A Syntactic-Semantic Study On Derivation Of Chinese Denominal Verbs

Denominal verbs derived from parent noun are one of the lexical verbs. The phenomenon of denominal verbs is witnessed ubiquitously in word-formation conversion. Most scholars have done a great research and have achieved a lot on the derivation of denominal verbs from lexical account, syntactic account, semantic account and pragmantic account. However, denominal verbs are the interface problems between syntactics and semantics. The literatures from syntactic-semantic interface are much less. This dissertation tries to investigate the derived process of denominal verbs under a syntactic and semantic approach,and analyze the syntactic and semantic features of Chinese denominal verbs. The parent noun of denominal verb has its conceptual knowledge of event at lexical level. In plainer words, a lexical root contains some basic nature information of participants at the lexical level. Based on the semantic role of parent role in the root event at lexical level, Chinese denominal verbs are classified into seven types: resultative denominal verbs, performative denominal verbs, similative denominal verbs, ornative denominal verbs, locative denominal verbs, privative denominal verbs and instrumental denominal verbs. With the seven types of Chinese denominal verbs in lexical-syntactic features, the derived process of denominal verbs are classified into two types with their lexical-syntactic features. One is that parent noun directly merged with light verb to derive denominal verbs. The other way is that there exists a null preposition between parent noun and light verb. Parent noun is firstly merged with a null preposition and then merged with light verb to derive denominal verbs. Performative denominal verbs, resultative denominal verbs, similative denominal verbs and privative denominal verbs obey the derived rule that parent nouns directly merge with light verbs to derive denominal verbs. The other denominal verbs are that parent nouns merge a null preposition, and then merge a light verb to derive denominal verbs. Chinese denominal verbs are similar with English denominal verbs in the derivation process, which has the universal meaning.