earticle

영어

per tries to explore ways in which lexical meanings and semantic structures interact to form semantic attributes and syntactic constructions, particularly focusing on the causative-inchoative alternation seen in the experiencer predicate construction in Mandarin Chinese. The paper starts with the fine-grained classification of experiencer predicates by grouping them into a range of classes in terms of the projection position of the Experiencer argument and the transitivity of the predicate. Together with the abstract CAUSE predicate and complex event structure, Lexical Conceptual Structure of each type of experiencer predicate provides a straightforward account for the causative-inchoative alternation shown in the experiencer predicate as well as in the ergative predicate. The effect of lexicalization is also addressed as a supporting evidence for this analysis.