THE ENCODING OF MOTION EVENTS IN CHINESE: MULTI-MORPHEME MOTION CONSTRUCTIONS

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF EAST ASIAN LANGAUAGES AND CULTURES AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN CHINESE

Jingxia Lin August, 2011

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/jm379cs8490

© 2011 by Jingxia Lin. All Rights Reserved.

Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

ii

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Chao Sun, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Beth Levin, Co-Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequatein scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Yoshiko Matsumoto

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies.

Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file inUniversity Archives.

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  iv  

ABSTRACT

This dissertation investigates Chinese verbal morphemes that express motion and their

distribution in motion constructions with multiple motion morphemes. For example, the

construction pǎo-jìn fángjiān run-enter room ‘run into the room’ is formed of two motion

morphemes pǎo ‘run’ and jìn ‘enter’. Multi-morpheme motion constructions (MMMCs)

are frequent in Chinese, but it seems difficult to formulate a generalization about the

relative order of the motion morphemes in these constructions. This dissertation argues

that the order is predictable. Drawing on recent work on “scale structure”, it proposes a

Motion Morpheme Hierarchy that can be used to predict the order of motion morphemes

and a More Specific Constraint that explains why the hierarchy emerges.

Unlike the traditional two-way classification of motion morphemes into manner-of-

motion morphemes and path morphemes (Talmy 1975), this study classifies Chinese

motion morphemes into four types according to the type of scale that each lexicalizes. A

path is composed of contiguous points that are ordered between the starting point of

motion and a reference object; the path can be understood as a scale because the ordered

points indicate measurement values on the dimension of distance (that is, the distance of

the starting point from the reference object) (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010). Motion

morphemes are first classified into scalar change motion morphemes (e.g., tuì ‘recede’,

huí ‘return’, jìn ‘enter’) and nonscalar change motion morpheme (e.g., fēi ‘fly’)

depending on whether they lexicalize a scale or not. Scalar change motion morphemes

are then classified into open scale motion morpheme (e.g., tuì ‘recede’) and closed scale

motion morphemes (e.g., huí ‘return’, jìn ‘enter’) depending on whether the scales they

lexicalize have endpoints or not. Closed scale motion morphemes are further classified

into multi-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., huí ‘return’) and two-point closed

scale motion morphemes (e.g., jìn ‘enter’) depending on whether their scales have

multiple points or two points (the starting and end points). A set of independent tests is

proposed to identify which type each Chinese motion morpheme falls into, regardless of

whether the morpheme can be used as an independent verb or not.

This dissertation then argues that the order of Chinese motion morphemes in

MMMCs are predictable using a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy formed of the four types

  v  

of motion morphemes. In this hierarchy, nonscalar change motion morphemes are located

at the farthest left, followed by open scale motion morphemes, and then closed scale

motion morphemes (including both multi-point and two-point closed scale motion

morphemes). In an MMMC, the motion morphemes are ordered from left to right

according to how their types appear in the hierarchy. Two extensive studies of MMMCs

based on corpora of recent Chinese novels show that the hierarchy is valid for a large

range of Chinese data.

In addition, the More Specific Constraint is proposed: in an MMMC, each morpheme

is more specific in terms of the scale it specifies than the morpheme to its left. For

instance, scalar change motion morphemes must follow nonscalar change motion

morphemes because the former specify the existence of a scale, whereas the latter do not;

closed scale motion morphemes must follow open scale motion morphemes because the

former not only specify the existence of a scale, but also the existence of an endpoint for

the scale. The constraint explains why the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy can be used to

predict the order of motion morphemes. This dissertation also examines a few special motion constructions where the

morpheme order is not predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy. These include

motion constructions ending with the deictic motion morphemes lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’, e.g.,

pǎo jìn-lái run enter-come ‘run into towards the deictic center’, and constructions

consisting of two synonymous motion morphemes, e.g., jìn-rù enter-enter ‘enter’.

However, evidence is provided to show that these constructions should not be considered

counterexamples to the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy or the More Specific Constraint.

This study provides new insight into the distribution of motion morphemes in Chinese

MMMCs and a more fine-grained analysis of the semantic relationships between the

morphemes in these constructions, and thus contributes to an increased understanding of

how motion events are expressed in Chinese. The findings of this study may also

illuminate the distribution of motion verbs in other languages, as well as constructions in

domains other than motion.

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Acknowledgements

When I started to write this section, I realized that it would be the hardest part to

complete. I worry that my words cannot adequately express my gratitude to the people

who have supported, helped, and accompanied me on my journey to the completion of

the degree. My appreciation for them is much deeper than the words below can show.

First and foremost I would like to thank my advisors, Prof. Chaofen Sun and Prof.

Beth Levin, to whom I am deeply indebted. Prof. Sun has taken me under his wing since I

came to Stanford. His office door has always been open to me whenever I have questions

or need help. His invaluable guidance, feedback, and support have not only aided in my

study and research but also in my job-hunting endeavors and life. I am also truly lucky to

have Prof. Beth Levin as my co-advisor. One of the first courses I took at Stanford was

her class on Lexical Semantics, through which I was led to the area of lexical semantics.

Prof. Levin is a wonderful advisor. She carefully read every single draft of all chapters of

the dissertation, helped me sort through many analyses, and corrected my English. I thank

both Prof. Sun and Prof. Levin for their many illuminating discussions, and for their

enormous patience, encouragement, and indulgence. This dissertation would not be what

it is without them.

I am also deeply grateful to Prof. John Wang, who has always treated me the way he

has been treating his own students with incredible patience, understanding, and

consideration. Prof. Wang had been serving on my dissertation reading committee until a

few weeks before my defense, when his travel abroad made him impossible attend the

oral defense. I also thank him for his insightful and inspiring literature classes.

My deepest thanks go to Prof. Yoshiko Matsumoto and Prof. Ban Wang for serving

on my committee, for their interest in my work, and for all insightful questions they have

raised. I am especially grateful to Prof. Matsumoto, who agreed to substitute for Prof.

Wang and read my dissertation draft carefully by re-arranging her tight schedule. I also

want to thank Prof. Amado Padilla for chairing my oral defense.

Many thanks go to Jeeyoung Peck. My dissertation has benefited much from our

conversations and from her continuous encouragement. Part of this dissertation will

appear in a joint paper with her in the journal Studies in Language. I am very grateful to

  vii  

her for “pushing” me hard when we were preparing the joint paper, which in turn

motivated me to think through all ideas in this dissertation more deeply and more fully.

Prof. Meichun Liu, Prof. Qianrui Chen, and Prof. Guofu Long in the Chinese

Linguistics Workshop have also offered me invaluable feedback after listening to my

presentations. I thank them all, especially Prof. Liu who has been so elegant, sweet, and

considerate.

I am immensely thankful to Prof. John Newman, my advisor at the University of

Alberta, Canada, and Prof. Zongjie Wu, my advisor at Zhejiang University, China. They

enthusiastically opened the door of linguistics to me with enormous encouragement and

patience.

During the years at Stanford, I am also truly fortunate to have been surrounded by

great friends. I especially want to thank my best friend Xiaoqiu Xu for sharing many

laughs together all these years and encouraging each other while working on our

dissertations. Without her, my writing experience would have been dimmer and lonelier.

I would also like to thank Fangqiong Zhan, Xiaoman Miao, Yu Zhang, Melvin Su,

Hisaaki Wake, Paul Ganir, Tingting Zhao, and many fellow students in the department as

well as Bin Liang, Jifeng Qin, Tao Li, Qiang Ma with whom I spent so much valuable

time together.

I am also very thankful to Richard Futrell, who has made great efforts helping me

with the language of the dissertation.

I cannot thank my husband Yang Qi enough for his unconditional and constant

support. He has always been there for me, taking care of almost everything so that I can

concentrate on study and research, listening to my complaints and excitement, and

offering suggestions and encouragement. I would never have been able to finish my work

without him.

Finally, my greatest thanks go to my parents Shunsen Lin and Yulian Chen for their

unchanging love, support, and wise advice throughout my life. I want to thank my

parents-in-law, You Qi and Yajie Liu, for their care of me these years, and my sister

Xiaoling and brother Jing for their continuous support.

  viii  

Table of contents

List of tables ...................................................................................................................... xii

List of figures ................................................................................................................... xiii

Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... xiv

1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research questions and significance of this study ........................................................ 1

1.2 Motion events and the typology of motion constructions ............................................. 4

1.2.1 The notion of motion event used in this study ........................................................ 5

1.2.2 The typology of motion constructions .................................................................... 7

1.3 Background on Chinese ................................................................................................ 8

1.3.1 Key typological characteristics of Chinese ............................................................ 8

1.3.2 The range of Chinese motion constructions ......................................................... 11

1.3.3 The Chinese motion constructions to be investigated .......................................... 15

1.3.4 Sources of Chinese data ........................................................................................ 20

1.4 Major claims ................................................................................................................ 21

1.5 Overview of the dissertation ....................................................................................... 22

2 Previous Studies of the Ordering and Classification of Chinese Motion

Morphemes ...................................................................................................................... 23 2.1 Previous studies of the order of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs ................. 23

2.1.1 Motion constructions as a type of resultative verbal compound .......................... 24

2.1.2 Temporal sequence and word order ...................................................................... 29

2.1.3 Summary ............................................................................................................... 32

2.2 The classification of Chinese motion morphemes in previous studies ....................... 33

2.2.1 Distinguishing manner from path ......................................................................... 35

2.2.2 Motion morphemes lexicalizing both manner and path ....................................... 40

2.2.2.1 A case study: chén ‘sink’ ............................................................................... 42

2.2.2.2 Manner-of-motion morphemes claimed to have directional meanings ......... 45

2.2.3 Summary ............................................................................................................... 49

3 Scale Structure and the Classification of Chinese Motion Morphemes .................. 51

3.1 The notion of scale structure ....................................................................................... 52

  ix  

3.2 A four-way classification of Chinese motion morphemes .......................................... 54

3.2.1 Nonscalar change vs. scalar change motion morphemes ..................................... 55

3.2.1.1 Compatibility with a variety of manners of motion ....................................... 57

3.2.1.2 Compatibility with a variety of result phrases ............................................... 57

3.2.1.3 Compatability with a variety of directions ..................................................... 60

3.2.2 Open scale vs. closed scale motion morphemes ................................................... 61

3.2.3 Multi-point closed scale vs. two-point closed scale motion verbs ....................... 63

3.2.4 Summary ............................................................................................................... 68

3. 3 “Special” motion morphemes ..................................................................................... 70

3.3.1 Dào ‘arrive’ .......................................................................................................... 70

3.3.2 Guò ‘cross’ ........................................................................................................... 76

3.3.3 Shàng ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’ ........................................................................ 80

3.4 The four types of Chinese motion morphemes according to their scale structure ...... 83

3.5 Bound motion morphemes and their scale structure ................................................... 84

3.5.1 Introduction to Chinese bound motion morphemes ............................................. 85

3.5.2 Identifying the scale structure of productive bound motion morphemes ............. 90

3.6 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 94

4 The Order of Motion Morphemes in Chinese MMMCs ........................................... 96

4.1 Chinese MMMCs consisting of multiple motion morphemes .................................... 97

4.1.1 Motion constructions consisting of two motion morphemes ................................ 97

4.1.2 Motion constructions consisting of three motion morphemes .............................. 99

4.1.3 Motion constructions consisting of more than three motion morphemes .......... 101

4.2 Motion morphemes can occur in various positions in Chinese MMMCs ................. 104

4.3 Predicting morpheme order in MMMCs: The Motion Morpheme Hierarchy .......... 112

4.4 Motion constructions not covered by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy .................. 117

4.4.1 Constructions with closed scale motion morphemes and dào ‘arrive’ ............... 117

4.4.2 Constructions with the open scale motion morphemes tuì ‘recede’ and shàng

‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ ................................................................................................. 120

4.4.3 Motion constructions ending with the deictic morpheme lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ .... 123

4.4.3.1 Lái/qù following a nonscalar change motion morpheme ............................. 126

4.4.3.2 Lái/qù following an intransitive scalar change motion morpheme .............. 129

  x  

4.4.3.3 Lái/qù following a transitive scalar change motion morpheme ................... 130

4.4.3.4 Summary ...................................................................................................... 136

4.4.4 Juxtaposed motion synonyms ............................................................................. 138

4.4.4.1 Juxtaposed motion synonyms are not MMMCs .......................................... 139

4.4.4.2 Previous studies of the order of morphemes in juxtaposed synonyms ........ 141

4.5 Summary ................................................................................................................... 143

5 Corpus Studies Verifying the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy and the Encoding of Motion Events in Chinese ............................................................................................. 145

5.1 Corpus study 1 ........................................................................................................... 146

5.1.1 Data sources ........................................................................................................ 146

5.1.2 Data selection ..................................................................................................... 147

5.1.2.1 MMMCs to be analyzed ............................................................................... 148

5.1.2.2 Motion constructions to be excluded from the analysis ............................... 149

5.1.3 Motion constructions found in the data sources ................................................. 151

5.1.4 Hypotheses and data coding ............................................................................... 153

5.1.4 Results ................................................................................................................ 156

5.1.5 MMMCs consisting of closed scale motion morphemes and dào ‘arrive’ ......... 159

5.1.6 MMMCs with three motion morphemes ............................................................ 160

5.1.7 Summary ............................................................................................................. 160

5.2 Corpus Study 2 .......................................................................................................... 161

5.2.1 Data sources ........................................................................................................ 161

5.2.2 Data Selection ..................................................................................................... 161

5.2.3 Hypotheses and data coding ............................................................................... 162

5.2.4 Results ................................................................................................................ 163

5.2.4.1 Two-morpheme MMMCs ............................................................................ 164

5.2.4.2 Three-morpheme MMMCs .......................................................................... 170

5.2.5 Summary ............................................................................................................. 171

5.3 The encoding of Chinese motion events ................................................................... 172

5.3.1 The Motion Morpheme Hierarchy and the “More Specific Constraint” ............ 172

5.3.1.1 The More Specific Constraint vs. the RVC account .................................... 173

5.3.1.2 The More Specific Constraint vs. the temporal iconicity account ............... 175

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5.3.1.3 The More Specific Constraint accounts for three-morpheme MMMCs ...... 176

5.3.1.4 The incompatibility of two closed scale motion morphemes in an MMMC 176

5.3.1.4 Tuì-shàng/xià is consistent with the More Specific Constraint ................... 177

5.4 The two-point closed scale motion morpheme dào ‘arrive’ ..................................... 179

5.4.1 A possible reason that dào ‘arrive’ follows closed scale motion morphemes .... 180

5.4.2 The function of dào ‘arrive’ after closed scale motion morphemes ................... 183

5.4.3 Dào ‘arrive’ vs. English to ................................................................................. 186

5.5 Summary ................................................................................................................... 187

6 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 188 6.1 Summary of the findings ........................................................................................... 188

6.2 Directions for future study ........................................................................................ 191

6.2.1 The historical development of Chinese motion morphemes and constructions . 191

6.2.1 The distribution of motion verbs in other serial verb languages ........................ 193

6.2.2 Scale structure and Chinese RVCs ..................................................................... 197

6.3 Summary ................................................................................................................... 199

Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 200

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List of tables  

Table 1. 1 Major periods of the Chinese language ............................................................ 20  

Table 3. 1 Tests distinguishing nonscalar change from scalar change motion morphemes

........................................................................................................................................... 61  

Table 3.2 Tests distinguishing multi-point from two-point closed scale motion

morphemes ........................................................................................................................ 68  

Table 3.3 Three features of scales determining four types of motion morphemes ........... 69  

Table 3.4 Examples of Chinese motion morphemes classified according to their scale

structure ............................................................................................................................. 84  

Table 3. 5 Bound motion morphemes and the corresponding free morphemes in Chinese

........................................................................................................................................... 87  

Table 3. 6 Examples of Chinese bound motion morphemes classified according to their

scale structure .................................................................................................................... 94  

Table 5.1 Novels selected for Corpus study 1 ................................................................. 146  

Table 5. 2 Motion constructions found in the data sources ............................................. 152  

Table 5. 3 MMMCs found in the novels ......................................................................... 152  

Table 5. 4 Numbers of occcurrences of (M1, M2) in terms of features of scales in the data

......................................................................................................................................... 157  

Table 6.1 Linear order of Thai motion verbs .................................................................. 194  

  xiii  

List of figures    

Figure 3.1 Classification of English motion verbs ............................................................ 55  

Figure 3.2 Four-way and two-way classification of Chinese motion morphemes ............ 70  

 

Figure 5.1 Frequencies of the types of “M1 + M2” MMMCs in the data sources .......... 159  

Figure 5.2 Zǒu ‘walk’ ...................................................................................................... 165  

Figure 5.3 Pǎo ‘run’ ........................................................................................................ 165  

Figure 5.4 Shàng ‘ascend’ ............................................................................................... 166  

Figure 5.5 Xià ‘descend’ ................................................................................................. 166  

Figure 5.6 Tuì ‘recede’ .................................................................................................... 167  

Figure 5.7 Huí ‘return’ .................................................................................................... 169  

Figure 5.8 Chū ‘exit’ ....................................................................................................... 169  

Figure 5.9 Dào ‘arrive’ .................................................................................................... 170  

  xiv  

Abbreviations

ASP Aspect marker

BA BA construction

CLF Classifier

DEL Delimitative aspect

IMP Imperfective

M1 The first (i.e. leftmost) motion morpheme in a motion construction

M2 The second motion morpheme in a motion construction

M3 The third motion morpheme in a motion construction

MOD Modifier marker

NEG Negative

NEG.POT Negative potential marker

ONOM onomatopoeia

POS.POT Positive potential marker

POSS Possessive

POT Potential marker

PP Prepositional phrase

PROG Progressive

REL Relative clause

  1  

Chapter 1

Introduction

Movement in space is one of the most basic human activities, but the languages of the

world do not express events involving movement in the same way. Studies of the

linguistic expression of motion events contribute to a better understanding not only of

how these events are conceptualized by speakers, but also of the relation between

language and thought. This dissertation explores Chinese verbal morphemes that express

motion and provides a comprehensive analysis of their distribution in motion

constructions, focusing on constructions consisting of multiple motion morphemes. In

this chapter, I introduce the research questions as well as the major claims of this study.

