单语素词汇致使式的句法生成研究

A Syntactic Approach to Monomorphemic Lexical Causatives in Mandarin Chinese

本文主要在分布式形态学的框架下讨论现代汉语的单语素词汇致使式。基于不同的句法语义表现,我们区分了两类词汇致使式,分别以“√开”和“√毁”为代表。在句法上,前者不允许致事主语被动化和回指,后者允许;在语义上,前者存在动词的歧义现象,后者不存在;在跨语言上,前者的句法表现与英语词汇致使式不同,后者与之相似。本文对上述现象提出如下解释:首先,“√开”类致使式的施事处于VoiceP但致事处于vP,而“√毁”类致使式施事与致事均处在VoiceP;其次,汉语词汇致使式复原义的显著性,与动词是否有歧义相关,而歧义一方面源于词根的不同句法实现方式,另一方面源于词根的语义变体。与此同时,该歧义也与使用频率的高低相关。最后,现代汉语跟古代汉语和英语在(反)致使式上不同的句法现象,来源于轻动词v是否具有[D]特征,该特征所允准的句法环境限制了语义变体的实现。

This paper attempts to account for monomorphemic lexical causatives in Mandarin Chinese in the framework of Distributed Morphology.We distinguish two types of lexical causatives which differ in syntactic and semantic behaviors:Syntactically,the first type represented by kai(开) does not allow passivization and anaphora in the case of causer subjects,whereas the second type represented by hui(毁) does;Semantically,kai-type causatives exhibit polysemous verb meanings,while hui-type causatives a monosemous verb meaning;Cross-linguistically,hui-type causatives show the same syntactic behaviors as English causatives,while kai-type causatives do not.Our account of these properties consists of three claims.The first is that the causer is introduced in the layer of vP in kai-type causatives,while the causer and agent are both introduced in the specifier of VoiceP in hui-type causatives.The second is that the saliency of the ‘restitutive' reading in lexical causatives is determined by two major factors.One pertains to the polysemy of the verb which results from the different syntactic constructions its root enters,or from its allosemes in different syntactic environments.The other factor is how frequently the verb is used.The final claim is that the presence or absence of D feature carried by the light verb v may lead to various syntactic phenomena of(anti)causatives in such languages as Mandarin Chinese,ancient Chinese and English.