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Article published In:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 23:2 (2022) ► pp.329–348

Defective incorporating verbs in Mandarin

| National Chung Cheng University

This paper identifies a type of noun incorporation in which the verb and a nominal are combined as early saturation of the verb, in contrast to early restriction, which is seen in the familiar type of noun incorporation. Two types of V-V resultative constructions in Mandarin Chinese are compared: the agent-oriented one and the patient-oriented one. The semantic grouping effects of the first verb and the post-verbal nominal of an agent-oriented type show that they are local to each other in their base-positions. But unlike in the patient-oriented one, the first verb in the construction shows a weak reachability. The defectiveness of the verb is parallel to that of an incorporated nominal in the familiar type of noun incorporation: e.g. no modification and no anaphoric linking to a proform. The paper argues that the first verb in the agent-oriented resultative construction and the post-verbal nominal, which can be a full-fledged referential nominal, undergo a type of noun incorporation parallel to the familiar type. In such noun incorporation, instead of the nominal, it is the verb that exhibits root-like properties. Such properties are viewed as a consequence of an early combination of a verb and a nominal, before each of them takes an event-argument, in a neo-Davisonian semantic perspective.

Keywords: agent-oriented resultative, incorporation, restriction, saturation, Mandarin
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The semantic grouping of V1 and O in AR
  • 3.The reachability differences of V1 in AR and PR
  • 4.Root-like properties of V1 in AR and a new type of NI
  • 5.A syntax of AR: Early merger of V1 with O
  • 6.A semantics of AR: Early saturation of V1 by O
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 29 April 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00108.zha
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