A Study Of The Structure Of Mandarin Resultative Verb Compounds: A Sideward Movement Approach

This thesis aims to address the structures of Resultative Verb Compounds (RVCs) inMandarin Chinese in the framework of Generative-Transformative Grammar (TGGrammar). Previous studies show that subject-predicated RVCs constitute a perennialtroublemaker in the syntactic studies on RVCs. In this thesis, I attempt to address thedifficulties of subject-predicated RVCs by means of Nunes’s Sideward Movementhypothesis (1995,2001,2004). Presumptively, I attribute the difference between thesubject-predicated RVCs and object-predicated RVCs to the way they move:subject-predicated RVCs are derived via Sideward Movement plus chain reduction, whileobject-predicated RVCs are the output of standard movement. On this assumption, not onlythe structural difficulties of subject-predicated RVCs and ambiguous RVCs are basicallyresolved, but also an additional merit is therefore achieved. This assumption gives anaccount for the existence of verb copying in subject-oriented RVCs, which I assume differsfrom subject-predicated RVCs in the application of Sideward Movement before or after theformation of the verb compound.