An Event Semantic Approach To Verb-resultative Constructions In Chinese

Dong-jie-shi describes events with a set termination point. It is a very importantsyntactic structure in Chinese and has always enjoyed the continuous attention amongscholars. The thesis attempts to investigate its semantic relation under theframework of event-based semantics.According to Rothstein (2004), the event denoted by dong-jie-shi is a complexevent consisting of two atomic subevents separately denoted by the primarypredicate and secondary predicate. According to Bach (1986), all predicates candenote some eventuality. To have a better observation of the internal relation betweenthese two eventualities denoted in VRCs, I raised the following research questions:1)Do the two eventualities denoted necessarily have to share some argument?2) What isthe temporal relation between two eventualities?3) What is the semantic relationbetween two eventualities?A detailed analysis shall be given in response to these three questions.Concerning the argument relation between two eventualities, Rothstein (2004)proposes that there is a shared argument between them. Various types ofdong-jie-shi can be formed according to the nature of the predicates and theirdifferent relations with arguments. Based on the observations and analyses, thereare indeed some cases involving no argument-sharing, and thus providing strongevidence against that it is a must for two eventualities to share a certain argument.As for the temporal relation between two eventualities, Rothstein (2004)suggests that the event denoted by the primary predicate e1was assigned a telic pointand the telic point of the event e1was time-connected to the event of e2of the affectedtheme being in a state denoted by the secondary predicate, in which the two subeventshave the same run time. Given that her intuition is roughly correct, the eventualitydenoted by the primary predicate should be a pre-supposedly specific activity eventwith a telic reading, thus it can be provided with a telic point.The last issue is about the semantic relation between two eventualities. Variouscomplicated mapping relations have been displayed as more predicates composedin dong-jie-shi and the different associations between predicates and theirarguments. Based on the observations, not all of them involve a causal orcause-result relation. I shall suggest in the thesis that the eventuality denoted bythe secondary predicate is the predication of the eventuality denoted by the primary predicate, which implies a predication relation, especially for pseudo-VRCs.Based on the above analyses, this thesis made an attempt to clarify theargument relation, temporal relation and semantic relation between twoeventualities denoted in dong-jie-shi, which lays a foundation for theunderstanding of its nature. Meanwhile, provided there is a mapping relation fromsyntactic structure to event structure, then the conclusion in this thesis may shedsome light for the studies of syntax of resultatives.