Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

MANDARIN CLAUSE LINKAGE^211

b. Ta .

he cry

"He cries."

c. Ta yânjîng hóng le.

he eye red ASP

"His eyes got red."

(30) a. Wo ba shu bài zài zhuözi shàng.

I PRETRANS books place be-at table on

"I placed the books on the table."

b. Wo bài shu.

I place book

"I arrange the books."

 Shu zài zhuözi shàng.

book be-at table on

"The books are on the table."

While the sentences in (27) show that "I" and "him" are both arguments of
both component verbs of the compound jiàoxùn, (28)-(30) show cases
where CR constructions can have arguments that are not shared by both
verbs. In (28), although both "I" and "him" are arguments of "beat", only
"he/him" is an argument of "die". (From the point of view of "beat", use of
the CR construction here has not increased valence, but from the point of
view of V 2 "die", an agent has been added.) (29) is an anomalous case,
which seems to contradict our earlier condition that Vj and V 2 in a CC must
share at least one argument. (Perhaps this is a good argument for allowing
pragmatic notions to influence our judgments of argument sharing —
although in a strict sense "he" and "eye" are not the same argument, in fact
it is HIS eyes that he "cried red", and this sentence could not make sense if
it were anyone else's eyes.) In any case, Wx "cry" and V 2 "red" ("redden")
are both originally intransitive, but when combined in a CR construction,
form a transitive expression. (30) shows that a three place predicate can be
formed out of two transitive verbs.
Of course not all CCs change the valence of their verbs, far from it.
CCs like kàndong ("read"+"understand") and bingsi ("sick(en)"+"die")
are cases of trans + trans = trans and intrans + intrans = intrans respec­
tively, and display no unshared arguments. The point is that CCs can
change valence and have unshared arguments, while verb compounds never
can.