Generalized Passivization on Complex Predicates - City University.docx
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Generalized Passivization on Complex Predicates - City University.docx
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The1998Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America New York City,NY,USA,8-11January1998
Generalized Passivization on Complex Predicates
Haihua Pan
Department of Chinese,Translation & Linguistics
City University of Hong Kong
Email:
cthpan@cityu.edu.hk,http:
//ctspc05.cityu.edu.hk/haihuapan/ ABSTRACT
The BEI passive construction is a very controversial construction in Chinese. It is argued that unlike English,Chinese passivization does not suppress the accusative assignment ability of the verb,since there is an object left behind in
(1),and the object of pai „send‟ stays in-situ in
(2) (Goodall1990,Feng1997,etc.). Sentences like
(2) complicates the debate on the status of BEI:
a preposition or a verb-like element with an IP complement (cf.Huang1982,Li1990,Feng1997,Goodall1990,etc.).
(1) Juzi bei ta bo -le pi.
orange by he peel-ASP skin
„The orange gets its skin peeled off by him.‟
(2) Jiaoshi bei laoshi pai Xiao Li zhao Lisi dashao -le. class-room by teacher send find clean-ASP „The class room has been cleaned by Lisi,whom the teacher sentXiao Li to look for.‟
In this paper I argue that the accusative case is indeed suppressed in passive sentences,and in this respect Chinese does not differ from English,if we recognize the existence of a Maleficiary Insertion rule (MI) (cf.Tan1992who treats BEI as the trigger of MI),and assume that the passive operation can apply to complex predicates in Chinese. Thus,under my account BEI is a preposition just like its English counterpart by. My analysis is supported by the following facts about Chinese.
The argument against the accusative case suppression (ACS) using
(1) is not well-founded. Since MI can add a maleficiary role into the argument structure of a verb under certain semantic condition,verb bo will have three -roles after MI applies,and can assign two objective cases,so the case the object pi „skin‟ gets is not the accusative case but an inherent case. Hence sentences like
(1) are not counterexamples to ACS. Furthermore,MI can help us solve the long-standing puzzle in Chinese,namely why intransitive verb si „die‟ can appear in the transitive sentence Ta si-le Fuqin „He got his father dead‟. This is because intransitive verb si can have two -roles after MI applies.Similar verbs include duan/po „break‟,lie „crack‟,an „press‟ in an laiba „press horn‟, fa „punish‟ in fa qian „fine (someone) money‟,etc;
The argument against ACS using
(2) is also flawed.Since jiaoshi „class-room‟ is not an object of the first verb pai „send‟,it seems that passivization does not exhibit ACS in Chinese. However,if we assume that unlike English,the domain on which Chinese passivization operates is a complex predicate,then the passive operation will suppress the accusative case assignment ability of paiXiao Li zhao Lisi dashao jiaoshi „sendXiao Li to find Lisi to clean the class room‟,and no problem arises. Since the other two objectsXiao Wang and Lisi in
(2) can also be passivized if verb qu „go‟ or lai „come‟,functioning like infinitive marker to,is inserted,our Generalized Passivization (GP) operation on complex predicates is further supported. This suggests that there is a generalized passivization operation which can operate on both simple and complex predicates in Chinese,and it is not restricted to any particular object. GP is also supported by the fact that complex predicates like resultative verb compounds and resultative construction can undergo passivization;and
Verbs with their goal role realized as obliques provide independent evidence for ACS,since their patient role can only be topic,passive subject,or BA-object,but not the direct object,cf.*Ta tui-le yi/nage ren xiang shenyuan „He pushed a/the man toward the canyon‟,Nage ren bei ta tui-xiang-le shenyuan „The man was pushed into the canyon‟,Ta ba yi/nage ren tui-xiang-le shenyuan. The behavior of these verbs suggests that there is an independent detransitivization operation that can suppress the accusative case assignment ability of the verb in question.The detransitivization operation can also help to explain why we cannot generate as the direct object the argument realizing the maleficiary role in verbs after MI application.
With the help of MI and GP,we can make Chinese conform to the standard passivization analysis,and thus support the search for Universal Grammar. Hence Chinese differs from English only in the domain on which passivization operates. The same approach can be extended to the famous BA-construction in Chinese,if we assume a Generalized Passivization on Complex Predicates
Haihua Pan,City University of Hong Kong
1detransitivization operation on complex predicates that suppresses the accusative case of the verb in question.Under this analysis,pace Bender (1996),BA is analyzed as a preposition just like BEI. Focus of the Talk
Whether Chinese BEI passive behaves simila
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