COERCION, EVENT STRUCTURE, AND SYNTAX*
T.-H. Jonah Lin and C.-Y. Cecilia Liu
National Tsing Hua University and National Chiao Tung University

1. Introduction
How much information does a lexical item contain? It can be a lot, as Pustejovsky’s(1995) theory of Generative Lexicon (GL) claims. According to GL, a lexical item contains
bundles of grammatical information which is so rich that it can even “sneak” into thesyntactic representation of a sentence and satisfy the selectional needs of a syntactic element.
This is called Type Coercion in the theory of GL. On the assumption that lexical items areformed in basically the same way with the same richness across languages, one would expectthat Type Coercion apply universally to human languages. But this doesn’t appear true,
though. In what follows we will show that most of the coercion mechanisms postulated by GL
don’t seem to work in Mandarin Chinese. An intriguing implication follows from this
discovery–that is, languages do not share the same degree of richness in sub-lexical event
information with their lexical items.
Why this is the case is the question that we are going to take up in this paper. The viewthat we hold is a fairly radical one: the syntactic representation in Mandarin Chinese grammar
exhibits properties that pertain to the lexicon in English grammar. If the rich event
information contained in individual lexical items in English results from the operation oflexicalization, then lexical items in Mandarin Chinese appear to stay in a pre-lexicalized state
and are sent out for syntactic computation as such. Thus lexical items in Mandarin Chinese
are accessed and processed as if they were still in the lexicon. The event structures are
therefore represented syntactically. To derive such a typologically distinct characteristic ofphrase structure, we suggest to consider Chomsky’s (1998, 1999) theory seriously that thecomputation of human language faculty starts from selecting a set of features and assemblingthem into a set of lexical items. This source of language variation has not received realattention in researches of grammatical theory. In fact, languages may select distinct sets offeatures; furthermore, languages can select the same set of features but treat them in different
ways. Suppose that in English the primitives that carry event information are extensively
incorporated into individual lexical forms, but in Mandarin Chinese they are not; instead, they
are sent directly to syntactic computation. This will then explain the richness of event*

The authors wish to thank the audiences in the seminar of syntax (2004-2005) at Graduate Institute of
Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University and Workshop on East Asian Languages at Nanzan
University (2005) for very helpful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are our
responsibility. The first author is grateful for the research grants from National Science Council,
Taiwan (NSC 93-2411-H-007-034) and Center for Linguistics, Nanzan University.

Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

information in lexical items in English and the poverty thereof in Mandarin Chinese, and will
also explain the “Davidsonian” character of the phrase structure of Mandarin Chinese
sentences (Lin 2001).
This paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we examine some coercion mechanisms
postulated in GL and show that they don’t work in Mandarin Chinese. In section 3 it is shownthat nominals in Mandarin Chinese don’t appear to have an event argument as many
researchers suggest. In section 4 we provide a hypothesis for this lack of intra-nominal event
information, arguing that lexicalization plays an important role in enriching the event
information in lexical items. Section 5 provides a sample analysis for coercion in syntax,
focusing on the multiple senses and syntactic behaviors of the verb fan ‘turn over’ in
Mandarin Chinese. Section 6 is the conclusion.
2. Coercion Mechanisms and Their Applications
Pustejovsky (1995) introduces a number of mechanisms to generate new senses from anindividual lexical item. The operation involved is called Type Coercion, defined as follows(Pustejovsky 1995: 111).
(1) Type Coercion
A semantic operation that converts an argument to the type which is expected by afunction, where it would otherwise result in a type error.
A new sense doesn’t come out of blue; typically it has already been in the lexical specificationof the lexical item. Thus, for a composition X(Y), X a head and Y an argument of X, theselectional requirement of X can be satisfied not only by Y but also by some sub-lexicalinformation contained in Y. Of special interest here are the following coercion mechanisms:
True Complement Coercion, Selectional Binding, and coercion of causative subject.1 They
are illustrated by the examples below (adapted from Pustejovsky (1995)).
(2) True Complement Coerciona.

John began a book.

b.

John began reading / to read a book.

c.

John began writing / to write a book.

(3) Selectional Bindinga.

We will need a fast boat to get back in time.

1

Other coercion mechanisms include Subtype Coercion and Co-composition. Mandarin Chinese
seems to exhibit effects of Subtype Coercion; see the discussion in section 3.

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Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)b.

John is a fast typist.

c.

Fast drivers will be caught and ticketed.

(4) Coercion of causative subjecta.

John killed Mary.

b.

The gun killed Mary.

c.

The storm killed Mary.

d.

The war killed Mary.

e.

John’s shooting Mary killed her.

We examine these examples in turn.
First, True Type Coercion. The verb begin is an aspectual verb, and presumably it
subcategorizes an event-denoting expression as complement.2 The event-denoting expression
can be a gerundive clause or an infinitival clause, as in (2b) and (2c). In English, however,sentences of (2a) type is fully acceptable, where the verb begin only takes a nominal
complement book. The question then is why (2a) is grammatical. Pustejovsky (1995) argues
for a very rich lexical specification for lexical items. The verb begin and the noun book, forexample, are represented as below (GL: 116).
(5) The lexical structure of the verb begin& begin#$!
&E1 = transition #$!
$ EVENTSTR = $E2 = transition !
!
$
!
$
!
$%RESTR = < o ∝ !"$!
$!
$ ARGSTR = &ARG1 = x : human #!
$ARG2 = e2
!
$
!
%
"
$
!
&FORMAL = P(e2, x)#!
$$ QUALIA = $AGENTIVE = begin_act(e1, x, e2) ! !
%
""
%

2

The verbs enjoy and want are also included in this class of verbs.

