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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 26:1 (2025) ► pp.155–189

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Light predicate raising in the Mandarin post-VP adverbial nominal constructions

 | National Chung Cheng University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 12 September 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00181.zha
Abstract
In Mandarin, a nominal may follow a string that is composed of a monomorphemic verb and its monomorphemic object. The nominal exhibits the same constraints as a preverbal PP. Also, unlike a canonical or non-canonical object, such a nominal cannot be deleted. It is argued that such a nominal is the object of a preposition; the PP is base-generated as a left adverbial of a shortest transitive VP; and after the leftward raising of the light VP and deletion of the preposition, the nominal surfaces to the right of the VP. Based on this study, the paper reports a form economy in syntactic operations.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Major differences of V-PONs from O-PONs
  • 3.The non-object properties of V-PONs
    • 3.1Various adverbial readings of V-PONs
    • 3.2A. The same combination restriction on a preverbal PP
    • 3.3B. The same interpretation as a preverbal PP
    • 3.4C. The ban on ellipsis
  • 4.The VP status and the lightness of the VO string to the left of a V-PON
    • 4.1The VO string as a VP
    • 4.2The minimal length of a syntactic element
  • 5.Two flawed analyses of V-PONs
    • 5.1The V-PON construction as a double object construction?
    • 5.2A V-PON as the object of a VO string?
  • 6.Proposal: Light predicate raising
    • 6.1The non-canonical order in extraposition constructions
    • 6.2PP-Stranding in V-PON constructions
    • 6.3The forms of certain prepositions in the pre- and post-verbal positions
    • 6.4Against the light verb analysis of an implicit preposition
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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