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Linking Semantics and Syntax in Mandarin Serial Verbs: A Role and Reference Grammar Account *

This paper discusses resultative verb constructions (RVCs) and serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Mandarin within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997, Van Valin 2005), with the goal of finding out how NP arguments are linked to syntax. Following van Voorst (1988), Dowty (1991), van Hout (1993), Tenny (1994), Croft (1998), Rosen (1996, 1999), Van Valin & LaPolla (1997:128), Chang (2003), and many others, this paper argues that it is the participant role rather than the thematic role an argument plays that determines how and where the argument is linked to the syntax. To account systematically for the complex grammatical phenomena of RVCs and SVCs in Mandarin, this paper proposes: (a) that the semantic macrorole of Undergoer should be divided into the Undergoer macrorole that undergoes the action and the Undergoer macrorole that participates in the endpoint; and (b) that when there are two identical arguments in a logical structure, one is syntactically expressed while the other is satisfied by binding and is not syntactically realized according to the proposed Macrorole Prominence Hierarchies (Chang 2003). The role hierarchy in Mandarin RVCs is suggested as: Actor1 > Actor2 > Undergoer2 > Undergoer1, whereas in Mandarin SVCs the role hierarchy is suggested as: Actor1 > Actor2 > Undergoer1 > Undergoer2.