IULC Publications

Structure vs. Function in the Chinese Verb Phrase

By Thomas Ernst

Chinese syntax includes a number of restrictions not present in other, relatively unfettered, languages. Among those applicable in verb phrases are 1) the limitation of definite frequency or duration expression to a pre-verbal position but indefinite ones to a post-verbal position, and 2) the rarity of more than one post-verbal expression. While there have been a number of recent attempts to account for such restrictions structurally, Dr. Ernst argues that their structural elegance belies both empirical and conceptual flaws. Specifically, such analyses are unable to account for 1) marked patterns like long VPs and 2) degrees of acceptability according to the type of post-verbal constituents. Dr. Ernst proposes instead an analysis of Chinese word order combining both structural and pragmatic mechanisms that accounts for both the data covered by purely structural analyses and the issues described above. General implications of Dr. Ernst's analysis include 1) support of the GB approach for extracting broad regularities of word order but 2) evidence for the possible need of such an approach to supplement purely syntactic principles with semantic and pragmatic mechanisms.

43 pages
$5.00

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