1.1 Research questions and significance of this study

Modern Mandarin Chinese (also Pŭtōnghuà ‘common language’, hereafter “Chinese”)

can express motion events in constructions consisting of only one verbal morpheme. For

instance, fēi ‘fly’ and huí ‘return’ are the only verbs that express motion in (1a) and (1b),

respectively.

(1) a. 两只大雁正往北方飞

liǎng -zhī dàyàn zhèng wǎng běifāng fēi

two-CLF wild.goose PROG towards north fly

‘Two wild geese are flying towards the north.’

(http://www.37xiao.com/gaoxiao/83/2189.html)

  2  

b. 我实习完了，可以回学校了

wǒ shíxí-wán-le, kěyǐ huí xuéxiào le

I intern-finish-ASP can return school ASP

‘I finished internship, [so I] can return to school.’1

(http://bbs.soft666.com/simple/index.php?t23804.html)

In addition, Chinese allows two or more verbal morphemes to occur together in a

construction, so motion events in Chinese are also commonly expressed through multi-

morpheme constructions. As in (2), the construction zǒu-huí xuéxiào walk-return school

‘walk back to school’ is formed of two motion morphemes, zǒu ‘walk’ and huí ‘return’.

(2) 我一路茫然地走回学校

wǒ yílù mángrán de zǒu-huí xuéxiào

I one.way absent-minded MOD walk-return school

‘I walked back to school all the way absent-mindedly.’

(http://bbs.rednet.cn/thread-2165585-4-1.html)

However, when more than one motion morpheme appears in a construction, it seems

to be difficult to formulate a generalization concerning the order of these morphemes. For

instance, huí ‘return’ must follow jiànɡ ‘descend’ in (3), but must precede dào ‘arrive’ in

(4).

                                                                                                                         1  Chinese has two morphemes –le according to previous studies: the –le occurring after (or suffixed to) a verb functions as a perfective marker, whereas the –le in sentence-final position signals a “currently relevant state” (Li and Thompson 1981: 240, among others). However, there are situations in which the function of –le is hard to identify, especially when –le occurs after a sentence-final verb. A detailed discussion of –le can be found in Li and Thompson (1981). This

  3  

(3) a. 飞机起飞半小时后又降回昆明。

Fēijī qǐfēi bàn -xiǎoshí yòu jiàng-huí Kūnmíng

plane take.off half-hour again descend-return Kunming

‘Half an hour after the plane took off, it descended back to Kunming.’

(http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2010-06-27/115617717194s.shtml)

b. *huí-jiàng Kūnmíng

return-descend Kunming

(4) a. 航班起飞 1个小时后，居然又回到了虹桥机场。

Hángbān qǐfēi 1-ɡè xiǎoshí-hòu,

flight take.off one -CLF hour-after

jūrán yòu huí-dào-le Hóngqiáo-jīchǎng

unexpectedly again return-arrive-ASP Hongqiao-airport

‘After the flight took off one hour ago, it unexpectedly returned to Hongqiao

Airport.’ (http://old.jfdaily.com/gb/jfxww/xlbk/ishidai/node10394/

node10397/userobject1ai1507204.html)

b. *dào-huí Hóngqiáo-jīchǎng

arrive-return Hongqiao-airport

There are also instances in which two motion morphemes can occur in either order, as huí

‘return’ and fǎn ‘return’ do in (5).

(5) a. 按计划我们登完塔山就要回返了

àn jìhuà wǒmen dēng-wán Tǎshān jiù yào huí-fǎn le

according.to plan we climb-finish Ta.hill then will return-return ASP

‘According to the plan, we will return after we climbed the Ta Mountain.’

(http://bbs.linyiren.com/thread-128579-1-1.html)

  4  

b. 可是儿子总是周日下午四点返回学校

kěshì érzi zǒngshì zhōurì xiàwǔ sì-diǎn fǎn-huí xuéxiào

but son always Sunday afternoon four-o’clock return-return school

‘But [my] son always returned to school at 4pm on Sundays.’

(http://www.sztyj.com/bbs/simple/?t72353_2.html)

Therefore, the following questions arise when multiple motion morphemes occur together:

Is the order of these morphemes just a matter of convention and totally unpredictable? Or

is there a generalization that can predict the order? If yes, what determines the order?

In order to answer these questions, this study explores Chinese motion morphemes

and the factors determining their order in multi-morpheme motion constructions

(hereafter “MMMCs”). Based on recent studies of “scale structure” (Kennedy and

McNally 2005, Rappaport Hovav 2008, Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010, among others),

I classify Chinese motion morphemes into four types according to what kind of scale the

morphemes lexicalize, and propose a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy formed by the four

types of morphemes that can be used to predict the order of morphemes in motion

constructions, as well as a general principle, which I call the “More Specific” Constraint

that explains why the hierarchy emerges.

The significance of this study is threefold. First, it provides new insight into the

morphemes’ syntactic distribution in MMMCs and a more fine-grained analysis of the

semantic relationships between the morphemes in these constructions. Second, it furthers

our understanding of the nature of motion events as well as the way motion events are

conceived in the minds of Chinese speakers and reflected in their language. Third, the

generalization underlying the ordering of Chinese motion morphemes might be extensible

to serial verb motion constructions in other languages, e.g., Thai and Ewe, as well as to

other Chinese multi-morpheme constructions, e.g., resultative verbal compounds.

1.2 Motion events and the typology of motion constructions This section introduces the notion of motion event used in this dissertation as well as the

typological patterns that Chinese exhibits in describing motion events.  

  5  

1.2.1 The notion of motion event used in this study

A motion event in this dissertation refers to the kind of event in which an object moves

and changes its location with respect to another object. As illustrated in (6), the dog

moved with respect to the kitchen and changed its location from the outside of the

kitchen to the inside.

(6) The dog ran into the kitchen.

Such an event is called a “translational motion event” by Talmy (2000: 35, cf. Zlatev et al.

2005, Bohnemeyer et al. 2007, Beavers et al. 2010).2

Talmy (2000: 25) distinguishes four “internal” components that comprise a

translational motion event:

(7) Figure: the moving object

Ground: the reference object with respect to which the Figure moves

Motion: the presence of motion

Path: The course/route along which the Figure moves with respect to the Ground

For instance, (6), repeated as (8), describes an event in which the figure (the dog) carries

out its motion along a path with respect to the ground (the kitchen).

(8) The dog ran into the kitchen.

Figure Motion Path Ground

In addition to the internal components, a motion event can also have an “external” or

associated “co-event” (Talmy 2000: 26). One important co-event is the manner of motion,

                                                                                                                         2 Besides translational motion events, Talmy (2000: 25) also treats a situation in which an object is located with respect to another object as a kind of motion, as in (i). However, this study only examines translational motion events.

(i)The pencil lay on the table. (Talmy 2000: 26, (26))  

  6  

which specifies how a figure moves (Talmy 2000). For instance, the verb run in (8)

specifies that the motion is carried out in a running manner.

According to Talmy (2000: 27-28), translational motion events fall into three types

depending on the agentivity of the figure. The first type is agentive motion, in which a

figure is caused to move by some explicit external cause, and the figure has no control

over its motion, like the keg in (9), which is caused to move by I (ibid.).

(9) I slid/rolled/bounced the keg into the storeroom. (ibid.:28, (5f))

The second type is non-agentive motion, in which the motion of a figure occurs without

an obvious cause, and the figure has no control over its motion, such as the rock in (10)

(ibid.).

(10) The rock slid/rolled/bounced down the hill. (ibid.: 28, (5c))

The third type is self-agentive motion, in which a figure moves and has control over its

motion (ibid.). (11) describes such an event.3

(11) I ran into the storeroom.

This study is limited to motion constructions that describe self-agentive motion and non-

agentive motion. Agentive motion is only mentioned when necessary because it is

structurally different from the other two types in both English and Chinese. For instance,

in constructions describing agentive motion, the figure is usually expressed as the object,

like the keg in (9), whereas the figure in constructions of self-agentive and non-agentive

motion is usually expressed as the subject, like the rock, the napkin, and I in (10) and (11).

The next section introduces the various ways of expressing self-agentive and non-

agentive motion.

                                                                                                                         3  Linguists studying Chinese motion events, e.g., Lamarre (2003), Qi (1998) and Y. Liu (1998), use the Chinese term 致移 zhìyí ‘caused motion’ for agentive motion (9), and 自移 zìyí ‘self motion’ for non-agentive (10) and self-agentive motion (11).  

  7  

1.2.2 The typology of motion constructions Talmy (2000) proposes that languages can be divided into two major types, verb-framed

and satellite-framed, according to whether path information is characteristically encoded

in the verb or not. Verb-framed languages encode path in the verb; Turkish, Korean,

Japanese, and Tamil are some of the languages that belong to this type (ibid.: 60). (12) is

an example from Spanish.

(12) la botella entró a la cueva (flotando)

the bottle MOVED-in to the cave (floating)

‘The bottle floated into the cave.’ (Talmy 2000: 49, (29a))

Satellite-framed languages, in contrast, encode manner in the verb, while path is

expressed in a satellite to the verb, i.e. in nonverbal morphemes such as particles or verb

affixes (Talmy 2000: 102). Russian, German, and Warlpiri are languages belonging to

this type (ibid.: 60). (13) is an example from English.

(13) The bottle floated into the cave.

In addition, recent studies also find languages such as Emai, Thai, and Ewe which

express path and manner using morphemes with equivalent grammatical status, so a third

type of language is proposed: equipollently-framed languages (Slobin 2004, Zlatev and

Yangklang 2004, Ameka and Essegbey 2001, among others). For instance, (14) is a

monoclausal sentence of Thai, where both manner and path are expressed in main verbs

(Zlatev and Yangklang 2004).

(14) chán dɘɘn khâw paj

I walk enter go

‘I am walking in (away from the deictic center, into something).’

(Zlatev and Yangklang 2004: 165, (11))

  8  

However, recent work (e.g., Folli and Ramchand 2005, Filipović 2007, Beavers et al.

2010, Croft et al. 2010) argues that a language can have more than one way of expressing

a motion event. According to these studies, most languages show both verb-framed and

satellite-framed patterns, and some may have all three options for the encoding of motion

events.

1.3 Background on Chinese This section introduces some key typological charactistics of Chinese, the typological

patterns that Chinese conforms to in describing motion events, the motion constructions

that are to be analyzed in this study, as well as the data sources used in this study.

1.3.1 Key typological characteristics of Chinese Mandarin Chinese has been considered to be an isolating language because it has

relatively simple morphology (Li and Thompson 1981, Norman 1988, among others). For

instance, Chinese has no case markers on nouns to indicate grammatical functions such as

subject and object, and verbs have no agreement markers either (Li and Thompson 1981,

among others). The function of these morphemes, however, is indicated by word order in

Chinese (ibid.).

Chinese has basic VO word order; that is, a verb is usually followed by an object, as

illustrated in (15) (Sun and Givón 1985, Norman 1988, Ramsey 1989, Pulleyblank 1995,

Sun 2006, Loar 2011, among others, cf. Li and Thompson 1974a, b, Li and Thompson

1981, Xu 2006).

(15) 她写了一本书

tā xiě-le yī-běn shū

she write-ASP one-CLF book

‘She wrote a book.’

However, Li and Thompson (1981), among others, argue that Chinese also shows

features that Greenberg (1963/1966) associated with OV languages. For instance, they

point out that in typical VO languages, modifiers are preceded by their head, but Chinese

  9  

can have a head preceded by a modifier, which is a feature of OV languages. For example,

in dà zhuōzi big table ‘big table’, the adjective dà ‘big’ precedes the head noun zhuōzi

‘table’.

In addition, Li and Thompson point out that Chinese temporal phrases and locative

phrases also show variations that are not typical of VO languages. For instance,

according to them, the position of temporal and locative phrases with respect to a

predicate is determined by “consideration of meaning rather than of grammatical

functions” (ibid. 1981: 19). As illustrated in (16), the locatives phrase zài zhuōzi-shàng at

table-top ‘on the table’ can occur both before and after the predicate tiào ‘jump’:

(16) a. 她/他在桌子上跳

tā zài zhuōzi-shàng tiào (pre-verbal locative phrase)

s/he at table-top jump

‘S/he jumped (up and down) on the table.’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 22, (20a))4

b. 她/他跳在桌子上

tā tiào zài zhuōzi-shàng (post-verbal locative phrase)

s/he jump at table-top

‘S/he jumped onto the table.’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 22, (20b))

According to Li and Thompson, modifiers in preverbal position describe the location of

actions, but modifies in postverbal position describe the place where a person or entity is

located as a result of the action; thus, in (16a), the table is the place where the jumping

event occurs, whereas in (16b), the table has to be understood as the place where the

person can be found after the jumping action. However, other studies, e.g., Tai (1985,

1987) and Loar (2011), propose that the order of syntactic units in Chinese reflects the

temporal order of the events that these units denote. For instance, in (16a), the person has

to move up to the table before s/he jumps, so zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘on the table’ precedes

                                                                                                                         4 The original Chinese examples cited from previous studies may be glossed in different ways. In order to keep the format consistent in this dissertation, all examples, including cited data, are presented with Chinese characters and pinyin with tone marks.

  10  

tiào ‘jump’; whereas in (16b), the person is located on the table after his/her jump, so tiào

‘jump’ precedes zài zhuōzi-shàng ‘on the table’. Chapter 2 will come back to these

proposals in the context of a discussion of motion morphemes in a Chinese motion

construction. Nonetheless, (16) indicates that semantics may affect the choice of word

order of Chinese.

Another important characteristic of Chinese is that it allows multiple verb phrases or

clauses to occur in a sentence, with no overt markers to indicate the relationships between

these juxtaposed phrases or clauses (Li and Thompson 1981: 594, among others). For

example, both sentences in (17) have two verb phrases, but no morpheme is used to

indicate the relationships betweent the two phrases; and for this reason, Chinese is

considered a serial verb language (Li and Thompson 1981, among others).

(17) a. 他拿刀切面包

tā ná dāo qiē miànbāo

he hold knife cut bread

‘He held the knife to cut the bread./He cut the bread with the knife.’

b. 他请我吃晚饭

tā qǐng wǒ chī wǎnfàn

he invite I eat dinner

‘He invited me to have a dinner.’

In addition, Li and Thompson (1981, also Packard 2000, and others) claim that

Chinese is rich in compounds in which (two) morphemes combine to form one word.

They point out that there are two major types of verbal compounds: resultative verb

compounds in which the second verbal morpheme indicates some result brought about by

the first verbal morpheme, e.g., pò ‘break’ in dǎ-pò huāpíng hit-break vase ‘break the

vase by hitting it’; and parallel verb compounds, in which the two verbal morphemes

which “are either synonymous or signal the same type of predicative notion”, e.g., gòu-

mǎi buy-buy ‘buy’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 68). Both serial verb constructions and the

  11  

two types of verbal compounds are found in expressions of motion events. I will discuss

them in more detail in the following chapters.

This dissertation follows the diagnostics of previous studies (Li and Thompson 1981,

among others) in determining whether a given combination of motion morphemes is a

compound word or a serial verb construction: in a given combination, if the first motion

morpheme cannot be modified by perfective suffix -le, then the combination is treated as

a compound word. For example, jiànɡ-huí descend-return in jiànɡ-huí Kūnmínɡ ‘descend

back to Kunming’ is treated as a compound because -le cannot be inserted in between

jiànɡ ‘descend’ and huí ‘return’. In contrast, in zǒu jìn-lái run enter-come ‘walk in toward

the deictic center’, -le can be inserted in between zǒu ‘walk’ and jìn-lái enter-come, so

zǒu and jìn-lái are treated as two words (jìn-lái is treated as a compound because -le

cannot be inserted in between jìn ‘enter’ and lái ‘come’). A hyphen is used to connect

motion morphemes within a compound and each motion morpheme is glossed

individually, because the analysis of this study is based on the lexical semantic

information in each morpheme.

1.3.2 The range of Chinese motion constructions As mentioned in Section 1.1, Chinese can have more than one motion morpheme in a

motion construction. For instance, manner and path information is expressed by two

individual motion morphemes in each sentence in (18).

(18) a. 小猫跑过房间

xiǎomāo pǎo-guò fángjiān

small.cat run-cross room

‘The small cat ran across the room.’

b. 学生走进教室

xuéshēng zǒu-jìn jiàoshì

student walk-enter classroom

‘The student walked into the classroom.’

  12  

However, by not uniformly identifying the same motion morphemes (manner or path)

as the main verb in Chinese, previous studies (Talmy 2000, Lamarre 2009, Peyraube

2006, Tai 2003, Chen and Guo 2008, Hsiao 2009, among others) have made different

claims regarding which lexicalization pattern Chinese has, i.e. which encoding option

Chinese exhibits.

Talmy (2000) claims that the morpheme expressing manner (usually the first motion

morpheme) in Chinese motion constructions is the main verb, e.g., pǎo ‘run’ in (17a),

whereas the morpheme expressing path information is the complement to the main verb,

i.e. the path satellite, e.g., guò ‘cross’ in (17a). He identifies Chinese as a satellite-framed

language because the path is not expressed in the main verb. Talmy’s position is also

adopted by Lamarre (2009), Peyraube (2006), Ma (2006), among others.

In contrast to these researchers, Tai (2003) claims that what they have called path

satellites are main verbs because they can occur alone and be suffixed with the aspect

marker -le. For instance, guò ‘cross’ in (19b) expresses path information and is the only

motion morpheme; in contrast, the motion morpheme preceding guò ‘cross’, i.e. fēi ‘fly’,

cannot occur alone in (19c).5

(19) a. 约翰飞过英吉利海峡

John fēi-guò Yīngjílì-Hǎixiá

John fly-cross English-Channel

‘John flew across the English Channel.’

b. 约翰过了英吉利海峡

John guò-le Yīngjílì-Hǎixiá

John cross-ASP English-Channel

‘John crossed the English Channel’

                                                                                                                         5 It is true that guò ‘cross’ can occur as a main verb as in (18b). However, Tai (2003) does not provide evidence showing whether guò ‘cross’ is still functioning as a main verb when it co-occurs with fēi ‘fly’ in (18a).

  13  

c. *约翰飞了英吉利海峡

*John fēi-le Yīngjílì-Hǎixiá

John fly-ASP English-Channel (Tai 2003: 309-310, (30)-(32))

Chen and Guo (2009) take a third position. They propose that Chinese is an

equipollently-framed language. However, they do not provide direct evidence showing

that the morphemes expressing manner and path have equivalent grammatical status.

Rather, through a statistical analysis of the motion constructions used in Chinese novels,

they find that Chinese manner and path morphemes are used with the same frequencies,

whereas a typical satellite-framed language such as English uses manner-of-motion verbs

predominantly and a typical verb-framed language such as Turkish uses path verbs

predominantly (cf. Chen 2005, Slobin 1997, 2004). Therefore, Chinese does not align

with English or Turkish, but is a language in between them (Chen and Guo 2009).

Unlike previous studies, Hsiao (2009, cf. Beavers et al. 2006, Beavers et al. 2010: 357)

proposes that all three encoding options are available in Chinese. (20a-c) illustrate

Hsiao’s examples of satellite-framed, verb-framed, and equipollently-framed encodings,

respectively.

(20) a. 玛丽沿着海边散步

Mǎlì yán-zhe hǎibiān sànbù

Mary along-IMP seashore stroll

‘Mary strolled along the seashore.’ (Hsiao 2009: 211, (6a))

b. 瓶子进了洞穴去

píngzi jìn-le dòngxué qù bottle enter-ASP cave go

‘The bottle entered the cave.’ (Hsiao 2009: 210, (4b))

  14  

c. 瓶子漂进了洞穴去

píngzi piāo-jìn-le dòngxué qù

bottle float-enter-ASP cave go

‘The bottle floated into the cave.’

(Tai 2003, cited from Hsiao 2009: 209, (4a))

Hsiao points out that the choice of a particular type of encoding is associated with

different factors. For instance, according to Hsiao, Chinese tends to use the satellite-

framed pattern to describe a motion event without an endpoint (unbounded event), as in

(20a) where the manner-of-motion morpheme sànbù ‘stroll’ is the main verb; in contrast,

if a motion event has an endpoint (bounded event), Chinese typically expresses the event

via a verb-framed pattern, as in (20b) where no manner-of-motion morpheme is used, or

the equipollently-framed pattern, and (20c) where both the manner-of-motion morpheme

piāo ‘float’ and the path morpheme jìn ‘enter’ are used. Furthermore, context and a

speaker’s desire to express a particular piece of information about the event can influence

the choice of encoding (Hsiao 2009, cf. Beavers et al. 2010). For instance, according to

Hsiao, because walking is usually assumed to be the default manner for a person to move

up to the second floor, the morpheme expressing walking does not need to be explicitly

expressed if a person moves upstairs by walking, though the motion construction is still

understood as a description of a walking event, as illustrated in (21).

(21) 大伟上二楼去了

Dàwěi shàng èrlóu qù le

David ascend second-floor go ASP

‘David went up to the second floor [by walking].’ (Hsiao 2009: 212, (7))

However, as illustrated in (22), if the manner of motion is different from walking, a

speaker tends to specify the manner and thus uses the equipollently-framed encoding

(Hsiao 2009).

  15  

(22) 大伟跳上二楼去了

Dàwěi tiào-shàng èrlóu qù le

David jump-ascend second-floor go ASP

‘David jumped his way to the second floor/David jumped to the second floor (at

one single jump).’ (Hsiao 2009: 212, (8a))

In this study, I follow Hsiao (2009) and Beavers et al. (2010) in assuming that

Chinese, as well as other languages, may describe a motion event in various ways,

including using all three types of encoding mentioned above.

1.3.3 The Chinese motion constructions to be investigated The preceding section shows that previous studies disagree on the grammatical status of

the morphemes that express motion in Chinese. As will be shown in Chapter 3, the

approach based on the scale structure of motion morphemes adopted in this study can be

applied to morphemes with different kinds of grammatical status, including independent

motion verbs, path satellites, and even bound motion morphemes, i.e. motion morphemes

that cannot be used alone as main verbs in Modern Chinese. Therefore, this study uses

the term “motion morpheme” to cover all morphemes expressing motion in Chinese.

This section introduces the types of motion constructions that are to be analyzed in

this study. As mentioned above, different means are available in Chinese for expressing

the same event (cf. Hsiao 2009, Chu 2004, Lamarre 2008). For instance, (23) lists some

of the sentences that can describe an event in which a figure moves back to a room in a

running manner.

(23) a. (Motion morpheme + motion morpheme + noun)

他跑回房间了

tā pǎo-huí fángjiān le

he run-return room ASP

‘He ran back to the room.’

  16  

b. (Motion morpheme + motion morpheme + motion morpheme)

他跑回去了

tā pǎo huí-qù le

he run return-go ASP

‘He ran back.’ (if the speaker is outside the room)

c. (Motion morpheme + motion morpheme + motion morpheme + noun)

他跑回到房间了

tā pǎo-huí-dào fángjiān le

he run-return-arrive room ASP

‘He ran back to the room.’

d. (PP + motion morpheme + motion morpheme + noun + motion morpheme)

他从外面跑回房间来了

tā cóng wàimiàn pǎo -huí fángjiān lái le

he from outside run-return room come ASP

‘He ran back to the room from outside.’ (if the speaker is inside the room)

e. (PP + motion morpheme + motion morpheme + motion morpheme)

他从外面跑回来了

tā cóng wàimiàn pǎo huí-lái le

he from outside run return-come ASP

‘He ran back from outside.’ (if the speaker is inside the room)

f. (Motion morpheme + noun + motion morpheme + noun)

他跑步回房间了

tā pǎo-bù huí fángjiān le

he run-step return room ASP

‘He ran back to the room.’

  17  

g. (Adverbial + motion morpheme + noun)

他跑着回房间了

tā pǎo-zhe huí fángjiān le

he run-IMP return room ASP

‘He returned the room in the manner of running.’

In order to analyze the relative order of motion morphemes, I focus on motion

constructions in which motion morphemes occur immediately adjacent to each other, e.g.,

pǎo-huí fángjiān run-return room ‘run back to the room’ in (23a), pǎo huí-qù run return-

go ‘run back away from the speaker’ in (23b), pǎo-huí-dào fángjiān run-return-arrive

room ‘run back into the room’ in (23c), pǎo-huí fángjiān lái run-return room come ‘run

back into the room towards the speaker’ in (23d), and pǎo-huí-lái run-return-come ‘run

back towards the speaker’ in (23e). These motion constructions are the multi-morpheme

motion constructions or MMMCs to be analyzed in this dissertation.

In contrast, (23f) consists of two verb phrases, i.e. pǎo bù run step and huí fángjiān

return-room. Such constructions are called “serial verb constructions” by Hsiao (2009: 9).

In (23g), the first motion morpheme is suffixed by the imperfective marker -zhe, and then

followed by another motion morpheme. Such “M1-zhe M2” constructions are called

“converb constructions” by Hsiao (2009: 9). This study does not discuss serial verb

constructions and converb constructions because their motion morphemes are not

immediately adjacent to each other.6

Hsiao (2009: 16) points out that there are two types of MMMCs (in her terms,

“direction verb compounds”) in Chinese. One is an MMMC such as (23a) which ends

with a ground NP, i.e. MMMCground; the other is an MMMC such as (23b) which ends

with a deictic motion morpheme lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’, i.e. MMMCdeictic. She argues that an

                                                                                                                         6 (22e) has two adjacent motion morphemes pǎo ‘run’ and huí ‘return’ and a deictic motion morpheme lái ‘come’ which does not occur immediately adjacent to the other two morphemes. In Chapter 4, I will argue that the deictic motion morphemes lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’ are not typical motion morphemes when they occur at the end of a motion construction, like lái ‘come’ does in (22e), so a generalization over the order of motion morphemes in MMMCs is formulated only to describe the relative order of pǎo ‘run’ and huí ‘return’.  

  18  

MMMCground cannot have a perfective marker -le inserted in between its motion

morphemes, but an MMMCdeictic can, as illustrated in (24).

(24) a. *他跑了回房间了 (MMMCground)

*tā pǎo-le huí fángjiān le

he run-ASP return room ASP

b. 他跑了回去了 (MMMCdeictic)

tā pǎo-le huí-qù le

he run-ASP return-go ASP

‘He ran back (away from the speaker).’

Therefore, she argues that an MMMCground is analogous to a verb-verb compound where

the two motion morphemes form a word; in contrast, an MMMCdeictic is analogous to a

serial verb construction, where pǎo ‘run’ and huí-qù return-go are two independent words.

However, an MMMCground and an MMMCdeictic share a common feature in that a

potential infix (-de ‘positive potential marker’ and -bù ‘negative potential marker’) can be

inserted in between the first and second motion morphemes, as in (25), cf. Hsiao (2009).

(25) a. 他跑得回房间 (MMMCground)

tā pǎo-de-huí fángjiān

he run-POT-return room

‘He can run back to the room.’

b. 他跑得回来 (MMMCdeictic)

tā pǎo-de-huí-lái

he run-POT-return-come

‘He can run back (toward the speaker).’

  19  

Compatibility with potential markers is treated as an important characteristic of

resultative verbal compounds in which the second morpheme expresses the result brought

about by its preceding morpheme (Chao 1968, Li and Thompson 1981, Parkard 2000,

among others). Therefore, according to previous studies, (25) indicates that the motion

morphemes in both MMMCground and MMMCdeictic are in a “main morpheme +

complement morpheme” relationship, i.e. pǎo ‘run’ is the main morpheme in both (25a)

and (25b), whereas huí ‘return’ in (25a) and huí-lái return-come in (25b) are result

complements (cf. Hsiao 2009). (More discussion of whether MMMCs should be treated

as resultative verbal compounds is found in Section 2.1.1 in Chapter 2.)

In addition to MMMCground and MMMCdeictic, Chinese has other types of MMMCs. For

instance, (23c) is an MMMC consisting of three motion morphemes without the deictic

motion morpheme lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’. This MMMC is distinguished from both the

MMMCground and MMMCdeictic mentioned above in that it does not allow the insertion of

the perfective marker -le or the potential marker –de/–bu, as illustrated in (26) and (27)

respectively.

(26) a. *他跑了回到房间了

*tā pǎo-le huí-dào fángjiān le

He run-ASP return-arrive room ASP

b. *他跑回了到房间

*tā pǎo-huí-le dào fángjiān le

He run-return-ASP arrive room ASP

(27) a. *他跑得回到房间

*tā pǎo-de-huí-dào fángjiān le

He run-POT-return-arrive room ASP

  20  

b. *他跑回得到房间

. *tā pǎo-huí-de-dào fángjiān le

He run-return-POT-arrive room ASP

As shown above, MMMCground, MMMCdeictic and MMMCs with three non-deictic

motion morphemes are not totally the same in structure. However, despite the possible

differences in these constructions, this study investigates all MMMCs whose motion

morphemes occur immediately adjacent to each other. Through exploring the semantic

factors that determine the order of motion morphemes in MMMCs, this study aims to

provide a unified account of the formation of all these MMMCs.

1.3.4 Sources of Chinese data This dissertation primarily focuses on the morphemes in the motion constructions of

Modern Mandarin Chinese. However, relevant data from earlier stages of Chinese is

occasionally referred to. I follow Sun (2006: xiv) on the periodization of Chinese, as

given in Table 1.1.

Table 1. 1 Major periods of the Chinese language

Periods Years

1. Oracle and Bronze inscriptions Sixteenth century to 771 BCE

2. Old Chinese 771 BCE to 220 CE

3. Middle Chinese 220 CE to 960

4. Early Modern Chinese 960 to 1900

5. Modern Chinese 1900 to present

The Modern Chinese data used in this study come from four major sources. The first

is the corpus of Modern Chinese constructed by the Center for Chinese Linguistics at

Beijing University (hereafter “PKU Corpus”). The corpus is available online at

http://ccl.pku.edu.cn/. Currently (4/2011), it has 307,317,060 characters as updated on

7/20/2009. Most of the data in this study is from this corpus. However, examples from

  21  

Google and Baidu searches are also used when necessary.7 Because internet language can

be nonstandard, the grammaticality of each example used in this dissertation is verified

with native speakers. In addition, four novels were selected for a corpus study to verify

the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy (see Chapter 5). These novels are Tàiyáng Chūshì ‘The

Sun was Born’ (by Chi Li, 1992), Dìqiú de Hóng Piāodài ‘The Earth's Red Flying

Ribbon’ (by Wei Wei, 1988), Kōngzhōng Xiǎojiě ‘Flight Attendant’ (by Wang Shuo

1985), and Tàiyánɡ Zhào zài Sānggānhé-shàng ‘The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River’

(by Ding Ling 1952). The size and diverse style of these novels provide a reasonable

basis for a comprehensive investigation of motion constructions. Detailed information

about these novels is given in Chapter 5. Finally, some examples are provided by the

author as a native speaker of Chinese. Such examples are mainly used for comparison

and tests of the distribution of motion morphemes.

1.4 Major claims

In this dissertation, I make the following claims about Chinese motion morphemes and

motion constructions; these claims will be justified in the following chapters:

a. Chinese motion morphemes, including both free morphemes and bound morphemes,

can be classified into four types based on the type of aspectual scale they lexicalize.

Analyzing the semantics of motion morphemes based on their scale structure provides a

more fine-grained classification of motion morphemes and better accounts for their

syntactic distribution.

b. The four types of motion morphemes form a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy that can be

used to predict the order of motion morphemes in Chinese multi-morpheme motion

constructions.

c. A sequence of motion morphemes conforms to a “More Specific Constraint”, in that

each morpheme is more specific in terms of the scale it specifies than the morpheme it

follows.                                                                                                                          7 Baidu (www.baidu.com) is the largest search engine for the Chinese language in the world.

  22  

1.5 Overview of the dissertation The remainder of the dissertation is organized as follows:

Chapter 2 reviews relevant previous studies, including the ordering and classification

of Chinese motion morphemes. It shows how these studies fall short in providing a fuller

account of Chinese motion constructions.

Chapter 3 analyzes Chinese motion morphemes in light of recent studies of scale

structure. I propose that Chinese motion morphemes can be classified into four types

according to the different scales they lexicalize. A set of independent tests is proposed to

identify the four types each morpheme falls into. In addition, the tests can also identify

the kind of scale lexicalized in bound motion morphemes. A few Chinese motion

morphemes, e.g., dào ‘arrive’, guò ‘cross’, shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’, sometimes

behave differently from other motion morphemes with the same type of scale. These

motion morphemes are also discussed in detail.

Chapter 4 provides a comprehensive description of the types of multi-morpheme

motion constructions in Chinese. A Motion Morpheme Hierarchy is formulated to predict

the order of motion morphemes that occur together in a construction. In addition, this

chapter introduces the motion constructions that the hierarchy does not predict. For

instance, by analyzing the distribution and function of the deictic motion morphemes lái

‘come’ and qù ‘go’, I show that lái and qù are not typical motion morphemes when they

occur after another motion morpheme, which explains why their distribution is unusual in

Chinese.

Chapter 5 presents two corpus studies that verify the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy.

Furthermore, I discuss what the hierarchy tells us about the encoding of motion events in

Chinese, as well as why certain morpheme can or cannot occur together. Spefically, the

order of Chinese motion morphemes conforms to a “More Specific Constraint”: the

morpheme which is more specific about the scale in a motion event must precede the

morpheme with less specific information about the scale.

Chapter 6 summarizes the whole dissertation and reviews issues relevant to future

studies.

  23  

Chapter 2

Previous Studies of the Ordering and

Classification of Chinese Motion

Morphemes

This chapter introduces previous studies investigating the order of motion morphemes in

Chinese multi-morpheme motion constructions (MMMCs). It shows that these studies are

unable to provide a comprehensive account of the various types of MMMCs in Chinese.

Furthermore, this chapter examines previous studies of the classification of Chinese

motion morphemes and demonstrates that these classifications are not sufficiently

consistent or fine-grained to provide a general basis for predicting the order of these

morphemes in MMMCs.

2.1 Previous studies of the order of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs As illustrated in Section 1.1, the relative order of motion morphemes in Chinese multi-

morpheme motion constructions (MMMCs) seems difficult to predict. Two examples are

repeated in (1): the morpheme huí ‘return’ must follow jiànɡ ‘descend’ in (1a), but must

precede dào ‘arrive’ in (1b).

(1) a. 飞机起飞半小时后又降回昆明。

Fēijī qǐfēi bàn -xiǎoshí-hòu yòu jiàng-huí Kūnmíng

plane take.off half-hour-after again descend-return Kunming

‘Half an hour after the plane took off, it descended back to Kunming.’

(http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2010-06-27/115617717194s.shtml)

  24  

b. 航班起飞 1个小时后，居然又回到了虹桥机场。

Hángbān qǐfēi 1-ɡè xiǎoshí hòu,

flight take.off one -CLF hour after

jūrán yòu huí-dào-le Hóngqiáo-jīchǎng

unexpectedly again return-arrive-ASP Hongqiao-airport

‘After the flight took off one hour ago, it unexpectedly returned to

Hongqiao Airport.’ (http://old.jfdaily.com/gb/jfxww/xlbk/ishidai/node10394/

node10397/userobject1ai1507204.html)

In this section, I introduce previous studies of Chinese word order and show that these

studies are unable to account for morpheme order in all types of MMMCs.

