The Information Structure and Argument Mapping of Mandarin Chinese Resultative Verb Construction

Abstract

This thesis will investigate the information structure and its interaction with argument mappings of Chinese resultative verb construction (RVC). One RVC may have several different mappings. This thesis proposes that these mappings have a strong relation with information structure. If a mapping is not in accord with the information structure of the sentence, this mapping will not be chosen by the speaker.

This thesis proposes that there are four types of Topics in Chinese: primary Topic, secondary Topic, continuing Topic and contrastive Topic. The primary Topic and contrastive Topic motivate a Patient-type argument to be the Subject, and an Agent-type argument being a secondary Topic may not be the Subject of the sentence. Secondary Topics in BA and BEI construction bear different information update, and this blocks some mappings that are possible in the canonical structure to appear in BA and BEI construction. Show more