Transitivity and the BA Construction

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the legitimacy of positing a Transitivity Projection (=TrP cf. Bowers 1993, 1997, 2001 and 2002) in the BA construction in Mandarin Chinese. BA has been proposed to be a semantically-bleached verb, inserted in the v position (Huang 1997 and Lin 2001). Several pieces of evidence such as manner adverbial placement (cf. Huang, Li and Li 2009) and GEI-insertion (cf. Tang 2001) indicate that there must be a functional projection between the vP and VP to host the BA NP. I propose that a TrP is probably the most apt candidate for the XP. I also argue, in contrast to the proposal by Huang, Li and Li (2009), that the present proposal which employs a TrP captures most of the properties of the BA construction. A comparison with the structure of the BEI construction also shows that the TrP proposal fits into the general picture of current linguistic theory on transitive constructions without extra stipulations.