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

(6) The lexical structure of the noun book& book
#
$
!
$
!
$
!
&ARG1 = x : info#
$ ARGSTR = $!
!
%ARG2 = y : physobj "$!
$&info • physobj_lcp# !!
$$FORMAL = hold(y, x)
!!
$
$
!!
$ QUALIA = $
!!
TELIC
=
read(e,
w,
x,
y)
$
$
!
$%
%AGENTIVE = write(e' , v, x, y) " !"A lexical item has properties that can be organized into a qualia structure, which consists offour distinct semantic roles: FORMAL, CONSTITUTUVE, AGENTIVE, and TELIC.
FORMAL represents information on the relation between an object and its constituents orproper parts, CONSTITUTIVE represents information that distinguishes the object within alarger domain, AGENTIVE provides factors involved in the origin of the object, and TELIC
shows information on the purpose and function of the object (GL: 85-86). That begin takes anevent-denoting expression as complement is mandated by its argument structure, namely
ARG2 in the specification of ARGSTR. What interests us here is the lexical specification of
the noun book in (6). Besides its usual denotational function, book incorporates much event
information in its lexical specification: for instance the AGENTIVE role indicates that a bookcomes into being through some writing event, and the TELIC role shows that the purpose of abook is to be read by people. It is such event information that satisfies the selectional
requirement of the verb begin in (2a). When begin composes with an event-denoting clausal
structure like reading/to read a book or writing / to write a book, the event argument carriedin the clausal structure satisfies its argument structure, in particular e2 in (5). But when begin
composes with the nominal (a) book, it can also “look into” the lexical specification of thenoun book, picking up an event argument therein to satisfy the need of its argument structure.
For the sentence (2a), e2 of begin can pick up the event argument of the TELIC role (reading),or that of the AGENTIVE role (writing). Type Coercion as defined in (1) makes thispossible.
The same approach applies to the examples of Selective Binding in (3). When one says
something is fast, it is meant that the thing moves quickly along certain track. On thisconstrual, a fast boat denotes a boat that moves fast (see (3a)). But a fast typist doesn’tnecessarily mean a typist who moves fast, nor does a fast driver necessarily move quickly.
A fast typist types fast, and a fast driver drives fast. These latter readings can be obtained if
the adjective fast does not only modify the individuals that the nouns typist and driver denote,
but also the event arguments representing typing and driving in the TELIC role of the qualia
structures of these two nouns.

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Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)

As to the coercion of causative subject in (4), look at the lexical structure of the verb kill
(GL: 208):(7) The lexical structure of the verb kill

&kill
#
$
!
&E1 = e1 : process#$!
$E2 = e2 : state !
$!
!
$ EVENTSTR = $!
$RESTR = < ∝ !
$
!
$
!
$
!
HEAD
=
e
1
%
"
$
!
$
&ARG1 = [1] [ top ]
#!
$
$
!!
#!!
$ ARGSTR = $ARG2 = [2] & animate_ind$ FORMAL = physobj ! ! !
$
$%
%
""
$
!
$
!
&dc_lcp#$!
$!
$ QUALIA = $FORMAL = dead(e2, [2])!
!
$!
%$AGENTIVE = kill_act(e1, [1], [2]) "!
%"In the case of (4a), John satisfies ARG1, namely [1]. In the case of (4b-d), the gun, thestorm and the war participate in the event e1 of the AGENTIVE role of the qualia structure (aprocess called argument coherence by Pustejovsky 1995). In the case of (4e), the shooting is
identified with e1. Based on all this, the different subjects in (4) satisfy the need of theargument structure of the verb kill.
In summary, the basis of Type Coercion is the richness of event information in lexical
items. Heads can “look into” the lexical specification of arguments (or the reverse, arguments
can “look into” the head, as in the case of the subjects of kill) so as to satisfy the selectional
needs. Without the richness of event information in lexical items, Type Coercion is notpossible.
3.

Failure of Coercion in Mandarin Chinese

Now we turn to Mandarin Chinese. It appears that none of the coercion mechanisms
alluded above works in Mandarin Chinese. Look at the following examples.
(8) a.

*Zhangsan
Zhangsankaishibegin

yi-ben shu.
one-CL book

‘Zhangsan began a book.’b.

ZhangsanZhangsankaishi
begin

du
read

yi-ben shu.
one-CL book

‘Zhangsan began to read a book.’− 13 −

Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004c.

ZhangsanZhangsankaishi
begin

xie
write

yi-ben shu.
one-CL book

‘Zhangsan began to read a book.’d.

ZhangsanZhangsankaishi
begin

bien
edit

yi-ben shu.
one-CL book

‘Zhangsan began to edit a book.’(8a) shows that composition of “begin a book” type is not grammatical at all in Mandarin
Chinese. To obtain a grammatical expression, the action must be explicitly provided, such as(8b) for reading and (8c) for writing. Of course, one can do other things in relation with abook, such as editing in (8d). These examples indicate that the verb kaishi ‘begin’ in
Mandarin Chinese does not “look into” its complement for satisfaction of its argument
structure requirement.
The same holds of the case of Selective Binding. Look at the following examples.
(9) a.

