Angry Thunder and Vicious Frost: Remarks on the Unaccusativity of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Angry Thunder and Vicious Frost:

Remarks on the Unaccusativity of Chinese Weather Verbs

Sicong Dong1, Jie Xu2, Chu-Ren Huang3

1 School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055

Shenzhen, China

2 Department of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Macau, Macao, China 3 Department of Chinese & Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

The 21st Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop (CLSW2020)

• 1. Unaccusativity
• Unaccusative 非宾格动词

take internal arguments, i.e., subjects originate as objects The patient died.

• Unergative 非作格动词

take external arguments The man is running.

non-volition volition

• 1. Unaccusativity
• Unaccusative

到 dào ‘arrive’, 死 sǐ ‘die’, 发生 fāshēng ‘happen’, 出现 chūxiàn ‘appear’

• Unergative

睡 shuì ‘sleep’, 笑 xiào ‘laugh’, 哭 kū ‘cry’, 跳 tiào ‘jump’

• One criterion: order of N and V in attributive clauses

死了一条狗的老头 / *一条狗死了的老头 美国人旅游的季节 / *旅游美国人的季节

• 2. Unaccusativity of Weather Verbs
• Debate on the unaccusativity of weather verbs

(1) unaccusative; (2) not unaccusative; (3) both; (4) neither

• Chinese weather verbs

下雨了。 降雪了。 The only argument of a weather verb appears in the postverbal object position.

• Sinitic languages/Chinese dialects

unaccusative

• 3. Chinese Weather Verbs
• Mandarin

下雨/下雪/下雹子/下霜/起雾 了。 雨下/雪下/雹子下/霜下/雾起 了。 打雷/闪电/刮风 了。 *雷打/*电闪/*风刮 了。

• 下, 起: surface and deep unaccusativity?
• 打, 闪, 刮: surface unaccusativity?

• 3. Chinese Weather Verbs
• Sinitic languages

Thunder: 打 dǎ ‘hit’, 拍 pāi ‘slap’; 响 xiǎng ‘make sound’, 吼 hǒu ‘roar’, 叫 jiào ‘shout’, 哀 āi ‘whine’ Frost: 打 dǎ ‘hit’;下 xià ‘fall’, 落 luò ‘fall’, 降 jiàng ‘fall’, 上 shàng ‘rise’ Thunder strike: 雷打 léidǎ thunder-hit, 雷劈 léipī thunder-chop, 天打 tiāndǎ Tian- hit, 雷公劈 léigōngpī Lord_of_Thunder-chop, 龙抓 lóngzhuā dragon-claw, 佛拌 fóbàn Buddha-throw Frost damage: 霜 打 shuāngdǎ frost-hit, 霜 杀 shuāngshā frost-kill, 霜 冻 shuāngdòng frost-freeze volitionality + a second argument

• 4. Two Event Types
• Activity

It rained (a light rain). unergative 一直不下雨 要下雨了 不管刮风下雨

• Happenstance

A light rain rained on my head. unaccusative 雨下得很密 雨下得更大了 雨下个不停

一直不下雨的时候 雨下得很密的时候

• 5. Conclusion
• Weather verbs in Mandarin and other Sinitic languages are not uniformly

unaccusative. unaccusative: 一直不下雨; 又开始打雷了 unergative: 雨下个不停; 雷打了半天 transitive: 滨河路上的一棵老柳树雷打掉了 (Lanzhou Chinese)