The Paradox of Subject-Oriented Resultative Compounds in Taiwan Southern Min

The Paradox of Subject-Oriented Resultative Compounds in Taiwan Southern Min Huei-Ling Lin Department of Foreign Languages and Literature National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan folhll@ccu.edu.tw Abstract Adopting Control Theory, this paper proposes that subject-oriented resultative compounds in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM) have a biclausal structure with PRO as the subject of the second verb. According to the Principle of Minimal Distance (Rosenbaum 1967, 1970), PRO should be controlled by the closest c-commanding antecedent. Therefore, the closest NP, even if it is not the object, can also control the PRO. Subject-oriented resultatives thus should not be considered exceptional. The syntactic derivation proposed in this paper can not only explain the orientation of the resultatives in TSM but also account for their syntactic behavior of allowing other syntactic elements in between. 1 Introduction “A resultative attribute describes the STATE of an argument resulting from the action denoted by the verb” (Simpson 1983: 143). For English resultatives, the resultative phrase is predicated of the object. For example, the resultative in (1a) is predicated of the object the car. When the sentence involves an intransitive change-of-state verb, the resultative is then predicated of the subject as in (1b). According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978), since (1b) involves an unaccusative verb, the surface subject is actually an object in the underlying structure. Therefore, the resultative in (1b) is also predicated of the object underlyingly. That is, the resultative in (1b) modifies the subject he, which is the underlying object. As Simpson (1983) states, “resultative attributes in English are subject to the SYNTACTIC constraint that they must be controlled by an OBJECT, whether underlying or surface” (p. 148), which is referred to as the Direct Object Restriction (DOR) by Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995). Subject-oriented resultatives are thus often considered exceptions or ungrammatical as in (2). In consequence, Mateu (2005) argues that DOR is strictly observed in English. (1) a. I painted the car yellow. (Simpson 1983: 143 (1)) b. He flushed/blushed red. (Simpson 1983: 144 (9a)) (2) *I danced/laughed/logged/walked/worked tired. (Simpson 1983: 145 (15)) Chinese resultatives are manifested in two forms—de construction as in (3) and V-V compound as in (4). (3) Zhangsan zhui de Lisi hen lei. Zhangsan chase DE Lisi very tired. ‘Zhangsan chased Lisi and as a result Lisi got tired.’ (4) Zhangsan da-po-le beizi. Zhangsan hit-break-ASP cup ‘Zhangsan broke the cup.’ In (3) the resultative lei ‘tired’ is predicated of the object Lisi, and the resultative in (4), po ‘broken’, is also predicated of the object beizi ‘cup’. It seems that the two types of resultative do follow DOR. However, there exist other types of resultative in Chinese, as in (5) and (6). The resultative lei in (5) is predicated of the subject Zhangsan, and the resultative in (6), ni ‘tired’, is also predicated of the subject Zhangsan. (5) Zhangsan zhui Lisi zhui de hen lei. (cf. (3)) Zhangsan chase Lisi chase DE very tired. ‘Zhangsan chased Lisi and as a result Zhangsan got tired.’ (6) Zhangsan ting-ni-le na shou ge. …

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