?Women
we

xuyao
need

yi-sao hen
one-CL very

kuai
fast

de
MOD

chuan.3boat‘We need a fast boat.’b.

*Zhangsan
Zhangsanshi yi-gehen
be one-CL very

kuai
fast

de
MOD

dazi-yuan.
typist‘Zhangsan is a fast typist.’
c.

*Hen
very

kuai
fast

de
MOD

jiashidriverhui beijingcha kai
will PASSIVE police issue

fadan.
ticket‘Fast drivers will be ticketed by police.’
While hen kuai de chuan ‘fast boat’ doesn’t sound completely out of the question (but see thediscussion later), hen kuai de dazi-yuan ‘fast typist’ and hen kuai de jiashi ‘fast driver’ aretotally unacceptable on the construal intended. To obtain the desired readings, verbal elements
must be inserted specifying the actions characterized as being fast, resulting in relativemodification structures. See the following examples.
(10) a.

Women xuyao
weneedyi-sao [ pao-de
one-CL run-EXT

hen
very

kuai
fast

de ]
MOD

chuan.
boat‘We need a boat that sails fast.’
3

The occurrence of hen ‘very’ with the adjectives here and below doesn’t serve the function of
intensification. Adjectives in Mandarin Chinese typically need it for modification and predication. See
Li and Thompson (1981) for discussion.

− 14 −

Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)b.

ZhangsanZhangsanshi yi-ge[ dazibe one-CL type

hen
very

kuai
fast

de ]
MOD

dazi-yuan.
typist‘Zhangsan is a typist that types fast.’c.

[ Kai che hen
kuaide ] jiashi
drive car very
fastMODdriverhui
bei
jingcha kai
fadan.
will
PASSIVE police issue
ticket‘Drivers that drive fast will be ticketed by police.’

These examples show that the actions of sailing (of a boat), typing, and driving must be
explicitly spelled out in the syntactic representation to be modified by the adjective kuai ‘fast’.
There is no “look into” of event information in the nouns.
As to the coercion of causative subject, consider the following examples.
(11) a.

ZhangsanZhangsansha-lekill-PERF

Lisi.
Lisi

‘Zhangsan killed Lisi.’b.

*Zhe-ba
this-CL

qianggun

sha-lekill-PERF

Lisi.
Lisi

‘This gun killed Lisi.’c.

*Na-changthat-CLbaofengyu
storm

sha-lekill-PERF

Lisi.
Lisi

‘That storm killed Lisi.’d.

*Zhanzheng
war

sha-lekill-PERF

Lisi.
Lisi

‘The war killed Lisi.’e.

*Zhangsan-deZhangsa’s

wu-ji sha-lemisfire kill-PERF

Lisi
Lisi

‘Zhangsan’s misfire killed Lisi.’
It is clear that no expression other than the agent of the action can function as the subject
argument of the verb sha ‘kill’ in Mandarin Chinese (see Kuno 1973 for the Japanese verb

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

korosu ‘kill’). What one can do to obtain sensible expressions is to paraphrase sha ‘kill’ as‘cause to die’, as the examples below show.4(12) a.

Zhe-ba qiang
this-CL gun

rang
make

Lisi
Lisi

/ henduo ren
siwang.
many people die‘This gun made Lisi / many people die.’ =‘This gun killed Lisi / many people.’b.

Na-changthat-CLbaofengyu
storm

shi
cause

Lisi /
Lisi

henduo ren
siwang.
many people die‘That storm made Lisi / many people die.’ =‘That storm killed Lisi / many people.’c.

Zhanzheng shi
war
make

Lisi /
Lisi

henduo ren
siwang.
many people die‘The war made Lisi / many people die.’ =‘The war killed Lisi / many people.’d.

Zhangsan-deZhangsa’s

wu-ji shi
misfire cause

Lisi /
Lisi

henduo ren
siwangmany people die‘Zhangsan’s misfire made Lisi / many people die.’ =‘Zhangsan’s misfire killed Lisi / many people.’
Non-agents cannot be the subject of the verb sha ‘kill’; they can only be the subject of aphrasal causative construction as indirect causers. Again, no “look into” is at work here.
The illustration above indicates that Type Coercion by and large doesn’t work in
Mandarin Chinese. Why? There are quite a few possibilities; for example, one could simply
assume that coercion is language-specific in the grammar of English, and that English
grammar entitles a head to have its selectional needs satisfied by sub-lexical information of its
arguments, whereas Mandarin Chinese grammar doesn’t. However, we don’t think this line ofthinking is on the right track, for two reasons. First, Subtype Coercion (Puestejovsky 1995)
works in Mandarin Chinese. The noun Toyota contains sub-lexical information that it is asubtype of the type cars, and this renders the English sentence in (13a) grammatical–the verb
drive ‘looks into” such sub-lexical information, which yields the reading that John drives acar of the brand Toyota. The fact that (13b) is acceptable indicates that the verb kai ‘drive’ in
Mandarin can also “look into” the noun Fengtian ‘[the pronunciation of the Chinesecharacters of] Toyota’ for such information.

4

In the examples in (12) we use shi ‘cause’ and rang ‘let’. The distinction between the two words
doesn’t matter for our purposes.

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Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)

(13) a.
b.

