Conférence Yen-Hui Audrey Li (2/2)

Yen-Hui Audrey Li (University of Southern California)
How to do so in Mandarin Chinese

In light of extensive studies on the English do so construction, this work investigates the lesser-known counterpart in Chinese as well as the properties of the words do and so. It will be shown that Chinese provides clearer evidence for analyzing this do as a light verb spelling out the eventuality predicate DO and takes a VP as its complement, which contains so. The analysis of the structure and derivation of the do so construction proposed in this work will be supported by comparison with related predicate anaphors and the structure containing a verb and so (such as I think so). The results of this study help resolving controversies relating to various constituency and argument structures. The cases illustrated are the ba construction, apparent prenominal PPs, control structures, and argument vs. non-argument PPs.