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The formation of the “NP1exp+V+NP2” construction in Chinese

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Chinese Lexical Semantics (CLSW 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10085))

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Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the formation of the “NP1exp+V+NP2” construction from the perspective of historical development and formal syntax. I argue that the “NP1exp+V+NP2” construction comes from a morphological or lexical causative construction and has a competitive relationship with the causative constructions in the process of the historical development of Chinese. The “V+NPtheme” constructions are actually two-place unaccusative sentences with omitted causer or experiencer. Only the “NPtheme+V” construction is the real one-place unaccusative construction in which the NPtheme generates in the object position in deep structure and moves to the subject position in surface structure because of case requirement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, No. 135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China

    Mengbin Liu

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  1. Mengbin Liu
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Correspondence to Mengbin Liu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Infocomm Research , Singapore, Singapore

    Minghui Dong

  2. Nanyang Technological University , Singapore, Singapore

    Jingxia Lin

  3. Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Xuri Tang

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Liu, M. (2016). The formation of the “NP1exp+V+NP2” construction in Chinese. In: Dong, M., Lin, J., Tang, X. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10085. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49508-8_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49508-8_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49507-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49508-8

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