John drives a Toyota.
ZhangsanZhangsan

kai
drive

yi-liang Fengtian.
one-CL Toyota‘Zhangsan drives a Toyota.’
Second, nominals in Mandarin Chinese that are inherently event-denoting, e.g. nominals
denoting actions and events, can compose with aspectual verbs like kaishi ‘begin’.5 Also,
they fare better when modified by adjectives like kuai ‘fast’. See the following sentences.
(14) a.

Women kaishi
we
begin

zhe-changthis-CLbisai.
game‘Let us begin the game.’b.

MeiguoAmericakaishibegin

ta yu
its with

Ilake
Iraq

de
MOD

zhanzhengwar‘America starts the war with Iraq.’(15) a.

Zhe shi yi-changthis be one-CL

hen
very

kuai
fast

de
MOD

bisai.
game‘This is a game [that proceeds] fast.’b.

Meiguo dui Ilake
America to Iraq

jinxing-leproceed-PERF

yi-chang hen
one-CL verykuai defast MODzhanzheng.
war‘America launched a fast war with Iraq.’
If sub-lexical information is simply unavailable to heads or modifiers in Mandarin Chinese, it
is not clear why the sentences in (14-15) (and also (13b)) are acceptable.
An alternative way to perceive the matter is as follows. The richness of sub-lexical event
information of lexical items appears to be the basis for coercion. On this logic, coercion may
fail in Mandarin Chinese because there is nothing to “look into” in the first place. In particular,
nominals like book have no sub-lexical event information to be retrieved. In other words, thepoverty of sub-lexical event information makes coercion inapplicable in this language.
Subtype Coercion works in Mandarin Chinese because it involves no event information; othertypes of coercion fail (event/action-denoting nouns being exceptional) because they refer to
sub-lexical event information.
There is evidence for this hypothesis. Many researchers have argued for the Davidsonian
event argument in linguistic expressions (see, among many others, Higginbotham 1985, 2000
and Larson 1998). Higginbotham (2000, 2004) even argues that ordinary nominals, such as
5

For discussion of event-denoting nominals in Mandarin Chinese, see Yang (2001).

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

book, frog, and dinosaurs, have an event argument. One benefit for introducing the event
argument into nominals is that the ambiguity of intersective and non-intersective
modifications can be reduced to modification of individuals and that of events (see Larson
1998 among many others). Consider the following example:(16)

A beautiful dancer
i. ‘A dancer who is beautiful’ii. ‘A dancer who dances beautifully’

Larson (1998) argues that nominals like dancer have two arguments <x, e>, x the individualargument and e the event argument. The (i) reading arises from modification of the individualargument x, while the (ii) reading arises from modification of the event argument e. Now lookat the counterpart of (16) in Mandarin Chinese.
(17)

Piaoliang
beautifuldeMODwu-zhedanceri. ‘A dancer who is beautiful’, but notii. *‘A dancer who dances beautifully’
The Mandarin Chinese expression (17) only has the individual-modification reading; theevent-modification reading is unavailable.6 If we assume that the nominal wu-zhe ‘dancer’
doesn’t have an event argument, the unacceptability of (17.ii) is accounted for. What is more,
the failure of the coercion mechanisms noted above can be explained–no event information inlexical items, hence no retrieval of such information.
At this point, it is beneficial to consider potential counterexamples to the hypothesis thatnouns in Mandarin Chinese don’t have event argument. We think of two potential
counterexamples. First, nouns in Mandarin Chinese can be modified by the adjective hao‘good’ (cf. Saint-Dizier 1998 for the modification of the French adjective bon ‘good’ in GL
terms). See the following examples.
(18) a.
b.

good eye / screwdriver
good musician / restaurant

6

Notice that piaoliang ‘beautiful’ can modify the action of dancing, as in (i). Thus the unavailabilityof the event-modification reading in (17) cannot arise from some deficiency of the modificational
power of piaoliang ‘beautiful’.
(i)ZhansganZhangsanhenverypiaoliang-dibeautifully

tiao-zhedance-ASP‘Zhangsan is dancing beautifully.’− 18 −

wu.
danceCoercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)

(19) a.

b.

hen
very

hao
good

de

hen
very

hao
good

de

MOD

MOD

yanjingeye/yinyue-jia
musician

daozi
knife
/

canting
restaurant

One may probably consider, say, hao-de yinyue-jia ‘good musician’ on a par with a beautiful
dancer–just as a beautiful dancer dances beautifully (on the event-modification reading), a
good musician plays music good. This would be a case of modification of the event argument
in a noun.
But this may not be the case. A good musician can be in good in many perceivable ways;s/he can play her/his role in an orchestra well but not good in doing sole; s/he may be a goodcomposer specializing in no particular musical instruments. Likewise, a knife can be good
because it fits the hand or is so delicately made that people would keep it in collection. Thus agood N need not involve modification of the event argument in N; it can be just vagueness.
Compare, for example, a fast driver and a good driver. A driver may be good for a politician
simply because he/she keeps secrets.
The second potential counterexample is sentences of the following sort:7(20)

