On the syntax of assigning you constructions in Mandarin Chinese

Bibliographic Data

ID21756990
AuthorsRui-heng Ray Huang (National Taipei University of Business, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume24
Issue2
Pages269-301
Publication date2023-04-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage and Linguistics 語言暨語言學 (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1606-822X • E-ISSN: 2309-5067
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/lali.00131.hua
OpenAlexW4323669332
LanguageEN
References cited11

Assigning you constructions in Mandarin Chinese are special in that they often read like passives. With this in mind, the goal of this paper is twofold. First, I aim to compare assigning you constructions with typical passive constructions of bei in Mandarin Chinese. Second, I attempt to seek an approach that may derive assigning you constructions desirably. The research results are as follows. I have found that assigning you constructions and bei passives differ both semantically and syntactically. I argue, contrary to Xiong (2010) , that you is not a passive morpheme since, unlike Mandarin bei passives or English be passives, assigning you constructions do not always exhibit the initial NP as a Patient or Theme. I also argue against the traditional treatment of you as a preposition and instead propose that you is a three-place predicate taking an IP complement. I show that the bi-clausal structure deriving from the verb analysis receives empirical support from binding phenomena

Linguistics · Mandarin Chinese · Morpheme · Natural language processing · Programming language · Syntax · Verb · Computer Science · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence