MANDARIN CLAUSE LINKAGE 213- Ordering of consecutive events
- Imputation of causality
- Zero anaphora
4.1.1 Ordering of consecutive events
In SVCs (section 1) as well as CCs (section 2) we saw that sequentiality in
real world events is iconically represented by sequentiality of word order.
That is to say, given two verbs V1 and V 2 in any kind of construction, if
ordering of events in time is being expressed, then V1 + V 2 will represent a
situation where the action or event encoded by v1 preceded the action or
event encoded by V 2. This may seem obvious, and indeed in the syntax of
Mandarin it is; nevertheless it does not necessarily have to be this way. If
CCs were not of a syntactically compositional nature, then there would be
no reason for them to necessarily follow this ordering principle.
4.1.2 Causality
Causality is directly and unambiguously expressed by verb concatenation in
the CR construction. Despite the fact that there is no overt causative
marker involved, any V1 + V 2 construction that is not either a lexicalized or
Parallel verb compound is most likely a CR and therefore can be inter
preted as V1 causes V 2.^2 If we can posit other types of relationships between
events that constitute lesser degrees of causality, such as directive causality
(causing something to happen by directing another agent to do it) and pur-
posiveness (doing something with the intent/hope of causing something else
to happen), then we could say that the CR construction is simply the most
extreme type of causative SVC, displaying the most direct causality, and
having the verbs most directly linked. (This idea will be more fully devel
oped in later sections.)
4.1.3 Zero anaphora
We have seen above in the section on SVCs how identical arguments in
multiverb constructions often need occur only once, for instance, if NP1 is
the subject of both Vx and V 2 in a SVC, then the subject of V 2 can be rep
resented by zero:
MP! V, (NP 2 ) V 2 (NP 3 )