ZhangsanZhangsanshi yi-gehen
be one-CL very

kuai
fast

de
MOD

pao-zhe.
runner‘Zhangsan is a fast runner.’(20) looks as if kuai ‘fast’ modifies the event argument representing running in the noun paozhe ‘runner’. But in fact it is not the case. If it were, it would be a mystery why (20) is
grammatical but (21) is not.
(21)??Zhangsan
Zhangsanshi yi-gehen
be one-CL very

kuai
fast

de
MOD

wu-zhe.
dancer‘Zhangsan is a fast dancer.’
Our explanation for (20) is as follows. Things can be fast as long as it moves fast along acertain track, be it a baseball or a baseball runner. This has nothing to do with the event
argument in the noun. Thus the adjective kuai ‘fast’ in (20) simply modifies the individual
denoted by the noun pao-zhe ‘runner’, and that is all. No event argument is involved. If event
argument is involved, it is not clear why pao-zhe ‘runner’ has an event argument but wu-zhe‘dancer’ doesn’t have one. Incidentally, we noticed earlier that (9a) doesn’t sound very bad.
That is because a boat can be fast as long as it (as an individual) moves fast. This reading isfine. But if (9a) is intended to mean that the boat sails fast, the sentence is ungrammatical,
since chuan ‘boat’ doesn't have an event argument to be modified.
7

We thank Barry Yang (personal communication) for bringing this sentence to our attention.

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

4. Lexicalization
Now we have a feasible hypothesis, namely, that nouns in Mandarin Chinese don’t havesub-lexical event information. The next thing is to ask why this is the case. Suppose that sublexical event information comes into a lexical item through the process of lexicalization (orconflation; see Talmy 1985). Lexical items in English are rich in sub-lexical information
because much of such information is incorporated into individual lexical items in the processof lexicalization. An inference then is that the impoverishment of event information in thelexical items in Mandarin Chinese arises from little event information incorporated into
individual lexical items, or, put in different terms, that lexicalization trivially applies to theroot of lexical items in Mandarin Chinese. A support for this view comes from the following
observation. The above discussion shows that the adjective kuai ‘fast’ doesn’t modify a nonevent-denoting nominal. But in compounds, such modification appears to be a lot easier.
See the following examples.
(22) a.

kuai-canfast-meald.

‘fast food’b.

kuai-shoufast-hand‘express train/bus’e.

‘people who do things fast’c.

kuai-chefast-carkuai-chuan
fast-ship‘ships that sail fast’kuai-bifast-pen‘people who write fast and nice’

In these examples, kuai ‘fast’ comes to modify a non-event-denoting noun throughcompounding. Notice that in these examples what kuai ‘fast’ modifies is in fact some sublexical event information in the noun. For instance, in kuai-can ‘fast-meal’, kuai ‘fast’
modifies the serving of the food; in kuai-shou ‘fast-hand’, kuai ‘fast’ modifies the action of
the hand (writing). Likewise, in kuai-che ‘fast-car’ and kuai-chuan ‘fast ship’, kuai ‘fast’
modifies the running and sailing of the car and ship. If compounding like (22a-e) involves
non-trivial lexicalization, these compounds provide support for the idea that event information
comes into lexical items by way of lexicalization.8

8

As to why non-trivial lexicalization entitles modification of the event argument, and how event
argument comes into the compounds, we assume a economy-based explanation. Compounding doesn’t
just involve juxtaposition or concatenation of lexical items; if it were the case, compounding as anindependent morphological operation would lose its stance in grammar. More information has to beincorporated into the compounds, and event information is a good candidate. This can be a partial
reason for the well-known observation that compounds usually exhibit more specific meanings thanthe corresponding phrasal expressions, such as girl friend vs. girlfriend and black bird vs. blackbird.

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Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)

The conclusion that we reach is reminiscent of Lin’s (2001) theory of light verb structure
and its lexicalization. According to Lin (2001), languages may differ in the extent to which
the light verb structures (that is, event structures) undergo lexicalization into individual
lexical items–this is what Lin (2001) calls the Lexicalization Parameter. Lin’s (2001) theory
explains the difference between English and Mandarin Chinese noted above. In English, agreat extent of lexicalization applies, resulting in rich event information in lexical items. In
Mandarin Chinese, lexicalization trivially applies to the root of the lexical item, leaving thebulk of event-constituting elements intact sent directly to syntactic computation. The
consequence of this difference is that, as much event information is incorporated into lexical
items, the phrase structure in English projects following the instruction of the event
information contained in the lexical items; this results in the “shell” character of the phrase
structure in English (Larson 1988), as the phrase structure in English simply serves to realize
the event information already contained in the lexical items. On the other hand, lexical items
in Mandarin Chinese don’t have much event information lexicalized into them; much of theevent information remains intact in the form of independent event predicates sent to narrowsyntax. Lexical items compose with event predicates through the usual syntactic operations,and this results in the situation that Mandarin Chinese builds event structure in syntax. The
difference between English and Chinese can be illustrated by the following two diagrams,with the verbs put in English and fang “put’ in Mandarin Chinese as examples. (For detailed
discussion, see Lin 2001).
(23)

VP
Agent

V’
V

VP
V’

Theme
V

Locationput< CAUSE,|Agent

BECOME,

AT>

|
Theme

|
Loc

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

(24)

VP
Agent

V’
V
CAUSE

VP
Theme

V’

