On the Syntactic Function of ta and le in the V-ta/le-ge Construction in Mandarin Chinese

• Main Authors: Wan-Chun Hung, 洪琬淳
• Other Authors: Miyuki Sawada
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/75038866945324894616

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 102 === The study adopts Lexical Decomposition Theory (Huang 2010), derived from McCawley (1969) and Ross (1972) and Light Verb Analysis (Lin 2001), originally proposed by Hale and Keyser (1993) to analyze the syntactic function of ta and le in the V-ta/le-ge construction. Most of the previous studies focus only on the V-ge construction and provide little descriptive explanation for the inserted morphemes, ta and le, of the V-ta/le-ge construction. In this study, the dummy ta is considered as a VP adjunct that modifies the whole VP and is interpreted as ‘very much’ to emphasize the irrealis action with an irrealis marker, such as yao ‘will’, jiang ‘will’, xiang ‘would like’, and so on. On the other hand, le in the V-le-ge is regarded as a perfective marker base-generated in the AspP (aspectual phrase) to denote a perfective event. The assumption mentioned above enable us to account for the phenomenon, that is, ta and le are only compatible with the irrealis V-ta-ge construction and the realis V-le-ge construction, respectively. In addition, we assume that ta is a verbal modifier that describes the excessiveness of the action. Therefore, ta cannot modify a verbal phrase with a mass noun because this kind of VP does not show any excessive information, as (1) illustrated below. Instead, ta can modify a verbal phrase with an object or complement because such a VP can be mapped onto the degree scale for the excessive modification. The sentences in question are in (2). (1) *chi ta ge fan eat TA GE meal ‘to have a meal’ *吃它個飯。 (2) a. chi ta ge san-wan-fan. eat TA GE three-bowl-rice ‘to have three bowls of rice’ 吃它個三碗飯。 b. chi ta ge tongkuai. eat TA GE to one’s heart’s content ‘to eat to one’s heart content’ 吃它個痛快。