2.1.1 Motion constructions as a type of resultative verbal compound Resultative verbal compounds (RVCs) are compounds consisting of two elements in

which the second one “signals some result of the action or process conveyed by the first

element” (Li and Thompson 1981: 54-55). Li and Thompson (1981) argue that there are

four types of RVCs: cause, achievement, direction, and phase, as in (2a-d) respectively.8

(2) a. Cause RVC

我把茶杯打破了

wǒ bǎ chábēi dǎ-pò le

I BA tea.cup hit-break ASP

‘I broke the tea cup by hitting at it.’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 55, (68))

b. Achievement RVC

我把那个字写清楚了

wǒ bǎ nà-ɡè zì xiě-qīngchu le

I BA that -CLF character write-clear ASP

‘I wrote that character clearly.’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 55, (70))

                                                                                                                         8 No clear definition of these four types of RVCs is provided in Li and Thompson (1981).

  25  

c. Direction RVC

她/他跳过那条河了

tā tiào-guò nà-tiáo hé le

s/he jump-cross that-CLF river ASP

‘S/he jumped over the river.’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 60, (88))

d. Phase RVC

她/他的钱用完了

tā-de-qián yòng-wán le

s/he-POSS-money use-finish ASP

‘Her/his money is all used up.’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 56, (74))

Other studies, e.g., Chao 1968, Lu 1977, Xiao and McEnery 2004, Sun 2006, have

different classification of RVCs. However, many studies (Hashimoto 1964, Thompson

1973, Li and Thompson 1981, Ross 1990, Shi 2002, Xiao and McEnery 2004, Xu 2006,

Hsiao 2009, among others, cf. Lu 1977) treat Chinese motion constructions with two or

three immediately adjacent motion morphemes as a type of RVC. (2c) is an example with

two motion morphemes, tiào ‘jump’ and guò ‘cross’. Motion constructions wth three

immediately adjacent motion morphemes end with a deictic motion morpheme lái

‘come’/qù ‘go’, e.g., tiào guò-lái jump cross-come in (3).

(3) 她跳过来了

tā tiào guò-lái le

she jump cross-come ASP

‘She jumped over towards the deictic center.’

In these constructions, the second and the third motion morphemes, e.g., guò-lái cross-

come in (3), are treated by previous studies as the second element in a RVC, and this

sequence is taken to be a complement to the first motion morpheme, e.g., tiào ‘jump’ in

(3). The two-morpheme sequence is called a “compound directional complement” (Chao

  26  

1968: 461, or “复合趋向补语 fùhé qūxiàng bŭyŭ (complex directional complement)” by

Liu 1998: 1).

Li and Thompson (ibid.), among others, point out that directional RVCs differ from

other types of RVCs in that they allow elements other than the potential infixes -de

(positive potential marker) and -bù (negative potential marker) to occur in between the

elements that form the RVCs. As illustrated in (4), the imperfective marker -zhe can be

inserted between tiào ‘jump’ and guò ‘cross’ in (2c), and tiào ‘jump’ and guò-lái cross-

come in (3), whereas it cannot be inserted in between dǎ ‘hit’ and pò ‘break’ in (2a), as

shown in (4c).

(4) a. 她/他跳着过那条河了

tā tiào-zhe guò nà-tiáo hé le (Directional RVC)

s/he jump-IMP cross that -CLF river ASP

‘S/He went over the river jumping.’

b. 她跳着过来了

tā tiào guò-lái le

she jump cross-come ASP

‘She crossed towards the deictic center jumping.’

c. *我把茶杯打着破了

*wǒ bǎ chábēi dǎ-zhe pò le (Cause RVC)

I BA tea.cup hit-IMP break ASP

‘I broke the tea cup by hitting at it.’

Nonetheless, motion constructions such as (2c) and (3) are treated as RVCs in that the

second element in the constructions “signals the direction in which the subject moves as

the result of the displacement [the first morpheme]” (Li and Thompson 1981: 58). In this

sense, guò ‘cross’ in (2c) and guò-lái cross-come in (3), as the second elements of RVCs,

indicate the direction in which the subject is moving as a result of his/her jumping.

  27  

In contrast, Lu (1977) defines RVCs more narrowly, distinguishing directional verbal

compounds (“DVC”) from RVCs. According to him (ibid.: 282), RVCs share three

features: (a) the second verb indicates a result brought about by the action/process

denoted in the first verb; (b) the result does not exist before the action/process takes place;

(c) the object undergoes a change of state after the action/process. Lu’s DVCs are verb-

verb constructions in which the first verb indicates the manner of motion and the second

verb indicates the direction of motion. In other words, the two verbs in a DVC are not

necessarily in a cause-result relationship. In addition, he argues that unlike an RVC in

which the result denoted in the second verb does not exist before the action/process takes

place, the actions denoted in the two verbs in a DVC can co-exist. For instance, according

to Lu, the cat in (5) is moving in some manner, and at the same time, it is moving in some

direction.

(5) 小猫跑来了

xiǎomāo pǎo-lái le

small.cat run-come ASP

‘The small cat ran in a direction toward the speaker.’ (Lu 1977: 291, (36a))

Therefore, Lu points out that the elements in a DVC are in a “manner-direction”

relationship.

However, neither the RVC classification nor Lu’s DVC classification can account for

all possible types of motion constructions in Chinese. According to the RVC

classification, both the second elements in (6), i.e. luò ‘fall’ in (6a) and jìn ‘enter’ in (6b),

are understood as results of the action gǔn ‘roll’:

  28  

(6) a. 滑坡处不断有悬石滚落 , 抢修队无法进入现场

Huápō chù búduàn yǒu xuánshí gŭn-luò, landslide place continuously have hanging.stone roll-fall

qiǎngxiū duì wúfǎ jìn-rù xiànchǎng

repair team unable enter-enter scene

‘There were hanging stones continuously rolling and falling from the place of

landslide, [so] the repair team could not enter the scene.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 那块条石滚进了岩下的水涧

nà-kuài tiáoshí gŭn-jìn-le yán-xià de shuǐ-jiàn

that-CLF square.stone roll-enter-ASP cliff-below REL water.stream

‘That square stone rolled into the stream under the cliff.’ (PKU Corpus)

However, in Chinese, the two “result” elements, luò ‘fall’ and jìn ‘enter’, can occur

together too. In addition, when they occur together, luò must precede jìn, as in (7).

(7) a. 忽然一块石子落进了水里

hūrán yī-kuài shízi luò-jìn-le shuǐ-lǐ

suddenly one.CLF pebble fall-enter-ASP water-inside

‘Suddenly, a pebble fell into the water.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *忽然一块石子进落了水里

*hūrán yī-kuài shízi jìn-luò-le shuǐ-lǐ

suddenly one.CLF pebble enter-fall-ASP water-inside

Nonetheless, treating the combination of luò ‘fall’ and jìn ‘enter’ as a RVC cannot

explain why jìn must be understood as the result of the action encoded in luò, but not vice

versa, given that both luò and jìn can be “results” in (6).

  29  

Similarly, Lu’s classification cannot explain the order of morphemes in (7). Rather

than being in a “manner-direction” relationship proposed by Lu regarding DVCs, luò ‘fall’

and jìn ‘enter’ are in a “direction-drection” relationship because both luò and jìn specify

directions instead of manners of motion (diagnostics for differentiating manner from path

is given in Section 2.2).

Furthermore, Chinese motion constructions can consist of more than two motion

morphemes. For instance, (8a) consists of three motion morphemes, huá ‘slide’, luò ‘fall’,

dào ‘arrive’, whereas (8b) has four motion morphemes zǒu ‘walk’, huí ‘return’, dào

‘arrive’, and lái ‘come’:

(8) a. 皮袄从肩上滑落到地上

píǎo cóng-jiān-shàng huá-luò-dào dì-shàng

leather.coat from-shoulder-on.top.of slide-fall-arrive floor-on.top.of

‘The leather coat slid from the shoulder and fell onto the floor.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 李芒也走回到树下来

lǐmáng yě zǒu-huí-dào shù-xià lái Li.Mang also walk-return-arrive tree-below come

‘Li Mang also walked back under the tree (towards speaker).’ (PKU Corpus)

Neither the RVC nor Lu’s DVC classification is able to explain the relationships and

order of the motion morphemes in these constructions. They are mainly concerned with

constructions with only two verbs (morphemes) or three-morpheme constructions where

the third morpheme is the deictic motion morpheme lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’.

2.1.2 Temporal sequence and word order Some previous studies such as Tai (1987), Y. Li (1993), and Loar (2011) relate the order

of syntactic units to the temporal sequence of the states/actions denoted by these units.

Tai (1987: 378) proposes the Principle of Temporal Sequence: “the relative word order

between two syntactic units is determined by the temporal order of the states which they

  30  

represent in the conceptual world.” For instance, (9) describes a situation in which the

subject arrives at a place by taking a bus.

(9) 他坐公共汽车到这儿

tā zuò gōnggòngqìchē dào zhèr

he sit bus arrive here

‘He came by bus.’ (Tai 1987: 384, (19))

Because the subject took the bus before he arrived at the place, the phrase expressing

riding the bus precedes the phrase ‘arriving here’ (Tai 1987). In contrast, (10) describes a

different situation in which the subject arrives at a place and then takes a bus from the

place, so the phrase expressing arriving at the place precedes the phrase expressing riding

the bus (Tai 1987).

(10) 他到这儿做公共汽车

tā dào zhèr zuò gōnggòngqìchē

he arrive here sit bus

‘He came here to ride in a bus.’ (Tai 1987: 384, (20))

Tai (1987: 383) claims that the Principle of Temporal Sequence is a general syntactic

constraint in Chinese and is “independently motivated by the word order phenomena in

conjoined sentences and predicates, serial verb phrases, and verb compounds in Chinese.”

In a similar sense, Y. Li (1993) proposes a “Temporal Iconicity Condition” that the

linear order of verbal constituents must obey:

(11) Temporal Iconicity Condition: Let A and B be two subevents (activities,

states, changes of states, etc.) and let A’ and B’ be two verbal

constituents denoting A and B, respectively; then the temporal relation

between A and B must be directly reflected in the surface linear order of

A’ and B’ unless A’ is an argument of B’ or vice versa. (Li 1993: 499)

  31  

For instance, both lèi-kū tired-weep and kū-lèi weep-tired are understood as

resultative compounds. However, Y. Li points out that the relative order of kū

‘weep’ and lèi ‘tired’ is determined by the temporal order in the real world: lèi-kū

tired-weep describes a situation in which the subject was tired and then wept

because of being tired, whereas kū-lèi weep-tired describes a situation where the

subject wept and then s/he became tired because of weeping, as illustrated in (12):

(12) a. Yōuyōu lèi-kū le

Youyou tired-weep ASP

‘Youyou was so tired she wept.’ (Y. Li 1993: 499, (35))

b. Yōuyōu kū-lèi le

Youyou tired-weep ASP

‘Youyou wept for so long that she became tired.’

(Y. Li 1993: 499, (36))

Both Tai’s Principle of Temporal Sequence and Y. Li’s Temporal Iconicity

Condition assume that in a Chinese motion construction, the motion morpheme

that denotes temporally later motion follows the morpheme that denotes

temporally earlier motion. As shown in (12), it is true that when there are

temporal differences between two states/actions, the constituent denoting the

earlier state/action must occur first in Modern Mandarin Chinese.

However, in a Chinese motion construction, two motion morphemes may

denote motion occurring at the same time. For instance, the motion denoted by

shànɡ ‘ascend’ in (13) does not necessarily occur temporally later than the action

denoted by pǎo ‘run’, especially if the figure was standing at the lower end of the

stairs before he started running up them.

  32  

(13) 他跑上楼梯

tā pǎo-shàng lóutī

he run-ascend stairs

‘He went up the stairs running.’

However, even though the actions denoted by pǎo ‘run’ and shànɡ ‘ascend’ can

occur simultaneously, only pǎo can precede shànɡ, but not vice versa, as in (14).

(14) *他上跑楼梯

tā shàng-pǎo lóutī

he ascend-run stairs

(13)-(14) indicate that the temporal iconicity account is unable to explain why one

morpheme must occur before the other when the two morphemes denote actions that

occur at the same time.

2.1.3 Summary

This section showed that treating Chinese MMMCs as RVCs or DVCs cannot provide an

explanation for the various positions that motion morphemes may occur in MMMCs,

especially those consisting of more than two morphemes. In addition, the temporal

iconicity proposal also is unable to account for the order of motion morphemes that

specify motion occurring at the same time.

In order to provide a better explanation of the order of motion morphemes, we need to

examine the meanings of motion morphemes and their distribution in MMMCs. In the

next section, I introduce previous studies that classify Chinese motion morphemes based

on their meanings.

  33  

2.2 The classification of Chinese motion morphemes in previous studies

Most previous studies classify motion morphemes in light of Talmy’s (1975, 1985, 2000,

2009) influential work.9 According to Talmy, manner and path are two important

components of a motion event (see Chapter 1); according to which component is encoded

in their meanings, motion morphemes can be classified into two types. One type is

manner-of-motion morphemes that specify how a motion event is carried out, e.g., run,

walk, fly, float; the other type is path morphemes that specify in which direction a motion

event is carried out, e.g., return, ascend, descend, enter, exit (Talmy 1975).10

Chinese motion morphemes too, may be classified into these two types (Talmy 1985,

2000, 2009, Chu 2004, Lamarre 2007, 2008, Chen and Guo 2009, among others). For

instance, zǒu ‘walk’, pǎo ‘run’, fēi ‘fly’ are manner-of-motion morphemes, whereas huí

‘return’, shàng ‘ascend’, and jìn ‘enter’ are path morphemes (Chen and Guo 2009).

However, there are two problems with the two-way classification of motion

morphemes into manner-of-motion and path morphemes. First, no systematic criteria or

tests are presented in previous work to identify which type a particular Chinese motion

morpheme falls into. Instead, the morphemes are usually classified based on intuition,

and thus a motion morpheme is sometimes classified in different ways by different

studies. Second, the two-way classification is not fine-grained enough to account for the

distribution of motion morphemes in Chinese motion constructions. In this section, I

mainly focus on the first problem, and come back to the second one in Section 2.2.3.

In many previous studies, Chinese motion morphemes are classified primarily via an

intuition-based semantic grouping. For instance, according to Hsiao (2009: 53), path-of-

motion morphemes are those lexicalizing both motion and direction, so she identifies

“any non-path information as MANNER information”. Nonetheless, no systematic tests

have been proposed in previous work to determine which type a motion morpheme falls

into. Therefore, while there is no disagreement in identifying prototypical manner-of-

                                                                                                                         9 There are also studies that classify Chinese motion verbs in other ways. For instance, Cui (2005: 1-2) identifies more than 100 motion morphemes in the text shì shuō xīn yŭ (Middle Chinese, 420-581 CE) and classifies them into seven types according to their specific meanings, e.g., COME/GO type (lái ‘come’, guī ‘return’, qù ‘go’), ASCEND/DESCEND type (shàng ‘ascend’, shēng ‘ascend’, tiào ‘jump’, dēng ‘climb’), and EXIT/ENTER type (chū ‘exit’, chūyóu ‘travel out’, jìn ‘enter’, rù ‘enter’). 10  Path morphemes are equivalent to the “inherently directed motion verbs” in Levin (1995).  

  34  

motion morphemes (e.g., liú ‘flow’, fēi ‘fly’) and path morphemes (e.g., jìn ‘enter’, huí

‘return’), some less prototypical motion morphemes are classified in different ways by

different linguists. For example, diào ‘fall’ and zuān ‘squeeze/get into’ are manner-of-

motion morphemes according to Chen and Guo (2009), but path morphemes according to

Lamarre (2008).

Furthermore, some motion morphemes are said to specify both manner and direction

information. For instance, Ma (2008: 29) argues that motion morphemes such as zǒu

‘run’, jiàng ‘descend’, táo ‘escape’, shēng ‘ascend’, zhuì ‘fall’, luò ‘fall’, dēng ‘climb’ in

Old Chinese (Xiānqín, 771BCE – 220CE) have both manner and path meanings because

they can take ground NPs directly as complements and describe directed motion events

with respect to these grounds. Hsiao (2009: 91, 65) also argues that in Modern Chinese

there are motion morphemes with both manner and path meanings. For example, she

claims that chén ‘sink’ not only expresses a downward direction, but also the medium of

motion (i.e. water), whereas diào ‘fall’ expresses not only a downward direction, but also

the force of motion (i.e. the force of gravity which causes the motion).

Therefore, systematic and reliable tests are necessary to identify what basic meaning

is encoded in a motion morpheme. In addition, motion morphemes that are claimed to

have both manner and path meanings need to be examined more carefully so that we can

determine whether they indeed encode both manner and path, and if not, which element

of meaning is the one encoded.

Recent studies, e.g., Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), Levin and Rappaport Hovav

(to appear), among others, address these problems in general. Levin and Rappaport

Hovav (to appear: 1, online version) use the notion “lexicalized meaning” for the

meaning that is “strictly contributed by the verb” (ibid.) and kept constant in all uses of

the verb. They distinguish lexicalized meaning from “other facets of meaning that may be

derived either by the choice of argument or from particular or prototypical uses of that

verb in context” (ibid.: 1). For instance, they understand English open as a verb which

lexicalizes the meaning “removing an obstruction to allow access to a formerly

inaccessible space”; thus, even if open is used in different contexts, e.g., to remove the lid

of a jar in open a jar or to move a door to unblock an aperture in open a door, the basic

meaning of open remains the same (ibid.: 1).

  35  

Furthermore, Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1991, 2006) and Rappaport Hovav and

Levin (2010) propose that there is “manner/result complementarity”, according to which,

a verb either lexicalizes a manner or a result meaning, but cannot have both manner and

result at one time.11 For example, Rappaport Hovav and Levin point out that although the

verb wipe is usually associated with an intention to clean the surface that is wiped, the

verb does not lexicalize a result meaning (clean) because a wiping event is not

necessarily associated with a result of being clean, as in (15).

(15) I wiped the table, but none of the fingerprints came off.

(Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010: 22, (46))

Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010, among others) identify path verbs as result verbs.

According to them, motion verbs conform to a constraint of manner/path

complementarity. Motion verbs may have manner and path meanings, but they cannot

have both meanings at one time.

The notions of scalar and nonscalar change are proposed by Rappaport Hovav and

Levin (2010) to identify the manner or path meaning lexicalized in a verb. These notions

will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. In the remainder of this section, I first

introduce a few tests to show that manner and path meanings can be identified via their

syntactic distribution rather than via intuition-based grouping by linguists. Then, I discuss

motion verbs that are claimed to lexicalize both manner and path in previous work.

2.2.1 Distinguishing manner from path

Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) and Rappaport Hovav (2008) observe that a path

morpheme differs from a manner-of-motion morpheme in at least two respects.

First, a path morpheme does not lexicalize information about manner of motion, and

thus the motion along that kind of path can be realized in different manners. Therefore, a

given path verb can potentially be modified by phrases expressing different manners of

motion. For example, huí ‘return’ describes a returning event, but does not specify in

                                                                                                                         11 Discussion of the motivation for “manner/result complementarity” can be found in Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010).

  36  

what kind of manner the event took place, so it can be modified by adverbial phrases

expressing manners, e.g., jumping and rolling, as illustrated in (16):

(16) 敌人跳/滚着回关外

dírén tiào/gǔn-zhe huí guānwài

enemy jump/roll-IMP return pass.outside

‘The enemy returned to the outside of the pass jumping/rolling.’

In contrast, if a motion morpheme specifies manner of motion, then the event denoted

by the given morpheme cannot be carried out using a different manner of motion; in other

words, the morpheme should not be modifiable by adverbials expressing other manners

of motion. For example, pǎo ‘run’, which specifies motion in the manner of running,

cannot be modified by adverbials expressing jumping or rolling, as illustrated in (17).

(17) *他跳/滚着跑

*tā tiào/gǔn-zhe pǎo he jump/roll-IMP run

# ‘He ran by jumping/rolling.’ (intended meaning)

Second, a manner-of-motion morpheme can take as a complement a phrase that

denotes a result state brought about by the motion (Rappaport Hovav 2008:22, cf. Filip

2004, 2008, Goldberg 1991, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995, Simpson 1983, Tenny

1994). For instance, ‘being tired’, ‘losing shoes’, and ‘arriving at school’ can be

understood as results of a running event, so the phrases expressing these results can

follow the manner-of-motion morpheme pǎo ‘run’, as illustrated in (18).

(18) a. 他跑累了

tā pǎo-lèi le

he run-tired ASP

‘He was tired as a result of running.’

  37  

b. 他跑丢鞋子了

tā pǎo-diū xiézi le

he run-lose shoe ASP

‘He lost his shoes as a result of running.’

c. 他跑到学校了

tā pǎo-dào xuéxiào le

he run-arrive school ASP

‘He ran to the school.’

(18) shows that both result phrases that are related (18c) and not related (18a-b) to the

path of motion can co-occur with a manner-of-motion morpheme.

In contrast, a path morpheme can be followed only by result phrases that are related

to the path of motion lexicalized by the verb; usually these are phrases that specify an

endpoint to the path (Tenny 1994, Gruber 1965). For example, in (19), although ‘being

tired’ and ‘losing weapons’ can happen in an event of returning to the outside of the pass,

they are irrelevant to the path of the event, so the phrases expressing being tired and

losing weapons are not allowed to follow huí ‘return’; in contrast, arriving at the outside

of a pass reinforces the figure’s returning to the endpoint of the path, so (19c) is

acceptable.

(19) a. *敌人回关外回累了

*dírén huí guānwài huí-lèi le

enemy return pass.outside return-be.tired ASP

#‘The enemy were tired as a result of returning to the outside of the pass.’

(intended meaning)

  38  

b. *敌人回关外回丢了武器

*dírén huí guānwài huí-diū-le wǔqì

enemy return pass.outside return-lose-ASP weapon

‘The enemy lost their weapon as a result of returning to the outside of the

pass.’ (intended meaning)

c. 敌人回到了关外

dírén huí-dào-le guānwài

enemy return-arrive-ASP pass.outside

‘The enemy returned to the outside of the pass.’

With the two tests above, i.e. whether a motion morpheme is compatible with a

variety of manner of motions or result phrases, we can determine what kind of meaning,

manner or path, is lexicalized in the “controversial” motion morphemes that have been

classified in different ways in previous work. For instance, as mentioned above, diào ‘fall’

is a manner-of-motion morpheme according to Chen and Guo (2009), but a path

morpheme according to Lamarre (2008). If we apply these two tests, we can determine

that diào ‘fall’ is a path morpheme.

First, diào ‘fall’ can be modified by phrases expressing different manners of motion.

As illustrated in (20), a falling event can take place in a floating (20a) or rolling (20b)

manner.

(20) a. 它才随风飘着掉了下来

tā cái suí fēng piāo-zhe diào-le xià-lái

it only.then with wind float-IMP fall-ASP descend-come

‘Only then did it [the airship] fall down towards the deictic center in a floating

manner in the wind. ’ (http://news.xinhuanet.com/video/2010-

07/20/c_12352291.htm

  39  

b. 两辆车翻滚着掉到了路边大沟里

liǎng-liàng chē fāngǔn-zhe diào-dào-le lù-biān dàgōu-lǐ

two-CLF car roll-IPM fall-arrive-ASP road-side big.channel-inside

‘The two cars fell into the big channel besides the road in a rolling manner.’

(http://www.qidian.com/BookReader/27684,716328.aspx)

Second, diào ‘fall’ can only be followed by phrases related to the path of falling. For

instance, diào ‘fall’ is followed by a result phrase in both (20a) and (20b), and both

phrases specify the endpoint of the path of the event: the figure is moving ‘down toward

the deictic center’ in (20a) and ‘into the big channel’ in (20b). Apart from the phrases

related to the path of motion, phrases expressing other types of results are not allowed to

follow diào ‘fall’. For instance, when a truck falls down off a bridge, its engine may be

broken and it may lose its wheels, but these results are not related to the path of falling,

so the phrases expressing these results are not compatible with the verb diào ‘fall’, as

illustrated in (21).

(21) a. *货车掉坏发动机了

*huòchē diào-huài fādòngjī le

truck fall-be.broken engine ASP

# ‘The engine of the truck was broken as a result of the falling of the truck.’

(intended meaning)

b. *货车掉丢轮子了

*huòchē diào-diū lúnzi le

truck fall-lose wheel ASP

# ‘The truck lost its wheels as a result of its falling.’ (intended meaning)

To conclude, tests of diào’s compatibility with a variety of manners and result phrases

show that diào is a path morpheme: diào can be modified by different manners of motion

and it can only take result phrases that are related to the path it lexicalizes. With similar

  40  

tests, we can determine the classification of all other controversial motion morphemes in

Chinese.

2.2.2 Motion morphemes lexicalizing both manner and path As mentioned earlier in Section 2.2, Ma (2008) and Hsiao (2009) claim that some

Chinese motion morphemes may lexicalize both information about manner and path. In

addition to Chinese, some other languages are also claimed to have such motion

morphemes. According to Zlatev and Yangklang (2004), besides manner-of-motion verbs

and path verbs, Thai has a type of motion verb which lexicalizes both manner and path,

e.g., tok1 ‘fall’, nii4 ‘escape’, phloo1 ‘pop out’, and laj2 ‘chase’. For instance, laj2 ‘chase’

expresses motion in the direction of a moving object, and also “manner-related

information (purposive action, high speed, etc.)” (ibid: 167). In addition, Slobin (2004:

230) points out that Turkish tırmanmak ‘climb’, as well as the equivalent ‘climb’ verbs in

other verb-framed languages, lexicalizes both manner and path because it is used only for

“upward motion in a grasping manner”. In English too, chase and escape are treated as

verbs specifying both manner and path in Özçalışkan and Slobin (2000).

Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), however, propose manner/path complementarity:

a verb usually lexicalizes only one meaning, manner or path, in each of its uses.

Rappaport Hovav and Levin do recognize the existence of polysemy, i.e. a verb that has

both a manner meaning and a path meaning, but they claim that in each use of such a

polysemic verb, only one meaning element, manner or path, is lexicalized in the verb,

whereas the other meaning drops out.

One example that Levin and Rappaport Hovav (to appear) analyze in detail is the

English verb climb. According to them, climb has been recognized as a verb with both

manner and path meanings in some previous studies (e.g., Fillmore 1982:32, Jackendoff

1985, cf. Kiparsky 1997:490): it expresses a clambering manner as well as an upward

direction. (22) is an example in which climb seems to have both the manner and direction

meanings (Levin and Rappaport Hovav to appear).

(22) Kelly climbed the tree. (Levin and Rappaport Hovav to appear: 8, (15))

  41  

However, Levin and Rappaport Hovav argue that the basic meaning of climb is

manner of motion. Furthermore, citing Geuder and Weisgerber (2008), they claim that

the manner lexicalized in climb is not clambering, but “force exertion against gravity”

(Levin and Rappaport Hovav to appear: 10). According to them, in a climbing event,

animate climers with limbs often clamber, whereas other climbers, e.g., animals without

limbs such as snails or inanimate objects such as trains and planes, may climb in other

ways, but all of them are exerting a force against gravity. Therefore, climb is understood

to lexicalize manner in all sentences in (23), even if not all moving objects clamber while

they climb (ibid.):

(23) a. John climbed down the mountain. (ibid.: 9, (16a))

b. Kelly climbed through the gap in the hedge. (ibid.: 9, (17a))

c. The plane/elevator climbed. (ibid.: 9, (18a))

Although the sentence in (22) does not contain explicitly expressed information about

direction, the climbing event is understood in an upward direction. Levin and Rappaport

Hovav argue that in this case, climb still only lexicalizes manner meaning: the upward

direction comes from the way “an agent typically interacts with it [tree]” because trees

are “perceived as projecting upward from the ground, so they are typically encountered as

something to ascend” (ibid.: 14). Furthermore, they point out that climb is not always

associated with an upward direction when it takes a ground NP directly as its object; as

illustrated in (24), the figure is understood to climb in a downward direction although

there is no explicitly expressed information about direction:

(24) ‘Bring the Governor’s reply straight back,’ shouted Master Mace as Mungo

climbed the rope ladder into the ship’s rowing boat. (J. Riordan and B.K.

McCalla, Rebel Cargo, Frances Lincoln, London, 2007, p. 149;

books.google.com/books?isbn=1845077741; cited from Levin and Rappaport

Hovav to appear: 13, (28))

  42  

Therefore, Levin and Rappaport Hovav argue that the direction associated with the

climbing event is understood from the context in which climb is used rather than from the

meaning that climb lexicalizes.

However, Levin and Rappaport Hovav (ibid.: 16) also observe cases in which climb

lexicalizes an upward direction, e.g., when the subjects are “abstract themes”

(temperature and prices). They point out that in these cases, climb indeed lexicalizes an

upward direction, but at the same time, the manner meaning of climb is no longer

available; in this sense, climb behaves like a path verb such as rise, as in (25).

(25) The prices/temperature climbed/rose.

(Levin and Rappaport Hovav to appear: 16, (37))

Levin and Rappaport Hovav conclude that the basic meaning of climb is the manner,

but climb may also have a direction meaning, and the two meanings show manner/path

complementarity in that only one of the meanings is available in each use of climb.

For these reasons, we have to carefully analyze the meaning lexicalized in a motion

verb and distinguish it from meanings that are understood from context. In the reminder

of this section, I take chén ‘sink’ as an example and show that the basic meaning of chén

‘sink’ is direction rather than direction and manner (Section 2.2.2.1). In addition, I review

previous studies of Chinese manner-of-motion verbs that are claimed to have directional

meanings.

2.2.2.1 A case study: chén ‘sink’

Chén ‘sink’ and its synonyms are proposed to be verbs lexicalizing both manner and

direction by Hsiao (2009) because these verbs lexicalize downward motion (path) in a

liquid-like medium (manner). For instance, (26) describes an event of sinking in water.

(26) 石头掉进水里, 很快沉入水底

shítou diào-jìn shuǐ-lǐ, hěn kuài chén-rù shuǐ-dǐ

stone fall-enter water-inside very quickly sink-enter water-bottom

‘The stone fell into the water; it sank into the bottom very quickly.’ (PKU Corpus)

  43  

However, I argue that the basic meaning of chén ‘sink’ is motion downward in the

direction of gravity, because chén ‘sink’ is associated with a downward direction in all of

its uses, but it is not necessarily used to describe motion in a liquid medium. For instance,

both (27a) and (27b) describe downward motion, but neither motion event takes place in

liquid.

(27) a. 心宿二在黄昏后的星空中逐渐西沉

xīnsùèr zài huánghūn-hòu de xīngkōng-zhōng zhújiàn xī chén Antares at dusk-after REL star.sky-inside gradually west sink

‘Antares gradually sank towards the west in the starry sky in the dusk.’

(PKU Corpus)

b. 从顶棚进来的新鲜空气都会沉到鸽舍下面

cóng dǐngpéng jìn-lái de xīnxiān kōngqì doū huì

from top enter-come REL fresh air all will

chén-dào gēshè-xiàmian

sink-arrive pigeon.coop-bottom

‘All fresh air coming in from the top will sink to the bottom of the pigeon

coop.’ (http://www.rpw.com.cn/article-5320.aspx)

Furthermore, the distribution of chén ‘sink’ also shows that it behaves like a path

morpheme instead of a manner-of-motion morpheme. As mentioned above, a manner-of-

motion morpheme is compatible with all kinds of results that could be brought about by

the event denoted by the morpheme; in contrast, a path morpheme only allows result

phrases that are related to the path of the event, and a path morpheme can occur with

adverbials expressing different manners of motion. As illustrated in (28), chén ‘sink’

allows a phrase that specifies the endpoint of the path of sinking; but as in (29), it does

not allow result phrases irrelevant to its path: although a fly may die in the process of

sinking into water, its death is not related to the path of sinking.

  44  

(28) 船上 600多人和金银珠宝，全部沉到海底

chuán-shàng 600 duō rén hé jīnyínzhūbǎo, quánbù chén-dào hái-dǐ

boat-on.top.of 600 many people and treasures all sink-arrive sea-bottom

‘All the 600 odd people and treasures on the boat sank into the bottom of the

sea.’ (PKU Corpus)

(29) *苍蝇沉死了

cāngying chén-sǐ le

fly sink-die ASP

# ‘The fly died as a result of sinking.’ (intended meaning)

In addition, chén ‘sink’ can co-occur with different manner morphemes. Because the

figure in a sinking event usually has no control over its motion (i.e. non-agentive motion),

chén ‘sink’ does not co-occur with manner-of-motion morphemes denoting self-agentive

motion (i.e. the figure has control over its motion, e.g., yóu ‘swim’, fēi ‘fly’). However,

chén ‘sink’ is found following a variety of transitive manner morphemes, which describe

a motion event in which the figure is caused to move in a downward direction. For

example, the ferry and cargo ship are caused to sink in (30a-b), in which chén ‘sink’

follows the transitive manner morphemes zhuàng ‘bump’ and jī ‘hit’.

(30) a. 运沙船撞沉渡轮

yùnshāchuán zhuàng-chén dùlún

sand.carrier bump-sink ferry

‘A sand carrier bumped a ferry, causing it to sink.’

(http://ent.163.com/07/1124/11/3U2FH8KB00032DGD.html)

  45  

b. 俄军舰击沉中国货船

é jūnjiàn jī-chén Zhōngguó huòchuán

Russian warship hit-sink Chinese cargo.ship

‘A Russian warship hit a Chinese cargo ship, causing it to sink.’

(http://news.163.com/09/0218/15/52EOM6ER0001121M.html)

The compatibility of chén ‘sink’ with a variety of manner morphemes indicates that chén

‘sink’ does not lexicalize a manner meaning.

Therefore, although chén ‘sink’ is frequently associated with downward motion in a

liquid medium, given its distribution and the fact that the downward direction can be

found in all of its uses, chén ‘sink’ is better treated as a path morpheme rather than as a

manner-of-motion morpheme or a morpheme lexicalizing both manner and direction.

2.2.2.2 Manner-of-motion morphemes claimed to have directional meanings

As mentioned above, Ma (2008) claims that in earlier stages of Chinese, some motion

verbs lexicalize both manner and path because they can take a locative NP directly as an

object complement and they describe a directed motion event. For instance, bēn ‘rush’

and táo ‘escape’ in (31) are immediately followed by the locative NPs shān ‘mountain’

and Chǔ ‘Chu State’, respectively.

(31) a. 白公奔山而缢

Báigōng bēn shān ér yì

lord.Bai rush mountain then hang.oneslef

‘Lord Bai rushed to the mountain and then hanged himself.’

(Old Chinese, Zuǒzhuàn, cited in Ma 2008: 29)

b. 伍子胥逃楚而之吴

Wǔ.zǐxū táo Chǔ ér zhī Wú

Wu.Zixu escape Chu.state then arrive Wu.State

‘Wu Zixu escaped from the State of Chu and then arrived at The State of Wu.’

(Old Chinese, Zhànguócè, cited in Ma 2008: 29)

  46  

In addition, although there is no explicit morpheme specifying the direction of motion,

both the sentences in (31) have a direction of interpretation: to the mountain in (31a) and

to the State of Chu in (31b). Therefore, Ma claims that bēn ‘rush’ and táo ‘escape’ are

morphemes lexicalizing both manner and path meanings, so the directed motion

interpretation of these two sentences comes from bēn ‘rush’ and táo ‘escape’.

