Syntax-Semantics Mismatches:the Case Of Fake Attributives In Chinese

The study of syntax-semantics mismatches demonstrated by fake attributives is a main concern of recent linguistic research on Chinese grammar. On the basis of the data from Ancient Chinese and Modern Chinese, the study is an attempt to explore the nature of fake attributives, and to demonstrate that the derivation of both fake possessives and fake nominal quantifiers is triggered by the demand for Case, and derived under the influence of historical factors (e.g., prosodic development) and/or information structure.Constructing fake possessives is one of the ways for the objects of complex verbal constructions (or of verbs in these constructions) to be realized. Not being able to get Cases, these objects cannot be realized in situ, but have to be spelled out in certain roundabout ways, one of which is to form fake possessives. To be more specific, since both the object of V in a V-DE construction and the object of the first V in a V-V compound cannot get Cases in situ, they have to retreat from their base-generated positions. However, they may still be realized, if necessary, in certain positions. If this position happens to be under FocP, it may trigger Generalized Focus Restructuring phonologically and analyze the topic and the focus into one Clitic Group, thus affecting the meaning conveyance and information processing. In order to ensure that the phonological structure matches the syntactic structure, extra measures, such as pause, interjection insertion or De-insertion, must be taken. A fake possessive may be derived if the boundary marker De is inserted between a topic and a focus. Similarly, because the accusative Cases assigned by VO complex verbs are consumed by Os, the objects of VO complex verbs cannot be realized in situ, either. In order to get a Case, they can either be combined with a preposition (forming a PP), to get oblique Cases or become possessors of Os to get possessive Cases. The latter is actually a kind of fake possessives.The derivation of fake nominal quantifiers is due to the demand for Case, too. Fake nominal quantifiers, semantically, are verbal quantifiers. In order to get a Case, they must either enter positions governed by verbs to get the Cases that are assigned by the verbs to their objects (forcing the verbs'objects to retreat or enter the verb-copying constructions), or appear in the attributives of NPs, where they may get Cases, if necessary, through agreement. If the latter is chosen, fake nominal quantifiers are obtained.In conclusion, the fake possessives involving V-DE constructions and V-V compounds are the results of the interaction between syntax and prosody. Their derivation is completed at the syntax-phonology (prosody) interface. However, the fake possessives involving VO complex verbs and the fake nominal quantifiers involving duration phrases and frequency phrases are mainly the results of syntactic operations.All the fake attributives cannot be accounted for by a single mechanism due to the fact that they are not of the same pattern although they share much in appearance. A proper explanation can be given only when multiple factors are taken into account, since fake attributives involve not only syntactic operations, but also many other factors, such as prosody, information structure, etc.