A Case Study on Spatial and Possessive Transfer in Chinese

• Main Authors: Tsung-Hsien Hsieh, 謝宗憲
• Other Authors: Lyih-Peir Luo
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/09173665029621001633

碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 外國語文學系 === 96 === Abstract This thesis aims at finding out how events of possessive and spatial transfers are encoded in Mandarin Chinese, supposing that construction representing transferring relationship is projected from the lexicon and hence predictable from the argument structure. According to Harley’s (2003) claim that different argument structures of verbs determine each distinct transfer, ditransitive verbs do not express ambiguously as Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2005) propose. In Kiparsky (1997), it is argued that location and possession have completely distinct semantic schemata based on Hale and Keyser’s (1992) proposal of central coincidence and terminal coincidence. In this research we argue that argument structures can distinguish the possessive and spatial transfers. Having studied on ditransitive verbs and denominal verbs in Chinese, we conclude that these verbs can be classified to three types: one expresses only spatial transfer; another only possessive transfer; still another can have different argument structures corresponding to types of transfers. The successful transfer and the animacy of the goal-denoting argument are proved to be decisive factors on the possessive transfer in the double object construction.