However, a more careful analysis is necessary to identify whether these motion verbs

indeed lexicalize both manner and path meanings. A related issue is whether the ground

NP is an argument of these verbs or an argument of directional prepositions that are

omitted in the texts. In other words, it may not be that these motion verbs take a ground

NP as their object and describe directed motion with respect to the locations, but rather,

there are hidden directional prepositions that introduce the ground NPs and contribute to

the direction interpretation. According to Lin (to appear), the directional preposition 于/

於 yú in Old and Middle Chinese is often used or omitted for different reasons. And there

are instances in which a ground NP is introduced by the preposition yú before it follows

verbs like bēn ‘rush’ and táo ‘escape’. For example, the two sentences in (32) are from

texts composed in the same period as the sentences in (31), but both the ground NPs in

(32) following bēn ‘rush’ and táo ‘escape’ are introduced by the preposition yú instead of

the verbs, cf. (31).

(32) a. 昭公师败，奔於齐，齐处昭公乾侯

Zhāogōng shī bài, bēn yú Qí, Qí chù Zhāogōng Qiánhóu

Zhao.Lord army fail rush to Qi Qi dispose Zhao.lord Qianhou

‘Lord Zhao’s army failed [in the battle]; he rushed to the State of Qi; [the king

of] Qi placed Lord Zhao in Qianhou.’ (Old Chinese, Shǐjì)

  47  

b. 且举大事者，孰不逃？桓公之难，管仲逃於鲁

qiě jŭ dà shì zhě, shú bù táo?

PART do big thing person who NEG escape

Huángōng zhī nàn, Guǎnzhòng táo yú lŭ

Huan.lord POSS difficulty Guanzhong escape to Lu

‘[As to] people who are conducting great undertakings, who has not run away?

When Lord Huan was in a difficulty, Guanzhong escaped to the State of Lu.’

(Old Chinese, Zhànɡuócè)

Therefore, it is possible that the directional interpretation in (31) comes from the hidden

preposition yú instead of the motion verbs themselves; it may not be lexicalized by the

verbs as claimed by Ma (2008). In other words, motion verbs in Old and Middle Chinese

may well conform to manner/path complementarity. Due to the scope of this dissertation,

I leave the discussion of the motion verbs in earlier stages of Chinese for future study,

and introduce studies of comparable motion verbs in Modern Chinese and other

languages.

In Modern Chinese as well, there are examples in which a manner-of-motion

morpheme is followed by a locative NP directly (Tham 2011). (33) is an example given

by Tham (2011), in which the manner-of-motion morpheme fēi ‘fly’ is followed

immediately by a locative NP, and the sentence has a directional meaning without a

directional morpheme.

(33) …水边的麻雀全飞树上了

…shuǐ-biān de máquè quán fēi shù-shàng le

water-side REL sparrow all fly tree-upon ASP

‘The sparrows by the water all flew onto the tree.’ (adapted from

zerentian668899.bokee.com/viewdiary.34759278.html, cited from Tham 2011: 3,

(9))

  48  

In addition, Tham observes that some Chinese manner-of-motion verbs can be followed

by a locative PP with a directional interpretation. For instance, zài ‘at, in’ is a locative

preposition, but it has a directional interpretation of ‘onto’ when it occurs after the

manner-of-motion verb fēi ‘fly’ in (34):

(34) 乌鸦又叫了一声…飞在墙上

wūyā yòu jiào-le yìshēng… fēi zài qiáng-shàng

crow again call-ASP one.sound… fly be.at wall-upon

‘The crow cawed once more, and flew onto the wall.’

(PKU Corpus, cited from Tham 2011: 3, (8a))

Besides Chinese, comparable phenomena are found in other languages. Levin et al. (2009)

discuss manner-of-motion verbs that are claimed to have both manner and directional

meanings in languages such as English, French, Italian, and Spanish. They (as well as

Tham 2011, cf. Nikitina 2008) argue that the directional understanding does not arise

from the meanings of the manner-of-motion verbs, but from contextual-pragmatic factors,

e.g., aspect, ground/path properties, and the nature of the manner (Levin et al. 2009: 7).

Levin et al. (2009) and Tham (2011), among others, point out that not all manner-of-

motion verbs can occur equally well with locative PPs with a directional interpretation.

For instance, according to Levin et al. (ibid: 15), many previous studies have observed

that the verbs most likely to have directional interpretation are those involving a figure’s

change of location in some direction, e.g., running and walking, whereas verbs that

typically do not allow a directional interpretation are those that do not involve a figure’s

displacement, e.g., dancing and spinning. Based on a corpus study of Chinese motion

verbs, Tham (2011: 1) observes in more detail that Chinese verbs describing short or

punctual motion as well as verbs with less specific information about manner or path tend

to show a directional interpretation without a directional morpheme.

However, Levin et al. argue that manner-of-motion verbs cannot be divided into two

types based on whether they can or cannot co-occur with locative prepositions with a

directional interpretation, because such a division cannot explain why sometimes, a verb

  49  

that is typically not allowed to have a directional interpretation with a locative

preposition co-occurs with such a preposition. Instead, they propose an account that can

provide a unified explanation based in pragmatics. For instance, they argue that wander

usually denotes aimless motion, but given an appropriate context, it can occur with

locative in with a directional interpretation (ibid.: 16):

(35) . . . my 2 year old daughter had wandered in the room drawn in by the sounds of

battle. (www.audioholics.com/reviews/receivers/pioneer-vsx-818v/listening-

conclusion, cited from Levin et al. 2009: 16, (60))

Therefore, Levin et al. conclude that although some manner-of-motion verbs can be

found in motion constructions with directional interpretations despite the absence of

directional morphemes, the directional meanings do not come from the verbs.

In this dissertation, I follow Levin et al. and others in assuming that the meanings of

Chinese motion morphemes conform to manner/path complementarity, and carefully

analyze the meaning lexicalized in these morphemes and distinguish it from the meanings

that are associated with these morphemes but actually come from their context of use.

2.2.3 Summary

This section examined previous work on the classification of motion morphemes.

Following previous work by Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) and others, I show that

Chinese motion morphemes usually conform to manner/path complementarity, and I

introduce tests that can distinguish manner-of-motion and path morphemes in a consistent

manner.

As illustrated in some examples above, e.g., (5), Talmy’s two-way classification of

motion morphemes into manner and path can be used to predict the order of morphemes

in MMMCs consisting of a manner-of-motion and a path morpheme. For instance, in (5),

repeated as (36), the manner-of-motion morpheme gǔn ‘roll’ must precede the path

morphemes luò ‘fall’ and jìn ‘enter’.

  50  

(36) a. 滑坡处不断有悬石滚落

Huápō chù búduàn yǒu xuánshí gŭn-luò, landslide place continuously have hanging.stone roll-fall

‘There were hanging stones continuously rolling and falling from the place of

landslide.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 那块条石滚进了岩下的水涧

nà-kuài tiáoshí gŭn-jìn-le yán-xià de shuǐ-jiàn

that-CLF square.stone roll-enter-ASP cliff-below REL water.stream

‘That square stone rolled into the stream under the cliff.’ (PKU Corpus)

However, the classification is not sufficiently fine-grained to account for all types of

motion morphemes. For instance, it cannot explain why a particular path morpheme (luò

‘fall’) must precede the other path morpheme (jìn ‘enter’), as in (6), repeated as (37).

(37) a. 忽然一块石子落进了水里

hūrán yī-kuài shízi luò-jìn-le shuǐ-lǐ

suddenly one.CLF pebble fall-enter-ASP water-inside

‘Suddenly, a pebble fell into the water.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *忽然一块石子进落了水里

*hūrán yī-kuài shízi jìn-luò-le shuǐ-lǐ

suddenly one.CLF pebble enter-fall-ASP water-inside

Therefore, a further classification of path morphemes is necessary in order to explain the

relative order between path morphemes as in (37a). Chapter 3 classifies Chinese path

morphemes into more subtypes based on the scale structure these morphemes lexicalize.

  51  

Chapter 3

Scale Structure and the Classification of

Chinese Motion Morphemes

This chapter analyzes the semantics of Chinese motion morphemes in light of recent

work on “scale structure” (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010, Rappaport Hovav 2008,

Kennedy and McNally 2005, among others). Specifically, instead of the traditional two-

way classification of motion morphemes into manner-of-motion morphemes and path

morphemes (Talmy 1975, 1985, 2000, see Chapter 2), Chinese path morphemes can be

further classified into three subtypes based on the scale that they lexicalize.

Section 3.1 introduces the notion of scale, primarily following the work of Rappaport

Hovav (2008) and Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010). In Section 3.2, I show that

Chinese motion morphemes can be classified into four types based on the scale structure

associated with the morphemes. In addition, a set of independent tests is introduced to

determine which type an individual motion morpheme falls into. Section 3.3 discusses

several “special” Chinese motion morphemes, including dào ‘arrive’, guò ‘cross’, shàng

‘ascend’, and xià ‘descend’. Although each of these morphemes lexicalizes a scale,

sometimes they do not behave exactly like other morphemes lexicalizing the same type of

scale. Section 3.4 summarizes the four types of Chinese motion morphemes that can be

used as independent verbs. Chinese also has motion morphemes that are no longer used

as independent verbs, i.e. bound motion morphemes. Section 3.5 introduces these bound

motion morphemes and shows that the scale structure of these morphemes can be

identified by the tests proposed in Section 3.2.

Chinese has both independent motion verbs and bound motion morphemes. To keep

the terms consistent, both will be refered to as “motion morphemes”. The term “verbs”

  52  

are also used when necessary, e.g., when English verbs are mentioned. Sections 3.2-3.4

primarily focus on the independent verbs in Chinese, whereas the bound motion

morphemes are introduced in Section 3.5.

3.1 The notion of scale structure

According to Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010: 28), a scale is “a set of degrees—points

or intervals indicating measurement values—on a particular dimension (e.g., height,

temperature, cost), with an associated ordering relation” (cf. Kennedy 2001, Kennedy and

McNally 2005, Kennedy and Levin 2008). Previous studies, e.g., Rappaport Hovav 2008,

Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010, among others, recognized three types of scales

corresponding to three types of verbs: property scales associated with change of state

verbs (e.g., widen, lengthen, cool); path (spatial) scales associated with path verbs (e.g.,

ascend, descend, come); and extent (volume, area) scales associated with incremental

theme verbs (e.g., eat, read, build). In this section, I mainly introduce the notion of

spatial scale which I apply to the analysis of Chinese motion morphemes, following

Rappaport Hovav (2008) and Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010).

According to Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), in the domain of motion events, a

scale is understood on the dimension of distance, that is, the distance of the figure with

respect to the ground. In addition, a scale is composed of points which are “a set of

contiguous locations which together form a path” and ordered in the direction of

movement (ibid: 29). Therefore, the figure’s location on the path represents a value for its

distance with respect to the ground; when the figure’s location changes along the path,

the value changes too, so the change is understood as a scalar change and the amount of

change is measurable based on the values at the start and end of the event (Rappaport

Hovav and Levin 2010). One example that Rappaport Hovav and Levin provide is the

path verb ascend: ascend lexicalizes a scale on the dimension of spatial distance, and the

points in its scale are ordered against the direction of gravity; so if a figure ascends, the

value on the scale increases. In this sense, Rappaport Hovav and Levin (ibid: 29) argue

that a spatial scale is parallel to a property scale (the scale of change of state verbs)

because “being at a position on a path is comparable to having a particular value for a

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scalar attribute with change of state verbs, and movement along the path is comparable to

a change in the value of an attribute”.

However, Rappaport Hovav and Levin also point out a difference between change of

state verbs and path verbs with respect to their scales (also Levin and Rappaport Hovav

2010). According to them, the degrees on the dimension of a particular property scale are

“inherently valued” (Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2010: 8), whereas the points on a

spatial scale may not be inherently ordered, but determined with respect to a reference

object on the scale. For instance, in Levin and Rappaport Hovav (ibid.), they argue that

on the temperature scale, 10 degrees is a value that is inherently lower than 11 degrees,

whereas the increasing or decreasing distance on a particular spatial scale is determined

in relation to the reference object that a figure moves towards or away from. For this

reason, they argue that a scalar change motion verb usually requires a reference object;

and the reference object is usually specified either by a ground NP that is taken as

complement by the motion verb or determined from the context of use. For instance,

enter the house has a scale with points ordered to the inside of the house, whereas the

points on the scale associated with the deictic motion verb come are ordered towards the

contextually determined deictic center (usually the speaker). Levin and Rappaport Hovav

(ibid.) also argue that there are a few motion verbs that have their points inherently

ordered on their scales; but these are limited to verbs denoting vertical motion, including

ascend, descend, drop, and fall, whose scales consist of points inherently ordered along

the path either in or against the direction of gravity.

Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) propose that there are different types of scale:

scales can be associated with multiple points (e.g., return) or only two points (e.g.,

arrive); and scales can be bounded (i.e. have an endpoint, e.g., return) or open (e.g.,

ascend). Therefore, path verbs lexicalizing different types of scale can be divided into

different subtypes on the basis of their associated scales, and verbs of different types may

behave differently (ibid.).

In the remainder of this section, I first introduce diagnostics to distinguish motion

morphemes that do not lexicalize scales from those that lexicalize scales, and then turn to

the differences among the motion morphemes with different types of scales. A set of

  54  

independent tests is also proposed to determine which type a Chinese motion morpheme

falls into.

3.2 A four-way classification of Chinese motion morphemes According to Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), motion morphemes can be classified

into four types based on three features defining a scale. The first feature is the existence

of a scale, i.e. whether the denoted motion takes place along a scale; this feature classifies

motion morphemes into scalar change motion morphemes (e.g., recede, return, enter) and

nonscalar change motion morphemes (e.g., fly, run, walk). The second feature is

boundedness, i.e. whether a scale has an endpoint or not; this feature further divides

scalar change motion morphemes into open scale motion morphemes (e.g., recede,

ascend) and closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., return, enter). The third feature is

punctuality, i.e. whether motion along a scale is durative (with multiple points) or

punctual (with two points, i.e. the starting and ending points); this feature divides closed

scale motion morphemes into multi-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., return,

come) and two-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., enter, arrive). Nonscalar

change motion morphemes are equivalent to manner-of-motion morphemes in Talmy

(2000), whereas the other three types are subtypes of Talmy’s path morphemes, each with

a different scale structure (ibid.). Figure 3.1 (a) and Figure 3.1 (b) illustrate the

classifications of English motion verbs based on Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) and

Talmy (1975, 2000), respectively. In the remainder of this section, I introduce each type

of motion morphemes and provide tests to determine which type a given Chinese motion

morpheme falls into.

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Figure 3.1 Classification of English motion verbs

 

 

 

3.2.1 Nonscalar change vs. scalar change motion morphemes

Both manner-of-motion and path morphemes involve some kind of change (see Dowty

1979, Filip 1993/1999, Verkuyl 1989 for discussions of verbs that involve and do not

involve change). For the verbs that lexicalize different types of change, the most

fundamental distinction is whether or not a verb lexically specifies a scale of change

(McClure 1994, Rappaport Hovav 2008). Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) point out

that all manner-of-motion morphemes specify nonscalar changes, and all path

morphemes specify scalar changes.12

                                                                                                                         12 Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) argue that motion verbs conform to manner/path complementarity: a single motion verb can be classified either as a manner-of-motion verb or a path verb, but cannot have both manner and path component of meaning at the same time. See Chapter 2 for more details.

(a) Four-way classification of English motion verbs based on Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010)

(b) Two-way classification of English motion verbs based on Talmy (1975, 2000)

  56  

As mentioned above, in the domain of motion events, a scale is composed of points

ordered along the path with respect to the ground, and a figure’s movement along the

path represents a type of scalar change (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010). For example,

the points on the scale associated with return are ordered in relation to a destination, and

for come, the ordering follows the direction towards a deictic center. Because each point

represents a value along the path with respect to a reference object, a figure’s movement

along the scale is measurable (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010). For instance, an event

of returning to a destination is half done if the figure moves halfway on the scale from the

starting point to the destination.

In contrast, according to Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010: 32), manner-of-motion

morphemes do not involve scalar change because the change they specify cannot be

characterized in terms of a single dimension such as a scale represents; instead, these

morphemes involve complex changes, i.e. “a combination of multiple changes” (ibid.:

32). For example, they argue that jog involves movements of the arms and legs, but no

single one of the movements can be understood as “the necessary starting point of motion,

that is, one can start jogging by moving one’s left leg first or one’s right leg first” (ibid.:

32). Similarly, Rappaport Hovav (2008: 18, cf. Dowty 1979) points out that although

waltz involves three ordered steps, a person “is not considered to be waltzing when going

through a single sequence of three steps”. Therefore, the progress of a nonscalar change

motion morpheme cannot be measured in terms of scale (ibid.).

In the following subsections, I introduce three tests that can be applied to distinguish

nonscalar change motion morphemes from scalar change motion morphemes. Because

most manner-of-motion morphemes are nonscalar change motion morphemes, whereas

path morphemes are scalar change motion morphemes (Levin and Rappaport Hovav

2010), these three tests are also used to identify whether a motion morpheme is a manner-

of-motion morpheme or a path morpheme. The first two tests (Section 3.2.1.1 and

Section 3.2.1.2) were used in Chapter 2 to distinguish manner-of-motion morphemes

from path morphemes.

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3.2.1.1 Compatibility with a variety of manners of motion

The motion expressed by a scalar change motion morpheme can be realized via different

manners of motion, so such a morpheme is compatible with phrases expressing different

types of manners of motion (also see Section 2.2.1 for a discussion of differentiating

manner-of-motion verbs from path verbs). For instance, the motion in a receding or a

returning event can take place by jumping or running, as illustrated in (1).

(1) a.他跑/跳着退

tā pǎo/tiào-zhe tuì

he run/jump-IMP recede

‘He receded by running/jumping.’

b. 他跑/跳着回学校

tā pǎo/tiào-zhe huí xuéxiào

he run/jump-IMP return school

‘He returned to school by running/jumping.’

