Morphology as a cause of syntactic change: The Chinese evidence
构词是句法演变的导因: 汉语的证据
Shuanfan Huang 黄宣范

Abstract 摘要
The bulk of Chinese VP syntax can be interpreted as the product of an interplay between two opposing forces: where verb compounding morphology always increases the number of arguments per verb, the surface structure condition that the main verb may not be followed by more than one constituent serves to limit the complexity of VP. This interplay has led to the development of accusative object markers and the verb reduplication construction. Evidence for this claim is provided from (1) the behavior of V + O compounds in transitive sentences, (2) morphological structure of complement-taking verbs, (3) cognate object constructions and (4) the phenomena of verb reduplication in extent and adverbial complements. Surface filters are word order templates, as pointed out in Perlmutter (1971) and the proposed surface structure condition is no exception. If we assume that Chinese dialects have essentially identical basic structure, then the proposed surface structure condition is a reasonable device to account for different surface details, and leads to a natural and revealing analysis of the syntax and morphology of Chinese dialects.

汉语动词词组的句法主要现象可以看成是两个反对力量相互牵制的结果：动词构词增加了与动词共用的名词数，而主要动词后头只能跟一个成分。这一表层结构法则却限制了动词词组的复杂性。这种互动关系造就了宾语标志和动词的重复结构。这个说法有下列的论据：1．动宾复合词的句法现象；2．带补语动词的构词现象；3．同根宾语结构；4．程度，副词补语中的动词重复现象；诚如Perlmutter(1971)所指出的，表层的过滤限制是词序塑造的模式，而这里所提出的表层结构规律也没有例外。如果我们假定汉语方言基本上具有相同的底层结构，那么所提出的表层结构法则可以合理地解释不同表层结构的细节，也可以给汉语方言的句法和构词提供一个自然且深入的分析。

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