202 MARK HANSELL
. Wö qië xiängchang.
I cut sausage
"I cut the sausage."
a. Wo dui ta shuö huà.
I toward him speak speech
"I talk to him."
b. *Wo dui ta.
I toward him ?????? BUT
c. Wo dui zhe tä
I toward ASP him
"I face him."
a. Wo gei ni shäo fan.
I give you burn rice
"I cook rice for you."
b. Wo gei ni qián.
"I give you money"
As (9) shows, yòng is able to appear equally well as a main verb and as
coverb, with the meaning remaining consistent throughout. Dui in (10),
however, is seriously restricted in its distribution, appearing as a main verb
only with the aspect marker zhe, and even then differing in meaning from
its meaning as a coverb. Gèi in (11) is a third case, where it can occur as a
main verb quite readily, but with a difference in meaning.
In a coverb construction, the two Vs do not refer to independent
events, rather they refer to two different aspects of the same situation. V 2
encodes the action or occurrence as regards the relationship between the
subject and the object, while Vj encodes it as regards the relationship
between the subject and some peripheral participant. For example, (9a),
(9b), and (9c) could all felicitously report the same real-world event, yet the
actions reported by the two verbs are logically independent, in that their
truth-values are independent. That is, even if what I used turn out to have
been a hacksaw rather than a knife, it is still possible that the sausage was
cut.(10)(11)