In contrast, a manner-of-motion morpheme is a nonscalar change motion morpheme;

since it already specifies a particular manner of motion, the motion event it denotes

cannot be further modified by other manners of motion. For example, fēi ‘fly’ denotes

motion in the manner of flying, and thus the motion cannot be carried out by running or

jumping, as illustrated in (2).

(2) *他跑/跳着飞

*tā pǎo/tiào-zhe fēi

He run/jump-IMP fly

#‘He flew by running/jumping.’ (intended meaning)

3.2.1.2 Compatibility with a variety of result phrases This test was introduced in Section 2.2.1 in Chapter 2 to distinguish manner-of-motion

morphemes from path morphemes. It also can be used to identify whether a given motion

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morpheme is a nonscalar change or scalar change motion morpheme. A nonscalar change

motion morpheme is compatible with a variety of result phrases, whereas a scalar change

motion morpheme is only compatible with result phrases that are consistent with the path

of the motion event it denotes. In this section, I provide an explanation of why the test

can be used.

A result phrase can contribute to delimiting an event (Goldberg 1991, Wechsler 2005,

among others). However, it has been observed in many previous studies that a predicate

cannot contain two phrases that delimit the event, unless the second phrase further

specifies the first one (i.e. the “Single Delimiting Constraint” of Tenny 1994: 79, also see

Gruber 1965, Simpson 1983, Goldberg 1991, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995, Filip

2004). A nonscalar change motion morpheme does not lexically specify change of state

or denote a delimited motion event, so it is compatible with any result phrases that

expresses the possible results brought about by the action denoted by the morpheme. For

instance, as illustrated in (18) in Chapter 2, repeated here as (3), pǎo ‘run’ allows bare XP

resultative complements and nonsubcategorized objects with result XPs predicated of

them, (cf. English manner-of-motion verbs in Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2001).

(3) a. 他跑累了

tā pǎo -lèi le

he run-tired ASP

‘He was tired as a result of running.’

b. 他跑丢了鞋子

tā pǎo-diū-le xiézi he run-lose-ASP shoe

‘He lost his shoes as a result of running.’

c. 他跑到了学校

tā pǎo-dào-le xuéxiào

he run-arrive-ASP school

‘He ran to the school.’

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In contrast, a scalar change motion morpheme specifies a change of location, which

can be understood as a kind of result; thus, such a morpheme cannot combine with a

variety of result phrases, but only those that are related to the path of motion denoted by

the morpheme, e.g., phrases which specify an endpoint to the path (Rappaport Hovav

2008). As illustrated in (19c) in Chapter 2, repeated here as (4a), huí ‘return’ can be

modified only by a phrase denoting the endpoint of the receding event, i.e. ‘the outside of

the pass’; although the figure can become tired or lose a weapon in an event of returning,

no phrases denoting such states are allowed to co-occur with huí, as in (19a, b) in Chapter

2, repeated here as (4b, c).

(19) a. 敌人回到了关外

dírén huí-dào-le guānwài

enemy return-arrive-ASP pass.outside

‘The enemy returned to the outside of the pass.’

b. *敌人回关外回累了

*dírén huí guānwài huí-lèi le

enemy return pass.outside return-be.tired ASP

#‘The enemy were tired as a result of returning to the outside of the pass.’

(intended meaning)

b. *敌人回关外回丢了武器

*dírén huí guānwài huí-diū-le wǔqì enemy return pass.outside return-lose-ASP weapon

‘The enemy lost their weapon as a result of returning to the outside of the

pass.’ (intended meaning)

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3.2.1.3 Compatability with a variety of directions

A nonscalar change motion morpheme has no inherent direction, so the motion it denotes

can be in any direction. For instance, in a running event, a figure can run forward or

backward, as in (5).

(5) 向前/后跑

xiàng qián/hòu pǎo

toward front/back run

‘run forward/backward’

In contrast, a scalar change motion morpheme specifies an inherent direction, so it only

allows phrases expressing directions that are compatible with the direction specified in

the motion morpheme. For instance, a figure moves backward in a receding event, so tuì

‘recede’ does not cannot combine with a preposition expressing a forward direction.

(6) a. *向前退

*xiàng qián tuì

toward front recede

b. 向后退

xiàng hòu tuì

toward back recede

‘recede backward’

Table 3.1 summarizes the tests that can distinguish nonscalar change motion

morphemes from scalar change motion morphemes.

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Table 3. 1 Tests distinguishing nonscalar change from scalar change motion morphemes

Nonscalar change

motion morphemes

Scalar change

motion morphemes

Compatible with a variety of

manners of motion

Compatible with a variety of

result complements

Compatible with a variety of

directions

3.2.2 Open scale vs. closed scale motion morphemes

Scalar change motion morphemes can be classified into two types based on whether or

not the scale lexicalized by a given scalar change motion morpheme has an endpoint, i.e.

whether the scale is bounded or unbounded (cf. Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010).13 For

example, come and return lexically specify a closed scale, whereas descend and rise

lexically specify an open scale (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010).

A scalar change motion morpheme with a bounded scale does not allow the figure to

progress beyond the bound, usually the point on the scale where the ground is located.

For instance, in He came to the school at 8am, the school is the bound of the event of

coming. Therefore, the coming event finishes when the figure arrives at the school.

Although the figure can move beyond the school, this further motion is no longer taken to

be part of the coming event. In contrast, a figure moving on an open scale does not have

an endpoint to arrive at. For instance, in an ascending event denoted by the verb ascend, a

figure can potentially move upward forever if there is no bound explicitly specified by

                                                                                                                         13 Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) first classify scalar change verbs into two types based on whether a given scalar change motion verb lexicalizes a multi-point scale or two-point scale, i.e. whether the directed motion denoted in the verb is durative or punctual. In this dissertation, scalar change verbs are first classified into open scale and closed scale motion morphemes based on boundedness, and then the latter are classified into multi-point and two-point closed scale motion morphemes (Levin p.c.); this better brings out the hierarchical organization among the subclasses of motion morphemes, as will be shown in Table 3.3. However, this difference in the presentation of the classes does not affect the classification of individual verbs.

  62  

other linguistic elements or the context. Therefore, by looking at whether a scalar change

motion verb allows a figure to move on a scale without limitation, we can distinguish an

open scale motion morpheme from a closed scale motion morpheme.

In Chinese, comparison can be expressed by a gèng ‘more’ comparative followed by

degree adjectives/adverbs, e.g., gèng yuǎn more far ‘further’, gèng gāo more high

‘higher’. If a scalar change motion morpheme is compatible with the ɡèng comparative,

then the morpheme has an open scale in that it allows a figure to move further along the

scale; otherwise, it has a closed scale. As illustrated in (7), shēng ‘ascend’ and jiàng

‘descend’ allow the ɡèng comparative.

(7) a. 气球在 5分钟前就向上升了, 现在应该升得更高了

qìqiú zài 5-fēnzhōng qián jiù xiàng shàng shēng le

balloon in 5-minute before then toward up ascend ASP

xiànzài yīnggāi shēng de gèng gāo le

now must ascend MOD more high ASP

‘The balloon began ascending five minutes ago, now it must have ascended

higher.’

b. 飞机在 5分钟前就向下降了, 现在应该降得更低了

fēijī zài 5-fēnzhōng qián jiù xiàng xià jiàng le

plane in 5-minute before then toward below descend ASP

xiànzài yīnggāi jiàng de gèng dī le

now must descend MOD more low ASP

‘The airplane began descending downward five minutes ago, now it must have

descended more.’

In contrast, huí ‘return’ and qù ‘go’ in (8) are incompatible with the comparative; this

is because once the figure has reached the endpoint, the returning/going event is finished.

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(8) a. 他在 5分钟前就回家了, *现在应该回得更远了

tā zài 5-fēnzhōng qián jiù huí jiā le

he at 5-minute before then return home ASP

*xiànzài yīnggāi huí de gèng yuǎn le

now must return MOD more far ASP

‘He began returning home five minutes ago, #now he must have returned

farther.’ (intended meaning)

b. 他在 5分钟前就去学校了, *现在应该去得更远了

tā zài 5-fēnzhōng qián jiù qù xuéxiào le

he in 5-minute before then go school ASP

*xiànzài yīnggāi qù de gèng yuǎn le

now must go MOD more far ASP

‘He began going to school five minutes ago, #now he must have gone farther.’

(intended meaning)

Therefore, shēng ‘ascend’ and jiàng ‘descend’ are open scale motion morphemes,

whereas huí ‘return’ and qù ‘go’ are closed scale motion morphemes.

3.2.3 Multi-point closed scale vs. two-point closed scale motion verbs As mentioned, closed scale motion morphemes are further classified into multi-point and

two-point closed scale motion morphemes. According to Beavers (2008), the scale of a

two-point closed scale motion morpheme is associated with only two values, that is,

having or not having a property on a particular dimension, e.g., being alive or dead, being

at an endpoint or not. Beavers also argues that the transition from one point to the other is

usually understood as instantaneous. For example, the event of entering a room is often

punctual and does not take time. In English, arrive, depart, enter and exit are two-point

closed scale motion verbs (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010: 30).

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Unlike two-point closed scales, multi-point closed scales are composed of a minimum

and a maximum value as well as many values in between them (Rappaport Hovav and

Levin 2010). The starting point of a motion event is understood to be associated with the

minimum value, the endpoint with the maximum value, and the points in between the two

points are understood as the values that the motion event may have as the figure moves

along the scale. Therefore, although motion along a multi-point closed scale is alto telic,

the motion is gradual and takes time, and thus the event is durative (ibid.). Examples of

directed motion verbs describing gradual traversals of a closed path in English include

return, come, and go (ibid.).

To distinguish a motion morpheme with a two-point closed scale from a motion

morpheme with a multi-point closed scale, we can look at whether a given closed scale

motion morpheme allows durative adverbials. If the morpheme is compatible with a

durative adverbial, it lexicalizes a multi-point scale; otherwise, it has a two-point closed

scale.

As illustrated in (9), the closed scale motion morphemes jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’ do

not allow durative adverbials, which indicates that they are two-point closed scale motion

morphemes.

(9) *他进/出房间进了 20分钟

*tā jìn/chū fángjiān jìn/chū-le 20-fēnzhōng, she enter/exit room enter/exit-ASP 20-minute

#‘She has been entering/exiting the room for 20 minutes’ (intended meaning)

In contrast, the closed scale motion morphemes huí ‘return’ and qù ‘go’ allow a

durative adverbial, and can be understood in two ways: one is that a figure spends that

period of time returning/going to a location, and the other is that a figure returns/goes to a

location and stays there for that period of time.

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(10) a. 他回家回了 20分钟

tā huí jiā huí-le 20-fēnzhōng

she return home return-ASP 20-minute

‘She has been returning home for 20 minutes./She returned home and stayed

there for 20 minutes’

b. 他去学校去了 20分钟

tā qù xuéxiào qù-le 20-fēnzhōng

she go school go-ASP 20-minute

‘She has been going to school for 20 minutes./She went to school and stayed

there for 20 minutes.’

If a ‘but’ clause such as the ones in (11) is added, the sentences in (10) can only be

understood in the first meaning, i.e. spending a period of time in moving to a location.

(11) a. 他回家回了 20分钟,可是还没到家

tā huí jiā huí-le 20-fēnzhōng, kěshì hái méi dào jiā she return home return-ASP 20-minute but still NEG arrive home

‘She has been returning home for 20 minutes, but she has not arrived at home

yet.’

b. 他去学校去了 20分钟, 可是还没到学校

tā qù xuéxiào qù-le 20-fēnzhōng, kěshì hái méi dào xuéxiào

she go school go-ASP 20-minute but still NEG arrive school

‘She has been going to school for 20 minutes, but she has not arrived at school

yet.’

Futhermore, the ‘but’ clause indicates that a figure in a returning/going event does not

necessarily arrive at the desitination instantaneously; in other words, the motion

morphemes huí ‘return’ and qù ‘go’ lexicalize multi-point scales.

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As pointed out by Beavers (2011), in a motion event along a scale with multiple

points, a figure can stop for a while during its motion along the scale or even repeatedly

backtrack towards the starting point before it arrives at the endpoint. Therefore, we can

examine whether a given closed scale motion morpheme allows a figure to stop on the

scale before arriving at the endpoint, and thus determine whether the morpheme has a

multi-point scale. As illustrated in (12), the motions denoted by huí ‘return’ and qù ‘go’

allow a figure to stop on the scales of the events of returning and going:

(12) a. 他回宿舍回了一半，停下休息了一会儿，又出发了

tā huí sùshè huí-le yíbàn, tíngxià xiūxí-le yíhuìr, yòu chūfā le

he return dorm return-ASP half stop rest-ASP a.while again set.off ASP

‘He returned halfway to the dorm, stopped to rest for while, and then

continued returning to the dorm.’

b. 他去学校去了一半，停下休息了一会儿，又出发了

tā qù xuéxiào qù-le yíbàn, tíngxià xiūxí-le yíhuìr, yòu chūfā le

he go school go-ASP half stop rest-ASP a.while again set.off ASP

‘He went halfway to school, stopped to rest for while, and then

continued going to school.’

In contrast, for a closed scale motion morpheme lexicalizing only two points in its

scale, the change from one point to the other is instantaneous (Beavers 2008, Rappaport

Hovav 2008). In other words, there is no way for a figure to stop or backtrack during the

motion from one point to the other. As illustrated in (13), jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’ do not

allow the figure to stop, which again suggests that they lexicalize two-point scales.

(13) a. *他进房间进了一半，停下休息了一会儿，又出发了

*tā jìn fángjiān jìn-le yíbàn, tíngxià xiūxí-le yíhuìr, yòu chūfā le

he enter room enter -ASP half stop rest-ASP a.while again set.off ASP

*‘He entered the room halfway, stopped to rest for while, and then

continued entering the room.’ (intended meaning)

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b. *他出房间出了一半，停下休息了一会儿，又出发了

*tā chū fángjiān chū-le yíbàn, tíngxià xiūxí-le yíhuìr, yòu chūfā le

he exit room exit-ASP half stop rest-ASP a.while again set.off ASP

*‘He exited the room halfway, stopped to rest for while, and then

continued exiting the room.’ (intended meaning)

However, the closed scale motion morpheme lái ‘come’ seems to be on the borderline

between being multi-point and two-point. When different native speakers are presented

with (14), their judgement of its grammaticality varies, which indicates that lái is not a

typical multi-point or two-point closed scale motion morpheme.

(14) ?他来学校来了一半，停下休息了一会儿，又出发了

tā lái xuéxiào lái-le yíbàn, tíngxià xiūxí-le yíhuìr, yòu chūfā le

he come school come-ASP half stop rest-ASP a.while again set.off ASP

? ‘He came halfway to school, stopped to rest for while, and then continued

coming to school.’ (intended meaning)

(14) indicates that lái ‘come’ does not align clearly with either multi-point or two-

point closed scale motion verbs. However, a change along the scale of lái ‘come’ does

not imply the maximal change, i.e. arrival at the endpoint of the scale. For instance, (15)

is an example from Nakazawa (2006, 2008). It indicates that the motion denoted by lái

‘come’ does not entail the actual arrival at the endpoint.

(15) 他八点来学校,但是还没到

tā bā diǎn lái xuéxiào, dànshì hái méi dào

he eight o’clock come school but yet NEG arrive

‘He came/went to school at eight, but he has not arrived.’

(Nakazawa 2006: 290, (6))

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Therefore, the scale lexicalized by lái is composed of multiple points, and a coming event

is durative. However, considering lái’s behavior with respect to the tests above, I treat lái

as an atypical multi-point closed scale motion morpheme; however, the reason why lái

does not behave exactly like the other multi-point closed scale motion morphemes is left

for future exploration.

Table 3.2 summarizes the tests that distinguish multi-point closed scale motion

morphemes from two-point closed scale motion morphemes. Table 3.2 Tests distinguishing multi-point from two-point closed scale motion

morphemes

Multi-point closed scale

motion morphemes

Two-point closed scale

motion morphemes

Compatible with durative

adverbials

Allows a figure to stop on the

scale

3.2.4 Summary

In this section, Chinese motion morphemes are analyzed according to their scale

structures. The motion morphemes are classified into four types according to three

features defining a scale. Specifically, the morphemes are first classified into nonscalar

change and scalar change motion morphemes depending on whether they lexicalize a

scale, i.e. [+/-scale]; then scalar change motion morphemes ([+scale]) are classified into

closed scale and open scale motion morphemes depending on whether the scale the

morpheme lexicalizes is bounded or unbounded, i.e. [+/- bounded]; finally, closed scale

motion morphemes are further classified into multi-point closed scale and two-point

closed scale motion morphemes depending on whether the morpheme’s lexicalized scale

is composed of multiple points or two points, i.e. [+/- punctual]. Table 3.3 is a summary

of the three features and the four types of motion morphemes.

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Table 3.3 Three features of scales determining four types of motion morphemes

Types of motion morphemes

Features with respect to scale

Existence of

scale

Boundedness punctuality

Nonscalar change

(fēi ‘fly’)

_ _ _

open scale

(tuì ‘recede’)

+ _ _

multi-point closed

(huí ‘return’)

+ + _

two-point closed

(jìn ‘enter’)

+ + +

The different combinations of these three features yield the four types of motion

morphemes: nonscalar change motion morphemes (e.g., fēi ‘fly’), open scale motion

morphemes (e.g., tuì ‘recede’), multi-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., huí

‘return’), and two-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., jìn ‘enter’).14 Nonscalar

change motion morphemes correspond to Talmy’s manner-of-motion morphemes,

whereas the three types of scalar change motion morphemes correspond to Talmy’s path

morphemes. Figure 3.2 (a) and Figure 3.2 (b) illustrate the classification of Chinese

motion morphemes based on Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) and Talmy (1975,

2000), respectively, cf. Figure 3.1.

