An Investigation Of Chinese Verb Copying Sentences Within The Generative Framework

This thesis aims to probe into the verb copying sentence in Mandarin Chinese. Itrefers to a sentence which has two occurrences of the same verb, one followed by anobject, and the other followed by a complement.Previous researchers either focus on the syntactically generative mechanism orthe syntactic properties and semantic characteristics of verb copying sentences. In thethesis, we attempt to reexamine verb copying sentences by taking both syntactic andsemantic perspectives into consideration to give a full account for the followingresearch questions:1) Why verb copying is allowed in some cases but not in others?2)Why verb copying is obligatory in some cases but optional in others?3) What is thesyntactic status of D/F phrase in optional verb copying sentences?4) What are thestatuses of V₁and V₂and how such kind of sentences is derived?As for the first question, based on Hoekstra’s （1990,1992） typology of events, wemake a proposal that only those verbs denoting a non-telic event type in the sentence inwhich the situation is repeatable or continuous after completion can be triggered asverb copying.As for the second question, we semantically reclassify verb copying sentencesinto resultative ones and descriptive ones. The two types differ in whether there is atermination of the event provided by VP₂. In resultative verb copying sentences withde phrase, there is a termination of the event which expresses a perfective meaning, soverb copying is obligatory. On the contrary, in descriptive ones, VP₂just gives adescription for the situation of VP1.Thus, verb copying is not obligatory.As for the third question, according to Huang’s （1994） thematic hierarchy, for onething, we propose that sentences with non-referential object+D/F phrase are ill-formed;whereas referential object+D/F phrase are well-formed. For another, sentences withD/F phrase+referential object/non-referential object projecting an NP are allwell-formed. In this way, we further explain verb copying sentences with D/F phrasecan be optional. Thus, verb copying varying from obligatory to optional is independenton the classification of such kind of sentences.As for the derivation of verb copying sentences, we treat resultative de and le asaspect markers, similar to inflectional morphemes in English, which are attached to theverb to show a perfective aspect. Verb copying is not only to satisfy the inflectionalmorpheme in phonetic level but also for feature checking of the object DP. Therefore, we regard V₁as the copied verb and V₂as the original verb with no substantivecontent.