臺灣博碩士論文加值系統

This is an experimental study testing the Unaccusative Hypothesis and definiteness effect on unaccusative verb and unergative verbs in Mandarin Chinese. The Unaccusative Hypothesis proposed by Perlmutter (1978) claims that subjects of unaccusative verbs are internal arguments but can move to the front to become surface subjects, while subjects of unergative verbs are external arguments. Following Belletti’s (1998) hypothesis that the arguments of unaccusative show the definiteness effect, Yu (1995) also claims that there is a definiteness effect of unaccusative verbs in Mandarin Chinese.

This study consists of two experiments, both of which are sentence acceptability judgments. The present study aims to investigate the position differences and definiteness effect on unaccusative and uneragtvie verbs. The study corroborated the definiteness effect in Experiment 1, which means that the definite postverbal arguments of unaccusative verbs are not acceptable. The Definiteness Effect and Unaccusative Hypothesis were both corroborated in Experiment 2, which means the arguments of unaccusative verbs can both be preverbal and postverbal but not for unergative verbs. The study classified verbs according to their behaviors on Unaccusative hypothesis and Definiteness Effect and found that verbs behaved differently from previous classifications.

Abstract i
Table of Contents iv
Table Lists vi
Figure Lists vii
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1.1 Unaccusative Verbs and Unergative Verbs 1
1.2 Motivation and Goal of Thesis 2
1.3 Organization of Thesis 3
Chapter 2 Theoretical Background 4
2.1 The Unaccusative Hypothesis 4
2.2 The Definiteness Effect 6
2.3 Different Diagnostics for Unaccusativity and Unergativity 7
2.3.1 Auxiliary Selection 8
2.3.2 Resultative Construction 9
2.3.3 Ne-cliticization 10
2.3.4 Possessive Dative Construction 11
2.3.5 The X’s Way Construction 12
2.3.6 Floating Quantifier 13
2.3.7 Accusative-Oblique Alternation 16
2.4 Unergative and Unaccusative in Chinese 18
2.4.1 Position Difference of Unaccusative and Unergative Verbs in Chinese 18
2.4.2 Postverbal Object NP Head Preposing 19
2.4.3 Definiteness Effect of Unaccusative and Unergative Verbs in Chinese 20
2.5 Categorizations of Unaccusative and Unergative Verbs in Mandarin Chinese 26
2.6 Hypotheses and Predictions of the Study 28
Chapter 3 Experiments 30
3.1 Experiment 1: Sentence Acceptability Judgments of Unaccusative Verbs 30
3.1.1 Participants 30
3.1.2 Materials 31
3.1.3 Design 33
3.1.4 Procedure 34
3.1.5 Results 34
3.1.5.1 Mixed-effects Logistic Regression 34
3.1.5.2 Cluster Analysis 37
3.1.6 Discussion 42
3.2 Experiment 2: Sentence Acceptability Judgments of Unaccusative Verbs and Unegrative Verbs 44
3.2.1 Participants 44
3.2.2 Materials 44
3.2.3 Design 46
3.2.4 Procedure 47
3.2.5 Results 47
3.2.5.1 Linear Mixed-effects Models 47
3.2.5.2 Cluster Analysis 50
3.2.6 Discussion 55
3.3 Further Analysis of Experiment 2 57
3.3.1 Design 57
3.3.2 Results 57
4.1 Summary and General Discussion 60
4.2 Limitation of the Study 62
4.3 Future Research 62
References 64
Appendix I 68
Appendix II 76

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