Existential and locative constructions in Mandarin Chinese

Despite previous studies (cf. among others Huang 1987. Existential sentences in Chinese and (in)definiteness. In Eric J. Reuland & Alice G.B. Ter Meulen (eds.), , 226–253. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1990. . Dordrecht: Kluwer; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1998. Two types of existenti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistic review 2020-06, Vol.37 (2), p.231-267
Main Authors: Paul, Waltraud, Lu, Yaqiao, Lee, Thomas Hun-tak
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chinese languages
Existential constructions
Grammatical aspect
Grammatical case
Humanities and Social Sciences
Linguistics
locative inversion
Mandarin
Natural language
Noun phrases
Reference (Semantic)
Sentence structure
subject position
Syntactic structures
Theoretical linguistics
unaccusative verbs
unergative verbs
Verbs
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Summary:Despite previous studies (cf. among others Huang 1987. Existential sentences in Chinese and (in)definiteness. In Eric J. Reuland & Alice G.B. Ter Meulen (eds.), , 226–253. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1990. . Dordrecht: Kluwer; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1998. Two types of existential sentences. 26. 175–191; Pan, Haihua. 1996. Imperfective aspect , agent deletion, and locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese. 14(2). 409–432), the defining characteristics of existential sentences in Chinese (including potential equivalents of in English) have remained controversial. This is shown to be due to the failure to acknowledge the existence of two different constructions, the (ExC) ‘Ø V DP’ where a sentence-initial phrase indicating location (PlaceP) is not required, on the one hand, and the (LoC) with an obligatory PlaceP, on the other: ‘PlaceP V DP’. Only the ExC can serve as a diagnostic context for unaccusative verbs, whereas the LoC allows for a wide range of verbs, including a subset of unergative verbs. Furthermore, two types of LoC need to be distinguished, depending on the type of aspect (perfective aspect - vs imperfective aspect ), giving rise to different semantics. Both have, however, in common that the PlaceP occupies the subject position (SpecTP), not the topic position, and that it is merged in SpecTP, not moved there, as evidenced by the systematic lack of a corresponding source structure with the PlaceP in postverbal position.
ISSN:0167-6318
1613-3676
DOI:10.1515/tlr-2019-2043