Argument Alternations And Unaccusativity Construction In Chinese

Argument alternations have been considered to be interesting phenomena all the times. Many linguists have concentrated on argument alternations in English, such as spray/load-alternation and swarm-alternation. To explain the dynamic property of arguments, they have mostly proposed the accounts from a semantic approach, arguing that semantic components of verbs play an important role. This thesis focuses on an argument alternation in Chinese, involving three syntactic constructions: a verb phrase, a locative inversion construction and a resultative ba-construction, as simply represented as the sentences in (1) and (2).(1) a. *Zai di-shang xiao tudou-pion ground-top peel potato-skin'Someone peels the skin of potatoes on the ground.'b. * Di-shang xiao zhe tudou-piground-top peel DUR potato-skin 'There is skin of potatoes on the ground.'c. Chushi ba tudou-pi xiao zai di-shang.cook BA potato-skin peel on ground-top 'The cook peeled the skin of potatoes on the ground.'(2) a. Zai heiban-shang xie zion blackboard-top write character'Someone writes some characters on the blackboard.'b. Heiban-shang xie zhe zi. blackboard-top write DUR character'There are some characters written on the blackboard.'c. Laoshi ba zi xie zai heiban-shang. teacher BA character write on blackboard-top 'The teacher writes some characters on the blackboard.'This thesis explores the syntactic constraints of this alternation and a motivated explanation of the links between verbs attested in these constructions, their argument structures and the alternations they undergo.Since the locative inversion construction is the most important construction among three constructions in this alternation, this thesis first centers about previous studies on the locative inversion in English. Because of the presence of unergative verbs in this construction, the status of this construction to be an unaccusative diagnostic has been challenged. Unergative verbs are also found in the locative inversion in Chinese. This thesis agrees that the status of...