TRANSITIVITY AND THE BA CONSTRUCTION

• Main Author: Pei-Jung Kuo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Crane Publishing Co 2010-06-01
• Series: Taiwan Journal of Linguistics
• Subjects: Transitivity Projection; the BA Construction; the BEI Construction
• Online Access: http://tjl.nccu.edu.tw/volume8-1/8.1-4Kuo.pdf

In this paper, I discuss the legitimacy of positing a Transitivity Projection (= TrP cf. Bowers 1993, 1997, 2001 and 2002) in the BA construction in Mandarin Chinese. BA has been proposed to be a semantically-bleached verb, inserted in the v position (Huang 1997 and Lin 2001). Several pieces of evidence such as manner adverbial placement (cf. Huang, Li and Li 2009) and GEI-insertion (cf. Tang 2001) indicate that there must be a functional projection between the vP and VP to host the BA NP. I propose that a TrP is probably the most apt candidate for the XP. I also argue, in contrast to the proposal by Huang, Li and Li (2009), that the present proposal which employs a TrP captures most of the properties of the BA construction. A comparison with the structure of the BEI construction also shows that the TrP proposal fits into the general picture of current linguistic theory on transitive constructions without extra stipulations.