-le. yi-ge. yuyan.. Zhangsan. one- Cl. language. learn-Asp. ‘Zhangsan learned a language.’ b. Zhangsan Zhangsan. chuang-le. yi-shou. ge.. create-Asp. one-Cl. song. ‘Zhangsan composed a song.’. 52.

(60) c. Shouji cellphone. bao-le. explode-Asp. ‘The cellphone exploded.’ d. Women we. zu-le. dushuhui.. organize-Asp. study.group. ‘We organized a study group by ourselves.’. On the other hand, the adverbial zi- in some cases cannot be dropped; otherwise, the sentences would be somewhat incomplete or ill-formed. Consider the sentences in (78) and (79).. (78) a.. Ta. zi-zhi. yi-tai. fadianji.. he. SELF-make. one-Cl. generator. ‘He made a generator by himself.’ b.. Ta. zi-po-le. san-duan. he. SELF-analyze-Asp three-Cl. honhonlielie. de. great. DE love.story. ‘He himself told three of his great love stories .’. 53. qingshi..

(61) (79) a. * Ta he. zhi. yi-tai. fadianji.. make. one-Cl. generator. ‘He made a generator by himself.’ b. * Ta he. po-le. san-duan. honhonlielie. de. qingshi.. analyze-Asp. three-Cl. great. DE love.story. ‘Intended: He revealed three of his great love stories by himself.’. We propose that adverbial zi-verbs are derived in the syntax by word-level adjunction,27 which can be either obligatory or optional. Word-level adjunction analysis is also attested in English (Radford 1988: 257). One example of optional adjuncts in English is the adverb enough, the sentence and the structure of which are in (80).. (80) a. He is [AP competent enough]. b.. (Radford 1988: 257). 27. Thanks to Prof. Jen Ting for pointing out this line of analysis as well as Radford’s work to me. 54.

(62) With regard to obligatory adjuncts, examples in English are phrasal verbs such as turn out, in which prepositional particles are treated as part of the verbs. Consider the sentence and its structure as in (81). (81) a. The weather may turn out rather frosty. b.. (Radford 1988: 257). Let’s turn back to adverbial zi-verbs. As can be seen in (82), the optional adverbial zi-verb is derived by zi- adjoining to the V head as a modifier at the word level.. (82) Optional adverbial zia.. zi-xue ‘to learn by oneself’. b.. 55.

(63) As for the obligatory adverbial zi-predicates, the verb zi-zhi ‘to make by oneself’ is also formed by the adverbial zi- adjoining to the head as illustrated in (83).. (83) Obligatory adjunct zia. zi-zhi ‘ to make by oneself’ b.. Summarizing, we’ve derived adverbial zi-verbs under the word-level adjunction analysis along the lines with Radford (1988). We further divide the adverbial zi- into two types: optional and obligatory types, examples of which are listed in Table 5.. Table 5 Optional and obligatory adverbial zi-verbs Adverbial type. Examples. Optional adjunction. zi-xue ‘to learn by oneself’, zi-chuang ‘to create by oneself’, zi-bao ‘to explode spontaneously’, zi-zu ‘to organize by oneself’, zi-cheng ‘to become a certain state spontaneously’. Obligatory adjunction. zi-zhi ‘to make by oneself’, zi-po ‘analyze by oneself’, ziying ‘ to operate a business by oneself’, zi-zhuan ‘to rotate spontaneously’, 56.

(64) 3.4 Zi-renwei: reflexive or adverbial type? In this section, we will discuss a special type of zi-verbs as (84) and the sentence containing zi-renwei is shown in (85).. (84) zi-renwei type zi-ren(wei), zi-yiwei ’consider oneself’, zi-zhi ’know something that is related to oneself’ (85) Zhangsan Zhangsan. zi-renwei. hen. congming.. SELF-consider. very. smart. ‘Zhangsan considers himself to be very smart.’. Kao (1993) analyzes zi- in zi-renwei type of verbs as an argument just like its full form counterpart ziji as in (86).. (86) a.. b.. Bill. zi-ren. hen. congming.. Bill. SELF-consider. very. Bill. renwei. ziji hen. congming.. Bill. consider. self very. smart. smart. ‘Bill considers himself to be smart.’ (Kao 1993:224). 57.

(65) Structurally, both of them are located in the same position in the D-structure as in (87a). The difference is that zi- is a bound morpheme and must move to incorporate with the matrix verb. Such a movement is regarded as a special type of noun incorporation28 as in (87b).. (87) a.. b.. (Kao 1993:224) 28. In fact, Baker (1998) argues that the subject of embedded subject in an ECM predicate can move to the matrix and get incorporated with the matrix verb. 58.

(66) Under the lexical derivation, Lin (2010) analyzes zi- in zi-renwei type of verbs as an adverbial and such verbs take an ECM clause with a PRO in the subject position and the empty element (PRO) must be coindexed with the subject as seen in (88).. (88) Zhangsani Zhangsan. zi-renwei. [CP PROi. SELF-consider. hen. congming].. very. smart. ‘Zhangsan considers that he is smart.’ Lin (2010: 56). Under Lin’s analysis, the verb zi-renwei ‘consider oneself’ is able to take the type of clauses where the subject position is not an empty category as in in (31) and (32); repeated here in (89) and (90). However, Kao’s (1993) analysis fails to account for the cases in (89) and (90), where the verb zi-renwei ‘consider oneself’ is not possibly derived by Kao’s movement analysis.. (89) Mali Mary. zi-ren. (ta). nuer. hen congming.. SELF-consider. (her). daughter. very smart. ‘Mary considers her daughter to be smart.’. 59.

(67) (90) Mali Mary. zi-ren. meiren hui. SELF-consider. no-one can. jie. zhe. ge. miti.. solve this. CL. puzzle. ‘Intended: Mary doesn’t think that anyone could solve the puzzle.’. Under our syntactic approach, we propose that zi-verbs like zi-renwei ‘consider oneself’ in (91), have two possible derivations. That is to say, such verbs can be derived by the adverbial zi- or the reflexive zi-.. (91) a. Zhangsan Zhangsan. zi-renwei. hen. congming.. SELF-consider. very. smart. ‘Zhangsan considered himself to be very smart.’ b.. Zhangsan. zi-zhi. congming.. Zhangsan. SELF-know. smart. ‘Intended: Zhangsan knows that his daughter is smart.’ c.. Zhangsan. zi-ren. da-de-ying. Lisi.. Zhangsan. SELF-consider. beat-DE-win. Lisi. ‘Zhangsan considers himself to be able to defeat Lisi.’ (Lin 2010: 52) One possible derivation of zi-verbs like zi-renwei is by noun incorporation. As illustrated 60.

(68) in (92), the reflexive zi- moves from an embedded clause to the matrix verb.. (92) a. Reflexive zi-type. b. Zhangsan Zhangsan. zii -renwei. ti. SELF-assume. hen. congming.. very. smart. ‘Zhangsan considered himself to be smart.’. 61.