An Exo-Skeletal Analysis of Complex-Path Motion Predicates in Taiwan Mandarin

Pin-Hsi Chen, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation provides a syntactic analysis of motion predicates in the variety of Mandarin spoken in Taiwan, using a generative-constructionist theoretical framework called the Exo-Skeletal Model (XSM) (Borer 2005a; Borer 2005b; Borer 2013). Although previous studies have investigated motion predicates from typological (e.g., (Talmy 2000)), diachronic (e.g., (Chor 2018)), and purely descriptive (e.g., Chen 2010) perspectives, few have given a comprehensive account of the multiple sub-components of these predicates and the different properties they have. Even fewer have attempted to analyze how motion predicates are structured in a Serial Verb Construction (SVC) language such as Mandarin. These few include Benedicto & Salomón (2014) on Mayangna, Zheng (2012, 2015) on SwaTawWe, Cantonese, and Mandarin, Osei-Tutu (2019) on Ghanaian Student Pidgin, and Taherkhani (2019) on Tati. It goes without saying that much work is still needed before we can paint a complete picture of how motion events are grammatically represented in the mind. The present study, therefore, will contribute to this line of research by addressing questions left unanswered by the aforementioned studies. It is hoped that this work will refine the existing analysis of the grammar of motion predicates, and that by doing so, we will be one step forward toward an explanatory account of such grammar. Furthermore, perception of motion is a universal human experience that is undoubtedly underpinned by certain innate cognitive modules. A study on motion predicates thus provides a significant steppingstone to exploring how the language faculty (which must also have someinnate specifications) interacts with those cognitive modules, thereby shedding light on the nature of our linguistic capacity. Goal. The goal of this dissertation is to refine the existing formal accounts of the syntax of motion predicates in Mandarin, specifically those found in Zheng (2015) and Chen (2017), thereby providing answers to the question of how motion events are syntactically represented in Language. In particular, this work will be primarily focused on two aspects: The first one is how the path component is structurally configured in Mandarin and what syntactic constraints it exhibits. The second one is how telicity obtains in Mandarin motion predicates. Although this dissertation shares the same overarching theme with those previous works, in some places it provides important updates and new analysis of the same puzzles. A Brief Background to the Study. Different languages express motion events in different ways. Among the works that have investigated this topic, Talmy’s (2000) is perhaps the most notable. He analyzes motion events from a typological and cognitive-semantic perspective by dissecting them into several basic semantic elements, such as Figure, Ground, Path, Motion, Manner, and Cause(Talmy 2000, p. 21) and examining what semantic elements are expressed by what surface elements, such as verb, adposition, subordinate clause, and satellite. (A satellite is a “grammatical category of any constituent other than a nominal or prepositional-phrase complement that is in a sister relation to the verb root (p. 222).”) This analysis leads to his well-known two-way typology that distinguishes between verb-framed languages, which express a path of motion with a main verb, and satelliteframed languages, which do so with particles, verb prefixes, verb complements, etc.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Benedicto, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Language|Asian Studies|Linguistics|Logic

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