Readers 读者
Hoo, Hoo, Hoo: Syntax of the Causative, Dative, and Passive Constructions in Taiwanese
"與", "與", "與": 台湾语言使役，与格及被动结构的句法
Lisa L.-S. Cheng 郑礼珊, C.-T. James Huang 黄正德; Y.-H. Audrey Li 李艳慧; C.-C. Jane Tang 汤志真
Abstract 摘要
The morpheme hoo in Taiwanese has been commonly observed to occur in a number of constructions: the causative, the passive, and the so-called double-object, dative and serial-verb constructions. We offer a formal unifying analysis of the argument structure of hoo that ties these constructions together in a way that explains their clustering, to the exclusion of other constructions. We show that the double-object construction is a special instance of the canonical causative. The serial verb hoo is a causative embedded as a secondary predicate, and the so-called dative is a special case of such a secondary predicate. Finally, the passive is an ergativized version of the canonical causative, formed not by dethematizing the subject, but by turning its event complement into a secondary predicate. Following in part Feng (1995), Chiu (1995) and Chomsky (1980), we assume that the secondary predicates (in passives, datives, and the serial-verb structures) are syntactically created by Null Operator movement. We provide extensive arguments in support of this hypothesis and note some implications for the theory of argument structure.