On Ta De Laoshi Dang-de Hao ‘He Teaches Well’ and Related Problems

Abstract

Modern Chinese exhibits a number of apparent syntax-semantics mismatches, giving rise to many examples with ‘fake possessives’ and ‘fake nominal quantifiers’, which pose non-trivial problems for a theory of syntax-semantics mapping and lead to other peculiar phenomena. This article assumes a lexical decomposition approach and proposes a head-movement explanation of the apparent mismatches, according to which a verb moves out of a gerundive construction into a higher performative light verb position. The proposal not only solves the apparent problems discussed, but is supported by several independent motivations and theoretical bonuses. The paper also broaches the question of linguistic variation, showing that the observed phenomena are by-products of Modern Chinese as a highly analytic language.