Action-Motion Expressed by Serial Verb Constructions in Standard Mandarin Chinese and Jinjiang Southern Min

Abstract

This paper focuses on the phenomenon that the same combination of verbs denoting the meaning of action-motion can occur in two different syntactic subtypes of Serial Verb Construction, i.e., the nuclear serialization and core serialization, based on the general distinction made in studies that adopt a variety of theoretical frameworks. Despite the similar meaning expressed by the two constructions and their instantiations that share the same component verbs, the nuclear and core serializations can be distinguished from each other in terms of their argument structure and constituency structure. In this paper, I attempt to offer an adequate description of the properties of these syntactic subtypes of action-motion SVC attested in two Sinitic varieties: Standard Mandarin Chinese and Jinjiang Southern Min. In addition, I argue that only the directional verb (V2) in the core serialization can be optionally followed by a locative noun phrase due to its partly independent argument structure in the core serialization, a characteristic not observed in the nuclear serialization. While both syntactic subtypes of action-motion SVC can be found in Mandarin Chinese, in Jinjiang Southern Min, the meaning of action-motion can only be encoded by the core serialization. The use of contrasting structures to encode action-motion expressions in Mandarin Chinese and mainland Southern Min also indicates the diversity of grammar found in different Sinitic varieties (also see Chappell 2015; Chappell and Li 2015).