V
BECOME

VP
V

Location / XP

fang
‘put’
In English, the verb put has already had a rich array of event information contained in its
lexical specification–it is an accomplishment verb, therefore the event predicates CAUSE,
BECOME, and AT are in it (cf. Dowty 1979, Kageyama 1993, 1996); these event predicatesthen introduce different arguments, Agent, Theme, and Location. The phrase structure is
projected accordingly: a two-layered VP structure is projected so as to provide three slots forthe arguments, which θ-bind the thematic roles in the argument structure in the verb put(Higginbotham 1985). In case an argument is too far, as Agent, verb movement applies andthe verb put incorporates to the higher V, which has no semantics of its own (but see Hale andKeyser 1993). 9 In summary, all that is projected is already included in the lexical
specification of the verb put. The phrase structure simply serves to realize the sub-lexical
event information. On the other hand, for the verb fang ‘put’ in Mandarin Chinese, no specific
event information is lexicalized into it. The event predicates CAUSE, BECOME, and so on
are sent to narrow syntax and merged into the structure via usual syntactic means. Fang ‘put’
doesn’t take any argument; the event predicates do. The whole structure in (24) thus is not
only a phrase structure, but also represents the event structure of the verb fang ‘put’ as anaccomplishment verb. In this sense Mandarin Chinese builds event structure in syntax. (Formore discussion, see Lin 2001.)
How do we derive this difference between English and Chinese? Intuitively the difference
has to do with the ways that pieces of sub-lexical event information are organized into lexical
items in the two languages. If what we have is a “Bloomfieldian” lexicon, namely a list of
idiosyncratic properties and exceptions (Chomsky 1995), then one could simply say that thelexical items in the two languages are just different. But there may be something more to thisquestion. Consider Chomsky’s (1998: 12-13) suggestion below.

9

Hale and Keyser (1993) assume that the light verb V represents an elementary event e, whichinteract with other event elements in the phrase structure to derive an event structure.

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Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)

“UG makes available a set F of features (linguistic properties) and operations CHL (thecomputational procedure of human language) that access F to generate expressions. The
language L maps F to a particular set of expressions EXP. Operative complexity is
reduced if L makes a one-time selection of a subset {F} of F, dispensing with further
access to F. It is reduced further if L includes a one-time operation that assembles
elements of {F} into a lexicon LEX, with no new assembly as computation proceeds. On
these (conventional) assumptions, acquiring a language involves at least selection of thefeatures {F}, construction of lexical items LEX, and refinement of CHL in one of thepossible ways – parameter setting.”“We assume, then, that a language L maps ({F}, LEX) to EXP.”
The computation of human language faculty starts with selecting a set of features F andassembling them into lexical expressions LEX. Obviously this is a possible source fortypological differences among languages–some languages have a full set of grammaticalfeatures entering into LEX (e.g. Latin, French), while others have much less grammaticalfeatures in LEX (e.g. Japanese, Mandarin Chinese). Suppose that included in the universal setof feature F are semantic features that bear event information. Furthermore, suppose that
languages may select the same set of features, but differ in the extent to which the features areassembled into elements in LEX–some languages, like English, involve a great extent of suchassembly, whereas some other languages, like Mandarin Chinese, do not. This can be
another important source for typological differences among languages. Thus, Mandarin
Chinese may select the same set of semantic features from F as English, though those featuresare sent directly to syntactic computation in the way characterized above. This is the origin of
Lin’s (2001) Lexicalization Parameter. The operation of lexicalization is nothing but theassembly of features selected from F.
Languages may choose different sets of features, or they may choose the same set offeatures but treat them differently. This gives rise to typologically diverse languages, though
the grammatical principles and operations are the same across all the languages.
5.

Building Event Structure in Syntax

Notice that, if the theory sketched above is correct, there wouldn’t be substantial
distinction between lexicon and syntax in Mandarin Chinese. The reason is that many of theelements treated as sub-lexical elements in English are treated as syntactic primitives in
Mandarin Chinese. This results in a very intriguing situation with Mandarin Chinese; that is,what syntax does in Mandarin Chinese is very much parallel to what lexicon does in English,
in terms of the elements being processed. There are interesting consequences from thisobservation. For example, the major purpose of GL is to capture the polysemy of words, by
way of retrieval to sub-lexical event information in lexical items. But since what syntax doesin Mandarin Chinese is on a par with what lexicon does in English, one will expect polysemyof words in Mandarin Chinese resulting directly from syntax.

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

We believe there are indeed cases in Mandarin Chinese where polysemy arises directlyfrom syntax. Here we provide an example, the verb fan ‘turn over’.
The verb fan can be used in three different senses. Let’s call them fan1, fan2, and fan3.
We first examine fan1. Fan1 is fixed to the agentive use, and it cannot be unaccusativized.
See the examples below.
(25) a.

Laowang
Laowangfanturn-overzhuozi.
table‘Laowang turned the table over.’b. ??Zhuozi fantable turn-over

le.
SFP

For fan2, on the other hand, unaccusativization is possible. See (26a). The pure agentive
use of the verb is not good; compounding with an action verb (e.g. da ‘hit’) is required. See(26b) and (26c).
(26) a.

Na-sao chuan
that-CL boat

fanturn-overle.
SFP‘That boat capsized.’b. ??Hai-langsea-wave

fan-leturn-over-PERF

na-sao chuan.
that-CL boat‘(Intended) The waves capsized that boat.’c.

