Abstract
In this paper, I present an argument from Mandarin Chinese for the claim that the double object construction involves more structure than the dative construction (Marantz (1993), Bruening (2001), Miyagawa and Tsujioka (2004)). The evidence involves a contrast between the double object and the dative constructions in the distribution of the distributive quantifier GE 'each'. I propose that GE may adjoin to a vP or a VP (cf. Lin (1998), Kung (1993)), and the distribution of GE may be used to diagnose the presence of a vP or a VP layer. The proposed analysis provides evidence for the existence of the verb-preposition distinction in Mandarin Chinese.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 155-173 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Journal of East Asian Linguistics |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 2005 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was funded by a grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and a Single Semester Leave awarded by the University of Minnesota. I would like to gratefully acknowledge their support. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments. I am grateful to Noam Chomsky, Michel DeGraff, Valerie Guerin, Alec Marantz, Shigeru Miyagawa and Norvin Richards for discussions at various stages of this work. Parts of the material in this paper were presented at the ApplFest: Independent Activities Period Workshop on Applicative Constructions and Related Issues, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January, (2001). I thank the participants of the workshop for questions and comments.