Abstract
This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lian…dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lian…dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; therefore, we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lian…dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions. Additionally, we also show that, as in many other languages with comparable constructions, the two instances of the verb are part of a single movement chain, which has the peculiarity of allowing Spell-Out of more than one link.
Highlights
The goal of this paper is to investigate two little-studied variants of two focus constructions in Mandarin Chinese, namely, clefts and lián...dou sentences
This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lian...dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lian...dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lian...dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions
Abels shows that the infinitive citat and the finite verb citaet stand in a movement relation analogous to the one we have proposed for Mandarin verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lián...dou sentences
Summary
The goal of this paper is to investigate two little-studied variants of two focus constructions in Mandarin Chinese, namely, clefts and lián...dou sentences (the latter construction being semantically equivalent to the English focus particle even). We refer to these variants as verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lián...dou sentences. As these labels make clear, the difference between these variants is not just the category of the focus—in addition to this, the verbal variants exhibit a doubling effect that is obligatorily absent from their nominal counterparts. Verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lián...dou have received very little attention in the literature; as far as we know, only Liu (2004) and Constant and Gu (2008) offer analyses with some level of insight (see Paris (1979, 1998)).. Are verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lián...dou sentences subtypes of the cleft and lián...dou constructions, or should they be treated as completely different constructions?
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