Hai-lang
sea-waveda-fan-le
hit-turn-over-PERF

na-sao chuan.
that-CL boat

‘The waves capsized that boat.’
Also, fan2 can be used in a special way, called the occurrence use (Huang 1997, Lin 2001),
which is not possible for fan1. This construction is characterized by the presence of a temporalor locative subject. See the following examples.
(27) a.

Zuotian / chunzi-li
yesterday
village-in

fan-lecapsize-PERF

liang-sao
two-CLchuan.
boat‘(Lit.) There capsized two boats yesterday / in the village.’b. ??Zuotian
yesterday/

cunzi-livillage-in

fan-leliang-zhang zhuozi.
turn-over-PERFF two-CL
table‘(Lit.) There flipped two tables yesterday / in the village.’− 24 −

Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)

Fan3 can be used agentively, as in (28a). But notice that the theme being turned over has
to be pages, not the entire book; compare (28a) with (28b). Fan3 can assume the unaccusativeuse, like fan2. This is shown in (28c). What is more, fan3 can assume the pure stative use,which is not possible for fan1 and fan2. See (28d).
(28) a.

ZhangsanZhangsanfan-leturn-over-PERF

san-yethree-page

(de)
MOD

shu.
book

‘Zhangsan turned over three pages of the book.’b. ?? Zhangsan
Zhangsanfan-leturn-over-PERF

san-benthree-CL

(de)
MOD

shu.
book

‘Zhangsan turned over three books.’
c.

(Feng
wind

yi chui,)as blowshubook

fan-leturn-over-PERF

san
three

ye.
page

‘(As the wind breezes,) three pages of the book turned over.’d.

Zidiandictionary

fanturn-overzai zhuo-shang,at table-on

( ni
you

ziji
self

cha).
check

‘The dictionary is on the table open; you go check by yourself.’
The following table summarizes the relevant properties of the three fan’s.
(29)((√): Acceptable with restrictions)
THEME

AGENTIVE UNACCUSATIVE

Fan1‘table’√Fan2‘boat’

(√)

√

Fan3

‘book’(√)√

OCCURRENCE STATIVE√√With all these acceptable and unacceptable examples, it appears to be a question whether one
can come up with a uniform analysis for the verb fan in Mandarin Chinese–notice thatdifferent senses of fan exhibit different, or event conflicting, syntactic properties. One might
simply suggest that there are three fan’s or three distinct senses of fan. But here we would liketo propose an analysis that is closer to the intuition. Notice that what matters in all theseexamples seems to be the theme argument, zhuozi ‘table’, chuan ‘boat’, or shu ‘book’, and theway it is affected. A table, or anything of that size or kind, gets thrown over by way of humanforce with full intention and agentivity, thus the table is fairly much like a patient in thematic
terms. On the other hand, the overturn of a boat is somewhat beyond the capability of anindividual human force; it seems to be a larger event and requires forces of different kinds. In
fact, the overturn of a boat can be the result of an external cause much larger than individual− 25 −

Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

force (e.g. waves) or no external cause at all (e.g. leakage or overloading). This somehow
points out that the overturn of a boat is something of completely different nature than theoverturn of a table. As to the turning over of (the pages of) a book, it seems to be too small an
action for one to exercise full agentivity–one or two fingers will do the job. Thus it is hardly
entitled for the term “event” in our commonsense. The above considerations suggest that thenature of the theme affected determines the agentivity and the underlying event/action, which
in turn determines the event structure in which the verb fan is embedded.
Let us implement this idea. Overturning of a table is an action with strong agentivity, andthis, we suppose, imposes a governing principle on the use of the verb fan and its relation
with the theme “table”. Thus the light verb structure for fan in this use is as follows.
(30)

VP
Zhansagn

V’
V

VP

CAUSE

V’

‘table’V

VP

BECOMEVfan

The light verbs CAUSE and BECOME are merged with fan to yield a fully agentive structure.
Syntactically CAUSE and BECOME don’t have to occur; in that case we would get, say, abecoming event if CAUSE doesn’t show up. But that violates the principle that if a table orsomething of that size or kind is affected by the action of fan-ing, full agentivity is involved(hence the causative structure).10 Thus the whole structure in (30) is not reducible, not forsyntactic reason, but for semantic naturalness. Any further reduction of the event structure
results in awkward semantics, and this is why the unaccusative construction, the occurrence
construction, and the stative construction cannot take the theme zhuozi ‘table’, which require
fewer event predicates or different types of event predicates (see discussion below).
10

We believe that the notion of “kind” is important here. For example, the turning over of a pokercard, namely showing hand, appears to be a case of fan 1, since showing a card apparently involves theintention of the player—there is no such thing as showing hand carelessly. There are interestingquestions in this regard, but we will not go into them here. Incidentally, we do not make a distinction
between intention and agentivity in this paper, though the distinction is important.

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Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)

We have evidence that fan1 involves intentional agentivity. The following examples showthat both fan and da-fan ‘hit-turnover’ can occur with the adverb guyi ‘intentionally’, but only
da-fan can occur with the adverb bu-xiaoxin ‘carelessly’.
(31) a.

ZhangsanZhangsanguyi
fanintentionally turn-overzhuozi.
table‘Zhangsan overthrew the table on intention.’b.

ZhangsanZhangsanguyi
da-fanintentionally hit-turn-overzhuozi.
table‘Zhangsan made the table turned over on intention.’c. ??Zhangsan
Zhangsanbu-xiaoxin
carelessly

fanturn-overzhuozi.
table‘Zhangsan carelessly overthrew the table.’d.

