A Minimalist Study Of BA-Construction In Mandarin Chinese

Based on the assumptions of MI (Chomsky 1998) and DbP (Chomsky 1999), this thesis provides a tentative analysis for the syntactic status of basic components of BA construction, and discusses the derivation of objective, locative/instrumental, and causative BA constructions.The BA-construction has been widely discussed in the literature due to its structural deviation from the canonical SVO word order in Chinese and the syntactic and semantic constraints imposed on its verb and other components. Couched within the framework of MI and DbP, this thesis re-examines the basic elements of BA construction, drawing the following conclusions: 1) BA is a functional category which licenses an external argument; 2) the aspect marker–le/-zhe and resultative marker–de, which are closely related to the well-formedness of BA-construction, are light verbs that have uninterpretable strong [-V] feature,Ф-features and EPP feature; 3) the noun phrases following BA is base generated in the lower VP shell, but shifted to Spec vP to delete the EPP feature of the light verb. It has to be definite or specific because only DP can move out of VP to this position.In addition to the basic components, this thesis dwells on the derivation of BA construction which can be classified into three categories. Objective BA construction is marked with a transitive verb and the BA DP being the logic object of the verb. Locative and instrumental BA constructions differ from objective one in that BA DP represents the location or instrument of the verb action. Causative BA construction is more complex in that the matrix verb in it is either unaccusative or intransitive and that there is usually a result clause following the matrix verb. On the one hand, there are some basic steps involved in the derivation of these three categories of BA construction. Local Match is established between an aspectual or resultative light verb and a noun phrase in VP, thus their uninterpretable features are deleted and the noun phrase is valued accusative Case. The noun phrase, if a DP, is further shifted to Spec vP to delete the EPP feature of v, being adjacent to BA. Likewise, EA, an agent or causer, agree with T and is assigned nominative Case. It is further moved to Spec T to delete the EPP feature which is assumed universal in languages. On the other, special operations should be adopted in dealing with different type of BA constructions. When a complement follows the verb in the objective BA construction, the verb first merges the complement and then the object in the derivation. Under the principle of Maximal Matching Effects (Chomsky 1999), the nominal complement can only receive an inherent Case from the V or preposition. In addition, the causative BA construction has an additional CAUS light verb, so BA DP, base-generated in VP, is the logic object of CAUS light verb and assigned accusative Case, though apparently it is the logic subject of the unaccusative/intransitive verb or resultative clause. Besides, resultative clauses in causative BA construction can be distinguished between control structure and ECM structure according to their properties.In this approach, the subtle, yet nontrivial distinction among various BA constructions can be captured structurally and the formation of the BA-constructions simply becomes the side effects of object shift without requiring any lexical rule or stipulation. This analysis offers a far more efficient and elegant account than other approaches for the syntax of various BA constructions.