The Syntax of Hoo‐Resultatives in Taiwanese Southern Min*

Abstract

AbstractThis article investigates the hoo‐resultative construction in Taiwanese Southern Min from the syntactic perspective. Specifically, it is argued that the morpheme hoo in hoo‐resultatives is responsible for causativizing an otherwise non‐unaccusative secondary predicate in resultative formation. The restriction with respect to the occurrence of object pronouns in the sentence‐final position is argued to result from prosodic considerations that ban two consecutive weak constituents from surfacing on the right edge. It is also suggested that the counterpart of this particular hoo in resultatives of Mandarin Chinese is covert and has no phonetic content. This view offers a systematic way to capture several cross‐linguistic contrasts with respect to resultatives between Taiwanese Southern Min and Mandarin Chinese.