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Article published In:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 24:2 (2023) ► pp.269–301

On the syntax of assigning you constructions in Mandarin Chinese

| National Taipei University of Business
Assigning you constructions in Mandarin Chinese are special in that they often read like passives. With this in mind, the goal of this paper is twofold. First, I aim to compare assigning you constructions with typical passive constructions of bei in Mandarin Chinese. Second, I attempt to seek an approach that may derive assigning you constructions desirably. The research results are as follows. I have found that assigning you constructions and bei passives differ both semantically and syntactically. I argue, contrary to Xiong (2010), that you is not a passive morpheme since, unlike Mandarin bei passives or English be passives, assigning you constructions do not always exhibit the initial NP as a Patient or Theme. I also argue against the traditional treatment of you as a preposition and instead propose that you is a three-place predicate taking an IP complement. I show that the bi-clausal structure deriving from the verb analysis receives empirical support from binding phenomena.
Keywords: assigning, passive, patient, bi-clausal, binding
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Comparison between you and bei
    • 2.1Semantic differences
    • 2.2Syntactic differences
  • 3.Review of previous studies
    • 3.1PP analysis
    • 3.2FP analysis
  • 4.Proposal: VP analysis
    • 4.1Toward a three-place argument structure
    • 4.2Syntactic parallels between the assigning you and typical ditransitive verbs
    • 4.3Nonfiniteness of the embedded IP complement
    • 4.4Pre-you NP: Topic vs. subject
    • 4.5Bi-clausality
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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Published online: 9 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00131.hua
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