The Indefinite Object in Mandarin Chinese. Its Marking, Interpretation and Acquisition
The Indefinite Object in Mandarin Chinese. Its Marking, Interpretation and Acquisition
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普通话中的不定宾语。
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发表时间：
2008
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通讯作者：
N. Yang
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作者：
N. Yang
本文的研究对象是汉语中的不定宾语名词短语。为了探讨语言的特殊因素是否可以用语言的普遍制约来解释，本文从标记、解释和习得三个方面对不定宾语进行了研究。本文认为，汉语不定宾语的特点是各种性质的一般性和独立理据性制约因素在语言中的特定排序的结果。在第三章中，我考察了汉语中的区别宾语标记，并得出结论，生命性和特异性的特征都影响了这种现象，这一点在其他语言中也得到了论证（Aissen 2003）。然而，引人注目的是，在汉语中，不是特定的而是非特定的对象被强制性地标记为对象标记“把”，而“把”是特定对象的可选标记。为了解释这一点，我认为，在汉语中，除了生命性和特异性，第三个维度在区别对象标记中发挥作用，即语序。也就是说，动词前位置与特定的NP相关联，而与它们是主语还是宾语无关。因此，乱序的对象（不管它们最初为什么乱序）通常是特定的对象。因此，非特定的物体在混乱的位置是“非典型的”，这就是为什么他们需要在中文中标记。第四章研究汉语动词前宾语NP的解释。与传统的主张，只有强（具体）NP可能会出现在动词前的位置标记为ba相反，我表明，非特定的不确定的NP，事实上也发生在bacconstructions。我认为，在把字句中的不确定对象的解释是受词汇属性的对象，它的句法位置和类型的谓词，并被认为是最佳的解决方案之间的相互作用的相关的普遍的，但潜在的冲突的限制。
The subject of this dissertation is the indefinite object noun phrase (NP) in Chinese. In order to investigate whether language specific factors can be accounted for by language universal constraints, three aspects of the indefinite object are studied: its marking, its interpretation and its acquisition. I show that the characteristics of indefinite objects in Chinese are the result of a language specific ranking of general and independently motivated constraints of various nature. In Chapter 3 I examine differential object marking in Chinese and conclude that features of both animacy and specificity influence this phenomenon, as has been argued for other languages (Aissen 2003). Strikingly however, in Chinese not the specific but rather the non-specific objects are obligatorily marked with the object marker ba, while ba is optional for specific objects. In order to explain this, I argued that in Chinese, apart from animacy and specificity, a third dimension plays a role in differential object marking, namely word order. That is, the preverbal position is associated with specific NPs, independently of whether they are subjects or objects. Thus scrambled objects (irrespective of the reason why they scrambled in the first place) are usually specific objects. Hence non-specific objects in scrambled position are ‘atypical’ and that is why they need to be bamarked in Chinese. In Chapter 4 I study the interpretation of object NPs in preverbal position in Chinese. Contrary to the traditional claim that only strong (specific) NPs may occur in the preverbal position marked with ba, I show that non-specific indefinite NPs in fact do occur in baconstructions as well. I argue that the interpretation of indefinite objects in the ba-construction is influenced by the lexical properties of the object, its syntactic position and the type of predicate, and is conceived of as the optimal resolution of the interaction between the relevant universal, but potentially conflicting constraints.