THE  V-COPY CONSTRUCTION IN MANDARIN: REDUX?  

Huba Bartos

March 29, 2012  

April 26, 2012

abstract:

The focus of this paper is the so-called verb-copy construction(s) of Mandarin Chinese, where two (or even more) copies of the same verb surface in a single clause, without any direct semantic consequence of this multiplicity. This family of constructions has received various analyses in the generative tradition (e.g., Tsao 1987, Huang 1988, Li 1990, Shi 1996, Paul 2002, Gouguet 2005, Cheng 2007), each with its strengths and weaknesses. In recent years, there emerged some partially converging proposals built on the minimalist framework of Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001) which fundamentally agree that in these constructions both VP-level and V-level operations are involved (V-copy is not one construction, but a group of surface lookalikes, with different underlying structures), and syntactic effects are heavily interspersed with semantic/pragmatic and phonetic considerations in a proper account; see Gouguet 2005, Bartos 2006, Cheng 2007, Tieu 2009. On the other hand, some other recent contributions (Fang & Sells 2007, Hsu 2008) seem to call many assumptions of the earlier analyses into question, and present data neglected by those proposals. The present paper briefly reviews the earlier accounts, examines and mostly refutes the new potential counterarguments, and refines Bartos's earlier analysis to cater for the full range of structural variety involved, by merging the compatible components of Cheng's (2007) and Tieu's (2009) proposals into it.