NP De VP Structure In Mandarin Chinese Revisited

This thesis targets at NP DE VP structure in Mandarin Chinese. We focus on three research questions in this thesis:(1) what are the constraints on verbs and noun phrases?(2) Whether the VP in this structure is a nominalization expression?(3) How is this structure generated?First of all, this thesis presents a detailed linguistic description in terms of the properties of NP and VP occurring in this structure. We observe that NP in this structure may be interpreted as definite, specific or generic but not indefinite. This semantic contrast can be attributed to the constraint on variable-binding, i.e. an indefinite NP introduces a variable that cannot be bound in this structure. In addition, we verified previous observation that bare VPs in this structure are often disyllabic verbs. Unlike disyllabic verbs, monosyllabic verbs generally cannot occur in this structure if they are not in complex forms such as passive or coordination structures. But disyllabic verbs seem to be disallowed in passive form or with full arguments realization. There seems to be a contrast between disyllabic and monosyllabic verbs.By comparing this structure with other DE structures in Mandarin Chinese, we regard this structure as a possing-nominalization structure, in which DE is a possessive determiner. We argue that NP is base generated in the Spec of DP, different from previous analysis that takes NP as the result of movement. Within the framework of Distributed Morphology, we assume VP is a gerundative phrase. The verbal properties of VP are realized by the light verb head dominating it while its nominal properties come from the final projection of DP.Such a morpho-syntactic approach can well account for the constraints on VP. We argue the nominalized VP should express an event interpretation. Therefore for verbs without event reading, they have to co-occur with other elements licensing an event interpretation. For mono-syllabic transitive verbs like da’beat’needs a passive marker bei to indicate a past event. Besides, since the light verb in the nominalization process is intransitive [Become]/[Happen], a passive marker is in need to constrain the transitivity of verbs. For other mono-syllabic antonym verbs like sheng’rise’and luo’lower’needs a conjunction word he’and’to express a complete eventive process.