A Syntax Study On The Causative Reversible Sentence

The reversible sentence is a kind of special sentence pattern in modern Chinese. When noun phrases before and after the verb exchange positions, it still expresses the same basic meaning. The causative reversible sentence is the research emphasis of this paper, the unmarked sentence of this sentence pattern contains a causative structure: the causer + VR + the causee. In this paper, we divide the causative reversible sentence into three types: the psychological verb + state complement, such as “Muqin xiangsi erzi le”; the general verb + resultative complement, such as “Zhedaocai chinile kerenmen”; the attachment verb + state complement, such as “Xianhua kaimanle tianye”.In this paper, we point out that, the predicate component has a static feature because this sentence pattern represents an existing state, and this makes the sematic roles of the nouns before and after the verb unclear. We think this is also the reason why this sentence pattern can be reversed. In addition, we put forward that the complement points to the noun phrase which is the actor of the main verb, but it isn't appropriate for the category of the attachment verb + state complement. We think this phenomenon has a relation to the complement “man”, because “man” has a biphasic feature on cognition. For example, “Tianye kaimanle xianhua”, we can say“Tianye manle” or “Xianhua manle”. On the other hand, the static feature is easy to cause sentence ambiguity, so in order to interpret the sentence ambiguity, we think that in the unmarked sentence, the complement points to the object, and the object is also the causee. For example, “Muqin xiangsi erzile”, in the unmarked sentence pattern, “muqin” is the causer, “erzi” is the causee, “si” points to the object “erzi”, the meaning is “The son missed her mother and the son felt like dead”. Certainly they share the same ambiguity structure.Moreover, we unify generation steps of the causative reversible sentence on the basis of the Minimalist Program(MP). “The causer + VR + the causee” is an unmarked sentence pattern, the caused event is reflected as the Small Clause(SC) on the generation process according to the Boundary Principle, the subject of SC moves to [Spec,VP] and the predicate merges with the main verb on account of the Greed. We also think the causer has the Focus Feature in order to emphasize the cautive effection, so the causer was moved to the specifier of the FocusP in order to check the uninterpretable Focus Feature.The reversible sentence, “the causee + VR + the causer”, is generated on the basis of the unmarked sentence with a meaning of notional passiveness, so it contains a light verb “vbei” and VR merges with it for checking its strong feature. We also think that there is another light verb in the marked sentence, and it can trigger the movement of the subject of the SC(namely the causee) for checking the EPP Feature of the light verb.