Semantic Features and Internal Differences of Ergative Verbs

Abstract

The ergative phenomenon in Chinese involves many hot-debated issues in the study of Chinese syntax and semantics, which was explored from various perspectives in previous researches. In this paper, a total number of 123 ergative verbs are sorted out in terms of their syntactic representation, semantic types and semantic features, and result in three findings. Firstly, the common semantic feature of ergative verbs is the meaning of change. Secondly, there are obvious internal differences in transitivity, causativity and volition of ergative verbs: unary ergative verbs indicate spontaneous and uncontrollable changes in events, with low transitivity and obvious non-volitional tendency; binary ergative verbs have higher transitivity and obvious causative tendency. Thirdly, the two relevant structures, ‘S+V+N’ and ‘N+V’, represent different stages before and after the change. The former structure represents the origin or motive force of the change, while the latter represents the state after the change. A temporal sequence and logical causality exist between them.