Locative Inversion：A Comparative Study of English and Chinese
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Kikushima, Kazunori
DOI
en-US
Abstract
This thesis deals with locative inversion, focusing on verbs which occur in the construction of English and Chinese. The purpose of this thesis is to show a proper necessary condition for verbs to occur in locative inversion.
Contrary to the prevailing argument that locative inversion is an unaccusative diagnostics, I show here that some unergative verbs, as well as prototypical unaccusative verbs, are found in locative inversion of English, and in addition, that verbs of change of state, which are among unaccusative, cannot occur in the construction. Examining the lexical representations for these verbs along the lines of the Generative Lexicon, I propose that besides the state subevent condition proposed by Nakajima (2001), it is also necessary to examine the lexical representations for the postverbal NPs in order to explain the co-compositional operation between some unergative verbs and the preverbal PPs for the circumstantial interpretation.
As for verbs which occur in locative inversion of Chinese, firstly, I present their distributional characteristics and argument structures, classifying these verbs into some semantic groups. Secondly, regarding some issues related to the interchangeability between –zhe and –le in locative inversion, it is proposed that the interchangeability is possible only when attainment to the endpoint of the process subevent gives rise to the atelic homogeneous state subevent at the same time in the headless event structure of the verb. Lastly, examining the lexical representations for verbs in Chinese locative inversion, I present some conditions for unergative to occur in the construction: i.e. co-compositional operation between unergative verbs and preverbal locative NPs, and the relation of the TELIC role for the postverbal NP being identical with the meaning of the verb itself.
Subjects
存在句
非受格動詞
非作格動詞
衍生辭彙
結合構成
locative inversion
unaccusative verb
unergative verb
generative lexicon
co-composition
Type
thesis
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