ZhangsanZhangsanbu-xiaoxin
carelessly

da-fanhit-turn-overzhuozi.
table‘Zhangsan carelessly made the table turned over.’Overturn of a boat is an event of a different nature. Typically it has no bearing on
individual force and often requires causes of different kinds (waves, leakage, overloading,etc.). Suppose that events of this kind are changes. This gives us the following light verb
structure.
(32)

VP
V’

‘boat’V

VP

BECOMEV
fan

This structure explains why fan2 can be unaccusative–it is unaccusative to start with. One canmerge one more layer of VP to the structure in (32) and make it into a causative (with CAUSE
and a causer subject) or occurrence (with OCCUR and a temporal/locative subject) construction.
This accounts for the agentive and occurrence uses of fan2. But remember the contrast
between fan and da-fan in (31)–the causative fan presupposes intentional agentivity, which isincompatible with the forces that cause the overturn of a boat. Thus da-fan must be used

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

instead if fan2 is embedded in a causative structure. (For discussion on verbal compounds likeda-fan, see Shen and Lin 2005, in which work V1 of a verbal compound V1-V2 is considered amanner/mode element which can license a non-agentive subject.)
(33)

VP
V’

"' waves'&$$#' yesterday / '$ in the village'$
%
(

V

VP

"CAUSE %#&$OCCUR'!

V’‘boat’V

VP

BECOMEV!

fan

A piece of evidence for our analysis is that the occurrence construction must involve
becoming events; activity and accomplishment verbs are not compatible with the occurrence
construction. See the following examples.
(34) a.

Fanren pao
le.
prisoner escape SFP‘Prisoners escaped.’b.

Zuotianyesterday

pao-lesan-ge fanren.
escape-PERF three-CL prisoner‘(Lit.) There escaped three prisoners yesterday.’c.

Henduo ren
si le.
many people die SFP‘Many people died.’d.

Zuotianyesterday

si-ledie-PERF

henduo ren.
many people‘(Lit.) There died many people yesterday.’− 28 −

Coercion, Event Structure, and Syntax (T. -H. Lin and C. -Y. Liu)(35) a.

Henduo ren
pao-zhe.
many people run-DUR(Activity)‘Many people are running.’
b. *Zuotian
yesterday

pao-zhe henduo ren.
run-DUR many people‘(Intended) There were running many people.’c.

ZhangsanZhangsangai-lebuild-PERF

henduo fangzi.
many house(Accomplishment)‘Zhangsan built many houses.’d. *Zuotian
yesterday

gai-lebuild-PERF

henduo fangzi.
many house‘(Intended) There built many houses.’Turning pages over is an action that requires much less effort than the overthrowing of atable. If the structure in (30) takes the theme ‘book’, one obtains a meaning that would beconsidered an “exaggeration”–a tiny thing such as a book requires no “overthrowing”. We
suppose that the meaning of fan thus automatically shifts to (the state of) page-opening rather
than overturn of a book. Suppose that such event structure realizes as a “bare” VP (with an
optional complement, as the locative complement in (28d)). This accounts for the stative useof fan3.
(36)

VP‘book’

V’
V

(XP)

fan
On this VP one can stack more light VPs, such as BECOME and CAUSE. This accounts for theunaccusative and agentive uses of fan3.
Why can’t fan3 assume the occurrence use? If the structure in (36) can be turned into a
becoming structure by way of the merger of the light verb BECOME, further merger of OCCUR
should be possible. Our answer to this question is that, in ordinary cases turning pages overdoesn’t count as a significant event that would be worth of the sense of “occurrence of anevent.” That’s why fan3 isn’t compatible with the light verb OCCUR even if BECOME is in the
structure.

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Nanzan Linguistics 2: Research Results and Activities 2004

The analysis presented above, if correct, shows that in Mandarin Chinese polysemy canarise from composition of arguments and light verbs in syntax. The different senses of fan
discussed above arise not from any sub-lexical event information contained in the verb fan,but from the theme affected and the event structure that the world knowledge or cognitive
considerations bring in along with the theme. All this is done in syntax. This is the case notbecause syntax keeps an eye on semantics, but because the elements under syntactic
processing in Mandarin Chinese are elements of sub-lexical nature (e.g. the event predicates
CAUSE, BECOME, etc.). This is the reason that in Mandarin Chinese the event structures arebuilt “in syntax as they are in lexicon.”
6.

Conclusion
The claim of this paper can be summarized as follows.

(A) The lexical items in different languages do not enjoy the same level of richness in
sub-lexical event information. Coercion only works in languages whose lexical items are richin sub-lexical event information.
(B) The computation of human language faculty starts from selecting a set of features
and assembly them into lexical items. Languages may select different features; they may also
select the same set of features but perform different extents of feature assembly. These
differences result in typologically different languages.
(C) English and Mandarin Chinese may have selected basically the same set of features,but in English much event information is assembled into individual lexical items, whereas in
Mandarin Chinese little is. In Mandarin Chinese pieces of event information are sent tonarrow syntax for processing, which results in the Davidsonian character of phrase structurein this language, namely building event structure in syntax.
(D) A sample analysis is given for the verb fan ‘turn over’ and its three senses. It isshown that polysemy can arise in syntax. This provides an illustration that the syntactic
structures in Mandarin Chinese has a lexical flavor.

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