Transitive unaccusative1 verb constructions in Mandarin Essay

Transitive unaccusative1 verb constructions in Mandarin - Essay Example 1. Perlmutter (1978) and Bwzio (1986) suggested that the class of intransitive verbs is non-homogenous, and it is composed of two subclasses: unaccusative and unergative verbs. This paper focuses on unaccusative verbs. The cases of unergative verbs are different with unaccusative, which will be discussed in Section 4. In Mandarin, there also exits an alternation of unaccusative verbs into transitive verbs (here we do not limit it to causative verbs, because we do not know its syntactic representation yet) without inserting a verb. We make a hypothesis that the syntactic configurational approach to event structures for the transitivity alternation in English (Hale and Keyser 1991, 1993, 1997, 1998, 1999) can apply to the structure of transitive unaccusative verb constructions in Mandarin. Next, we will give the reason for this hypothesis, and check our hypothesis by Mandarin data. The body of research created by Hale and Keyser (1991, 1993, 1997, 1999) implies that relevant syntactic configurations predetermine event structures the event structures of VPs and NPs’ thematic status inside them. Hale & Keyser state that deriving of English deadjectivals and denominals subjected to complex syntactic structures; thereby, the rules of UG, such as ECP, affect the relevant derivations. Basically, Hale & Keyser’s assumption implies that syntactic means affect derivation of lexical units, while syntactic operations insure derivation of the argument structures. Hale &Keyser virtually exc