The Syntactic And Semantic Analysis Of The Complex “Gei” Constructions

The Chinese complex“Gei”sentence is initially considered to be followed by a verb V₂.The structural analysis is“V₁+NP₂+Gei+NP₃|V₂”,but actually“Gei+NP₃+V₂”is a structure.The behavior alleged by the second verb is the purpose of the action alleged by the first verb.This paper analyzes the construction based on Functional Category Hypothesis,Control theory and Lexical Decomposition theory,and aims to demonstrate that there is a“behavior-purpose”relationship between two verbs.Firstly,based on the analysis of corpus,the components are described.In terms of valency characteristics,both verbs can be served by monovalent verbs,bivalent verbs,and trivalent verbs,indicating that the valence do not have a decisive effect on whether verbs enter complex“Gei”sentences or not.From the perspective of semantic features,volitional verbs can act as V₁,non-volitional verbs can not serve as V₁,and the overall trend is“[+volitional]>[±volitional]>[-volitional]”,V₂ has autonomy and sensory,indicating that V₁ and V₂ are willful actions.From the structural form,NP₁ tends to act as a identifiable component,NP₂ tends to act as a non-identifiable component,NP3 tends to act as a identifiable component,indicating that the subject has a identifiable tendency,and the object has a non-identifiable tendency.From the semantic roles,NP₁ is usually an agent,it also can be a causer,a relator;NP₂ is usually a patient,can also be a becomer,a server,a supplement,a causee,a involver;NP₃ is the agent of V_2,it is usually the object of V₁,and it can also be a sharer,a patient,and a location of V₁.Which indicates that thematic roles are not The verbal information in the thesaurus,assigned by the functional category.Secondly,according to the syntactic and semantic attributes of the two verbs,the dominance of the verbs is determined.The aspectual marker“zhe/le/guo”can appear after the first verb,but only"le"can appear after the second verb;The tense adverbs“YI JING（YI）”,“ZHENG ZAI（ZHENG）”,“JIANG YAO（JIANG）”can appear before the first verb,however cannot appear before the second verb;The negative adverbs“BU/MEI”can appear before the first verb,whereas cannot appear before the second verb;The first verb can be modified by“ZAI+DP”and the domain can be either V₁P or the entire sentence.The second verb can be modified by“ZAI+DP”but the domain is only V₂P.The second verb is a subordinate verb of the first verb.The verbal phrase projected by the second verb is the purposive argument of the first verb,the semantic relation between two verbs is the“behavior-purpose”relations.The sentence meaning of the entire structure is"x cause y become z cause y by V".Finally,the structure of the complex“Gei”sentence is derived.Contrasting the voice categories of the sentence pattern,we consider that the complex“Gei”sentence is not a covert coordination;Comparing the event categories of the sentence pattern,we deem that the complex“Gei”sentence is not a consequential serial verb construction;Contrasting the semantic structure of sentence pattern,we think that the complex“Gei”sentence is not a resultative serial verb construction,but a purposive serial verb construction.we can add the purposive marker“LAI”,which means that this construction is expanded by PURPOSE;it can be transformed into“Ba”sentence,which means that this construction is expanded by CAUSE and BECOME,then the entire structure can be assigned as"[CausP[Caus][Bec P[Bec][VP[PurpP[Purp]][V]]]]".