Research On The Conditions For The Acceptability Of The Combination Of Hen And A VP With Numeral Complement

The paper addresses a kind of phrase with Hen combining a VP with numeral complement (HVP phrase) in Chinese, such as "hen zhao le yizhenzi(很找了一阵子)”and "hen qu guo ji ci(很去过几次)”Although a lot of researches have been done upon the Conditions for the Acceptability (A-conditions) of the HVP phrase, there are still many important relevant problems to be resolved, such as, how many conditions are needed to get the phrase accepted? how do the A-conditions cooperate? why do the A-conditions exist?To get the range of the A-conditions of the HVP phrase, we have investigated a great deal of instances from existed literature and a great deal of possible instances. Through careful analysis, we find a series of A-conditions:the numeral complement should not express meaning of real numerical value; the numeral complement should have the measuring value which can be subjectively modified; the numeral complement should not mean subjective "small value"; the VP in the phrase should have meaning of measural type; the VP of the phrase should not have prominent meaning; the VP of the phrase should construct solidly and steadily; the HVP phrase as a whole should have at least one meaning which can be reasoned; the HVP phrase should be used in an occasion where people can speak ostentatiously; etc.To explain the cooperation mechanism of the A-conditions, we put forward the Combining-Feature Structure Analysis in Chinese, which derived from the complex features analysis in computational linguistics, especially that in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). The analysis includes four steps:to transcribe the A-conditions to combining-features and feature values, to get the combining-features in one element structured, to describe the combining process of different elements by rules, and to unify different elements. To give the A-conditions’existence a general explanation, we have introduced a new method:Induction-Connection. After several steps’ generalization, we have gotten one general rule for the A-conditions’ explanation:integrity and harmony law of system, which includes two big sub-law (law of construction-integrity and law of relation-harmony) and many further subordinate rules.To expand our research, we put the HVP phrase into a bigger system of the phrases with co-occurrence of adverb and numeral element. The expanding investigation, as expected, really shows the value of our findings and even refines some of them.Although our research object HVP phrase is a specific phrase, the A-conditions we have found and our multi-angle, multi-faceted study to which will help resolve many unresolved problems for long, and find more new Chinese grammar phenomena, and give inspiration to the A-condition study of complicated phrases, to the syntactic analysis of Chinese grammar, to the study of Chinese measuring category.