Cover not available
Part of
New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax: Studies in honor of Yen-Hui Audrey Li
Edited by Andrew Simpson
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 272] 2022
► pp. 111–132

“Descriptive complements” are manner adverbials

| University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Dartmouth College
The Mandarin “descriptive complement” construction (e.g. Ta pao-de kuai “S/he runs fast”) is often analyzed as a verb plus a syntactic complement, but I argue that the postverbal de-phrase is in fact a manner adverbial. Several facts about the construction, including morphological and cooccurrence restrictions, do not help decide the issue. Rather, two strong arguments support its adjunct status. First, taking these phrases as complements would require all Mandarin verbs to optionally select for a manner expression, a dubious proposition. Second, doing so would violate a widely-assumed universal restriction on argument structure (to at most three arguments). Finally, several putative arguments for complement status are shown to be either invalid (such as the possibility of extraction) or weak (postverbal position).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The descriptive construction
    • 1.2Two types of choice for an analysis
    • 1.3Organization
  • 2.Equivocal evidence
  • 3.(Potentially) deciding evidence
    • 3.1Selection
    • 3.2Argument structure
  • 4.Two non-arguments for the Complement Hypothesis
    • 4.1Extraction from DES
    • 4.2Postverbal position
  • 5.Summary and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 April 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.272.04ern
References (44)
References
Abeillé, Anne, and Daniele Godard. 2001. A Class of ‘Lite’ Adverbs in French. In Joaquin Camps et al.. (eds), Romance Syntax, Semantics and L2 Acquisition, 9–25. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Borgonovo, Claudia., and Ad Neeleman. 2000. Transparent Adjuncts. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 45:199–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chao, Yuen-Ren. 1948. Mandarin Primer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Lisa L.-S. 2007. Verb Copying in Mandarin Chinese. In The Copy Theory of Movement, Norbert Corver and Jairo Nunes (eds.), 151–174. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ernst, Thomas. 1995. Negation in Mandarin Chinese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13:665–707. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. The Syntax of Adjuncts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2003. Adjuncts and Word Order Typology in East Asian Languages. In Functional Structure(s), Form and Interpretation, Audrey Li and Andrew Simpson (eds.), 241–261. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
. 2014a. Adverbial Adjuncts in Mandarin Chinese. In The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, C.-T. James Huang, Y.-H. Audrey Li, and Andrew Simpson (eds.), 49–72. Malden, MA: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014b. The Syntax of Adverbs. In Routledge Handbook of Syntax, A. Carnie, Y. Sato, and D. Sadiqqi (eds.), 108–130. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2022. Adjunct Condition and the Nature of Adjuncts. The Linguistic Review 39:1.
Geuder, Wilhelm. 2000. Oriented Adverbs: Issues in the Lexical Semantics of Event Adverbs. Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Konstanz.
Gouguet, Jules. 2006. Adverbials and Mandarin Argument Structure. In Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 6, Oliver Bonami and Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), 155–173. Paris: Colloque de Syntaxe et Semantique de Paris.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth, and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1993. On Argument Structure and the Lexical Expression on Syntactic Relations. In The View from Building 20, Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), 53–109. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi. 2011. A Minimalist Approach to Argument Structure. In The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism, Cedric Boeckx (ed.), 426–447. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P., and Eva F. Schultze-Berndt. 2005. Issues in the Syntax and Semantics of Participant-Oriented Adjuncts: an Introduction. In Secondary Predication and Adverbial Modification, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Eva F.Schultze-Berndt (eds.), 1–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, C.-T. James. 1982. Logical Relations in Chinese and the Theory of Grammar. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
. 1988. Wo pao de kuai and Chinese Phrase Structure. Language 64:274–311.Google Scholar
. 1992. Complex Predicates in Control. In Control and Grammar, Richard K. Larson, Sabine Iatridou, Utpal Lahiri and James Higginbotham (eds.), 109–147. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, C.-T. James, Audrey, Li Y.-H., and Yafei, Li. 2009. Syntax of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, Chu-ren, and Mangione, Louis. 1985. A Reanalysis of de: Adjuncts and Subordinate Clauses. In WCCFL 4, Jeffrey Goldberg, Susannah MacKaye and Michael Westcoat (eds.), Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
Kayne, Ricard. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kubota, Ai. 2015. Transforming Manner Adverbs into Surface-Subject-Oriented Adverbs: Evidence from Japanese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 33:1019–1046. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Law, Paul. 2006. Adverbs in A-not-A Questions in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 15:97–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Li, Audrey Y.-H. 1990. Order and Constituency in Mandarin Chinese. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liao, Wei-wen Roger, and Tzong-hong Jonah Lin. 2019. Syntactic Structures of Mandarin Purposives. Linguistics 57:87–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lin, T.-Z. Jonah. 2014. Light Verbs. In The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, C.-T. James Huang, Y.-H., Audrey Li, and Andrew Simpson (eds.), 73–99. Malden, MA: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1984. On the Nature of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
McGinnis, Martha. 2017. Applicatives. In Blackwell Companion to Syntax, 2nd ed., Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mei, Kuang. 1972. Studies in the Transformational Grammar of Modern Chinese. Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Morzycki, Marcin. 2016. Modification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinon, Christopher. 2013. Speech Act Adverbs as Manner Adverbs. MS, Universite Lille 3. [URL]
Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb Meaning and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. Situations and Syntactic Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rapoport, Tova. 2019. Secondary Predication. In Oxford Handbook of Event Structure, Robert Truswell (ed.), 426–455. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Susan. 2006. Secondary Predication. In Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Vol. 4, 209–233. Malden, MA: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schäfer, Martin. 2008. Resolving Scope in Manner Modification. In Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 7, Oliver Bonami and P. Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), 351–372. Paris: CSSP.Google Scholar
Soh, Hooi Ling. 1998. Object Scrambling in Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Tang, C.-C. Jane. 1990. Chinese Phrase Structure and the Extended X’ Theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University dissertation.Google Scholar
Truswell, Robert. 2011. Events, Phrases, and Questions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsai, Cheng-Yu Edwin. 2012. Descriptive Complement Constructions as Concealed Pseudoclefts in Chinese. In Proceedings of the 29th West Coast Conference on Linguistics, Jaehoon Choi et al.. (eds.), 259–267. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Zhang, Niina. 2003. The Asymmetry between Depictives and Resultatives in Chinese. In Asymmetry in Grammar, Anna Maria DiSciullo (ed.) Vol. 1, 165–185. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. Low Predicate Inversion in Mandarin. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 29:159–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar