The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin
This open access book aims to provide an explanatory account for the phenomenon of absent external arguments in Mandarin Chinese. It starts from the observation that although expletivizing an agent is considered impossible cross-linguistically, it is possible in Mandarin. To account for this excepti...
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| Natura: | Online |
| Lingua: | inglese |
| Pubblicazione: |
Springer Nature
2025
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| Accesso online: | ONIX_20250513_9789819629879_51 |
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| _version_ | 1869516914890375168 |
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| author | Zhang, Yan |
| author_browse | Zhang, Yan |
| author_facet | Zhang, Yan |
| author_sort | Zhang, Yan |
| collection | Directory of Open Access Books |
| description | This open access book aims to provide an explanatory account for the phenomenon of absent external arguments in Mandarin Chinese. It starts from the observation that although expletivizing an agent is considered impossible cross-linguistically, it is possible in Mandarin. To account for this exceptional behavior, it proposes the M parameter, which suggests that English and Chinese differ in whether the agentive entailments of the root are grammatically codified in selection for the feature [+m]. While the M parameter provides a grammatical basis for when omission of the external argument is possible in a given language, this book argues that expletivization in general is subject to a variant of the Proper Containment Condition (Rappaport Hovav and Levin, 2012), which is dubbed the Aspectual Proper Containment Condition (APCC). The APCC is concerned with the relation between the interval yielded by aspect and the situation in the speaker/hearer’s mental model that obtains during that interval. It requires that the external argument be eliminated if and only if its referent does not participate in the situation in the mental model during that interval. This open access book demonstrates that in the vast majority of cases the APCC correctly predicts agent omission in Mandarin sentences containing one of the four aspectual markers (-zai, -zhe, -le, and -guo), with a few exceptions where additional restrictions are at play. |
| format | Online |
| id | doab-20.500.12854ir-159369 |
| institution | Directory of Open Access Books |
| language | eng |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Springer Nature |
| publisherStr | Springer Nature |
| record_format | ojs |
| spelling | doab-20.500.12854ir-1593692025-05-14T04:01:10Z The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin Zhang, Yan agent expletivization aspectual markers agentivity argument structure transitivity alternation This open access book aims to provide an explanatory account for the phenomenon of absent external arguments in Mandarin Chinese. It starts from the observation that although expletivizing an agent is considered impossible cross-linguistically, it is possible in Mandarin. To account for this exceptional behavior, it proposes the M parameter, which suggests that English and Chinese differ in whether the agentive entailments of the root are grammatically codified in selection for the feature [+m]. While the M parameter provides a grammatical basis for when omission of the external argument is possible in a given language, this book argues that expletivization in general is subject to a variant of the Proper Containment Condition (Rappaport Hovav and Levin, 2012), which is dubbed the Aspectual Proper Containment Condition (APCC). The APCC is concerned with the relation between the interval yielded by aspect and the situation in the speaker/hearer’s mental model that obtains during that interval. It requires that the external argument be eliminated if and only if its referent does not participate in the situation in the mental model during that interval. This open access book demonstrates that in the vast majority of cases the APCC correctly predicts agent omission in Mandarin sentences containing one of the four aspectual markers (-zai, -zhe, -le, and -guo), with a few exceptions where additional restrictions are at play. 2025-05-14T04:01:09Z 2025-05-14T04:01:09Z 2025-05-13T08:26:58Z 2025 book ONIX_20250513_9789819629879_51 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/101713 9789819629879 9789819629862 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/159369 eng SpringerBriefs in Linguistics open access image/jpeg n/a https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/101713/1/9789819629879.pdf Springer Nature Springer Nature Singapore 10.1007/978-981-96-2987-9 10.1007/978-981-96-2987-9 9fa3421d-f917-4153-b9ab-fc337c396b5a 9789819629879 9789819629862 Springer Nature Singapore 148 Singapore open access |
| spellingShingle | agent expletivization aspectual markers agentivity argument structure transitivity alternation Zhang, Yan The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin |
| title | The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin |
| title_full | The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin |
| title_fullStr | The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin |
| title_short | The Aspect-Sensitive Agent Omission in Mandarin |
| title_sort | aspect sensitive agent omission in mandarin |
| topic | agent expletivization aspectual markers agentivity argument structure transitivity alternation |
| topic_facet | agent expletivization aspectual markers agentivity argument structure transitivity alternation |
| url | ONIX_20250513_9789819629879_51 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT zhangyan theaspectsensitiveagentomissioninmandarin AT zhangyan aspectsensitiveagentomissioninmandarin |