                                                                                                                         14 The three features of scale, [+/- scale], [+/- bounded], [+/- punctual], give rise to eight possible combinations. Besides the four combinations presented in Table 3.3, the other four are (-scale, -bounded, + punctual), (-scale, + bounded, -punctual), (-scale, +bounded, +punctual), (+scale, -bounded, +punctual). This dissertation only discusses four of them because the classification of motion morphemes is assumes that some of these features are only relevant in the context of others, that is, only motion morphemes with the feature [+scale] are further classified according to whether they are [+bounded] and [-bounded], and only those with the features [+scale] and [+bounded] are further classified according to whether they are [+punctual] and [-punctual]. The other four combinations are not possible because their features and values do not follow the hierarchical order.

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Figure 3.2 Four-way and two-way classification of Chinese motion morphemes

 

 

 

3. 3 “Special” motion morphemes

Section 3.2 proposed a set of tests to identify whether a Chinese motion morpheme

lexicalizes a scale and if so, what kind of scale it lexicalizes. The morphemes associated

with the same kind of scale usually behave the same way in terms of their compatibility

with phrases expressing different manners of motion, gèng ‘more’ comparative, and

durative adverbials. However, despite these similarities, a few Chinese motion

morphemes do not align with other morphemes of the same scale type with respect to all

aspects of their distribution. These morphemes include dào ‘arrive’, guò ‘cross’, shàng

‘ascend’, and xià ‘descend’. In this section, I analyze them in more detail.

3.3.1 Dào ‘arrive’

According to the tests introduced in Section 3.2, dào ‘arrive’ is a two-point closed scale

motion morpheme like jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’. Dào is a scalar change morpheme in that

(a) Four-way classification of Chinese

motion morphemes based on

Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010)

(b) Two-way classification of

Chinese motion morphemes based

on Talmy (1975, 2000)

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it does not allow a variety of result phrases, and an arrival event can be realized using

various manners of motion, as illustrated in (16) and (17), respectively.

(16) a. *她到累了

tā dào-lèi le

she arrive-tired ASP

# ‘She arrived tired.’ (intended meaning)

b. *她到丢了鞋子

tā dào-diū-le xiézi

she arrive-lose-ASP shoe

# ‘She lost her shoes as a result of arriving.’ (intended meaning)

(17) 她跑/跳/走着到了学校

tā pǎo/tiào/zǒu-zhe dào -le xuéxiào

she run/jump/walk-IMP arrive-ASP school

‘She arrived at school by running/jumping/walking.’

Furthermore, dào specifies a closed scale. As illustrated in (18), no gèng ‘more’

comparative is allowed; that is, it is not possible to express that the figure arrives at a

location further away than the location s/he has previously arrived at.

(18) 他在 5分钟前就到学校了,*现在应该到得更远了

tā zài 5-fēnzhōng qián jiù dào xuéxiào le

he in 5-minute before then arrive school ASP

*xiànzài yīnggāi dào de gèng yuǎn le

now must arrive MOD more far ASP

‘He arrived at school five minutes ago, #now he must have arrived farther.’

(intended meaning)

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In addition, an event of arriving at a location is usually understood to be

instantaneous; thus, the figure in such an event cannot stop for a while on the path to the

location (19); this suggests that the scale lexicalized by dào has only two points.

(19) *他到学校到了一半，停下休息了一会儿，又出发了

*tā dào xuéxiào dào-le yíbàn, tíngxià xiūxí-le yíhuìr, yòu chūfā le

he arrive school arrive-ASP half stop rest-ASP a.while again set.off ASP

#‘He arrived halfway to school, stopped to rest for while, and then continued

arriving again.’ (intended meaning)

However, dào does not behave exactly like the other two-point closed scale motion

morphemes, jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’, with respect to some facets of distribution. For

example, jìn and chū must be accompanied by an explicit specification of the ground

(20a); they can be followed by a locative NP denoting a ground (20b); if no locative NP

is present, then they must be followed by the deictic motion morphemes lái ‘come’ and

qù ‘go’ (20c) and (20d) (cf. Ju 1992, Y. Liu 1998, Qi 1998, Lamarre 2008).15

(20) a. ?她进/出了

?tā jìn/chū le

she enter/exit ASP

b. 她进/出学校了

tā jìn/chū xuéxiào le

she enter/exit school ASP

‘She entered/exited the school.’

                                                                                                                         15 Chapter 4 provides a detailed discussion of the distribution and function of the deictic motion morphemes lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’ when they occur after another motion morpheme.

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c. 她进来/去了

tā jìn lái/qù le

she enter come/go ASP

‘She entered [towards the speaker/away from the speaker].’

d. 她出来/去了

tā chū lái/qù le

she exit come/go ASP

‘She exited [towards the speaker/away from the speaker].’

Like jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’, dào ‘arrive’ usually do not occur alone without

explicitly expressed information about the ground (21a), but requires a ground NP (21b).

(21) a. ?她到了

?tā dào le

she arrive ASP

b. 她到学校了

tā dào xuéxiào le

she arrive school ASP

‘He arrived at school.’

For instance, in 185 instances of dào used as a motion morpheme randomly drawn from

the novel category of the PKU Corpus, there are only eight instances (4.3%) in which a

ground NP is not explicitly expressed. All eight instances appear in conversations where

the ground information can be retrieved from the context. Five instances occur in the

following dialogue where the speakers are talking about a journey to their hometown.

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(22) 我问一句 “还要多长时间才可以到啊？”

司机说 “该到的时候，自然就到了。不到的时候，您急也到不了。”

wǒ wèn yí-jù “hái yào duōcháng shíjiān cái kéyǐ dào ā ?”

I ask one-sentence still need how.long time till can arrive ASP

‘I asked ‘How long till we arrive [at our hometown]?’’

sījī shuō “gāi dào de shíhou, zìrán jiù dào le

driver say should arrive REL time naturally then arrive ASP

bú dào de shíhou, nín jí yě dào bùliǎo ”

Neg arrive REL time you worry also arrive Neg.POT

‘The driver said, ‘When [you are] supposed to arrive, [you] naturally arrived [at

the hometown]; when not supposed to arrive, even if you are worried, you

cannot arrive.’’ (PKU Corpus)

However, unlike jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’, when the ground NP is absent, dào cannot

be followed by lái/qù directly (Ju 1992, Qi 1998, Lamarre 2008), as in (23), cf. (20c) and

(20d).

(23) *他到来/去了

*tā dào-lái/qù le

he arrive-come/go ASP

#‘He arrived [towards/away from the speaker].’ (intended meaning)

In addition, previous studies disagree about the morphological status of dào. Dào is

treated either as a motion verb, a directional complement (satellite, coverb), a postvebal

preposition, or an incorporated preposition (cf. Liu 1998, Lü 1980, Lamarre 2007, 2008,

2009, Poteet 1987, Peck 2008, among many others). For example, Lamarre (2007, 2009)

claims that dào is a postverbal locative preposition in (24a), but an independent verb in

(24b).

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(24) a. 推到屋里去

tuī-dào wū-lǐ qù

push-arrive room-inside go

‘Push [it] into the room.’

b. 到屋里去推

dào wū-lǐ qù tuī

arrive room-inside go push

‘Go into the room and push [it].’ (Lamarre 2009: 3, (3) and (3’))

Li and Thompson (1981) point out that dào in (25) can be a coverb with no verbal

meaning, or an independent verb that forms a serial verb construction with the other

independent verb qù ‘go’.

(25) 他到伦敦去了

tā dào lúndūn qù le

he arrive London go ASP

‘He went to London.’ (Li and Thompson 1981: 366, (42))

Peck (2008: 16-18) shows that preverbal dào is a preposition because it cannot take

aspect markers as affixes and the locative NP following dào cannot be stranded, as

illustrated in (26).

(26) a. *他到了伦敦去了

* tā dào -le lúndūn qù le

he arrive-ASP London go ASP (Peck 2008: 17, (2.16c))

b. *伦敦, 他到去了

*lúndūn, tā dào -qù le

London he arrive-go ASP (Peck 2008: 18, (2.17c))

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Although previous studies do not agree about which grammatical category dào should

fall into, it seems that dào is not always an independent motion verb in all its uses.

However, as shown in (16-18), when dào occurs as the only motion morpheme in a

sentence, dào is clearly functioning as a motion verb. In order to provide a more

comprehensive analysis, this dissertation includes dào as a motion morpheme in the

discussion when it occurs in MMMCs. More discussion of dào is given in Chapter 5.

3.3.2 Guò ‘cross’ According to Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), English verbs of traversal, e.g., cross

and traverse, are not typical scalar change motion verbs because although these verbs

lexicalize paths, they do not specify in which direction the points are ordered and thus,

without context, it is not possible to tell from which side of a ground a traversal event

starts. For instance, in John crossed that street, cross does not specify which side of the

street John started crossing from.

The Chinese motion morpheme guò ‘cross’ is similar to English verbs of traversal in

that it does not lexically specify in which direction the points are ordered along its path.

For instance, in (27), the starting side and ending side of the street are not identifiable

from the meaning of guò.

(27) 他过了马路

tā guò-le mǎlù

He cross-ASP street

‘He crossed the street.’

However, in this dissertation, I include guò ‘cross’ in the list of scalar change motion

morphemes for two reasons.

First, in a specific crossing event, there is always an end point, i.e. the other side of

the delimited entity to be crossed from the figure’s starting point. Although the exact end

point is not specified in the meaning of guò ‘cross’, it can be retrieved from the context.

In other words, the components of the scales are partially lexicalized in guò, and the

  77  

order of the points along the scales is determined contextually. For example, as illustrated

in (28), we can infer from the context that the event of crossing the city wall starts from

the side where the speaker is located, and ends at the other side of the wall.

(28) 过城墙那边儿是城外

guò chéngqiáng nàbiānr shì chéng-wài

cross city.wall that.side is city-outside

‘[If you] cross the city wall; that side [of the city wall] is outside of the city.’

(PKU Corpus)

There are other scalar change motion morphemes that do not lexicalize all

components of their scales either.16 For instance, huí ‘return’ only specifies that a figure

will return to a destination in a returning event, but does not specify the exact destination

that the figure returns to. Rather, in each returning event, the information about the

destination is provided by the ground NP that follows huí, which then specifies the

direction in which the points along the scale of huí are ordered. For example, in (29a), the

points in huí’s scale are ordered in the direction of the figure’s home, whereas in (29b),

the points are ordered in the direction of the school.

(29) a. 他昨天晚上 8点回家了

tā zuótiān wǎnshang 8-diǎn huí jiā le

he yesterday evening 8-o’clock return home ASP

‘He returned home at eight o’clock yesterday evening.’

b. 他今天早上 10点回学校了

tā jīntiān zǎoshɑng 10-diǎn huí xuéxiào le

he today morning 10-o’clock return school ASP

‘He returned to school at ten o’clock this morning.’

                                                                                                                         16 As introduced in Section 3.1, only motion verbs expressing motion in the direction of gravity or against gravity, e.g., shēng ‘ascend’ and jiàng ‘descend’, fully lexicalize the direction of motion.

  78  

Therefore, verbs of traversal and some other scalar change motion morphemes such as

huí ‘return’ can be understood as scalar change motion morphemes which partially

lexicalize their scales.

Second, guò ‘cross’ has a distribution similar to other closed scale motion morphemes.

(30) and (31) indicates that guò ‘cross’ is a nonscalar change motion morpheme: in (32),

the crossing event expressed by guò ‘cross’ can take place in a variety of manners of

motion; and in (33a), guò is not compatible with phrases denoting different directions,

whereas a nonscalar change motion morpheme such as pǎo ‘run’ in (33b) can denote

motion in various directions.

(30) 他跳/跑着过了街，到了对面的酒店

tā tiào/pǎo-zhe guò-le jiē, dào le duìmiàn de jiǔdiàn

he jump/run-IMP cross-ASP street arrive ASP facing REL store

‘He crossed the street jumping/running, and went into the hotel on the other side.’

(31) a. *他向前/后/左/后过了街

*tā xiàng qián/hòu/zuǒ/hòu guò-le jiē

he toward front/back/left/right cross-ASP street

# ‘He crossed the street in a forward/backward/left/right direction.’ (intended

meaning)

b. 他向前/后/左/后跑

tā xiàng qián/hòu/zuǒ/hòu pǎo

he toward front/back/left/right run

‘He ran in forward/backward/left/right direction.’

Furthermore, guò lexicalizes a closed scale. The locative NP taken by guò as its

complement denotes the ground to be crossed. Once the entire ground is crossed (e.g., as

indicated by a perfective marker -le in (32)), the traversal event is finished. Therefore,

  79  

guò has a closed scale, and the length of the scale is determined by the length of the

ground. As illustrated in (32), guò does not allow a gèng ‘more’ comparative, because

after the bridge is crossed, the figure’s motion is no longer perceived as crossing.

(32) 他在 5分钟前过了大桥，*现在过得更远了

tā zài 5-fēnzhōng qián guò-le dàqiáo,

she in 5-minute ago cross-ASP big.bridge

*xiànzài guò de gèng yuǎn le

now cross MOD more far ASP

‘She crossed the big bridge five minutes ago, # and now she crossed further.’

(intended meaning).

So far, I have shown that guò can be understood as a scalar change motion morpheme,

and it behaves like a closed scale motion morpheme. However, it differs from other

closed scale motion morphemes in two respects.

First, most closed scale motion morphemes take goal or source NPs as their

complements, e.g., huí ‘return’ takes a goal NP as its complement and chū ‘exit’ takes a

source NP as its complement, but guò takes a route NP as its complement. Therefore, the

ground NPs following huí and chū help specify the direction of motion in each motion

event, but it is the context instead of the locative complement of guò that contributes the

direction of a crossing event.

Second, guò can take two different types of route NPs as its complements. One is an

NP denoting a long path/route with multiple points (“complex path”, Beavers in press: 18,

online version), e.g., a long bridge, an ocean; the other is a short, boundary-like path, e.g.,

a police line drawn on the ground. Depending on the kind of NP that guò takes as its

complement, guò behaves either like a multi-point or two-point closed scale motion verb.

For instance, guò can take dàqiáo ‘bridge’ as its complement. A bridge is a path that

usually takes a figure some time to cross, so guò in (33) is a multi-point closed scale

motion morpheme: it is compatible with a duration phrase and describes an event in

which the figure has been spending 20 minutes crossing the bridge.

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(33) 他过大桥过了 20分钟还没过完

tā guò dàqiáo guò-le 20-fēnzhōng hái méi guò-wán

he cross big.bridge cross-ASP 20-minute still NEG cross-finish

‘He had been crossing the big bridge for 20 minutes, but has not finished.’

Besides NPs denoting complex paths, guò can also take a boundary-like ground NP as its

complement, e.g., a police line, and in these instances, it behaves like a two-point closed

scale motion morpheme. For instance, because crossing a line is usually instantaneous,

guò jǐnɡjièxiàn ‘cross the police line’ does not allow a duration phrase, as in (34).

(34) *他过警戒线过了 20分钟

*tā guò jǐngjièxiàn guò-le 20-fēnzhōng

he cross line cross-ASP 20-minute

# ‘He has been crossing the line for 20 minutes.’ (intended meaning)

Therefore, guò is a closed scale motion morpheme, but it does not lexically specify

whether its scale is multi-point or two-point. When guò takes a ground NP with a

complex path as its complement, it behaves like a multi-point closed scale motion

morpheme like huí ‘return’, lái ‘come’, and qù ‘go’. In contrast, when guò takes a

boundary-like ground NP as its complement, it behaves like a two-point closed scale

motion morpheme like jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’.

3.3.3 Shàng ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’

Shàng ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’ denote motion in the same direction as shēng ‘ascend’

and jiàng ‘descend’, respectively. As shown in Section 3.2, shēng ‘ascend’ and jiàng

‘descend’ are classified as open scale motion morphemes. Shàng and xià lexicalize open

scales, too. As illustrated in (35), both shàng and xià are compatible with a gèng

comparative.

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(35) a. 想问下上墙怎么才能上得更高

xiǎng wèn-xià shàng qiáng zěnme cáinéng shàng de gèng gāo

want ask-DEL ascend wall how can ascend MOD more high

‘[I] want to ask, how can I ascend a wall higher?’

(http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=939318261)

b. 太阳慢慢地从本来就不高的位置下得更低了

tàiyáng mànmànde cóng běnlái jiù bù gāo de wèizhi

sun slowly from originally already NEG high MOD position

xià de gèng dī le

descend MOD more low ASP

‘The sun descended lower from its original position which was already not high’

(http://archjail.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!11577DDFCD02AB7F!286.entry)

However, as (36) and (37) illustrate, while shēng/jiàng and other open scale motion

morphemes usually cannot be followed by ground NPs immediately, 17 shàng and xià

usually require explicitly expressed ground NPs;18 thus, they behave like closed scale

motion morphemes such as huí ‘return’, dào ‘arrive’, jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’.

                                                                                                                         17 Shēng ‘ascend’ and jiàng ‘descend’ are occasionally immediately followed by a ground NP. But most of these instances involve fixed phrases such as shēng-tiān ascend-sky, which is often used to mean ‘die and go to paradise’. 18 According to Lamarre (2009), xià ‘descend’ can take either a source NP or a goal NP as its complement. For example, èrlóu ‘second floor’ in (i) and hǎi ‘sea’ in (ii) are understood as source and goal, respectively.

(i) 下二楼到大厅里 xià èrlóu dào dàtīng-lǐ descend second.floor arrive hall-inside ‘go down from the second floor and go in to the hall’ (ii) 下海 xià hǎi descend sea ‘go down into the sea/go into business’

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(36) a. *气球升了天空

*Qìqiú shēng-le tiānkōng

balloon ascend-ASP sky

a'. 气球升到了天空

Qìqiú shēng-dào-le tiānkōng

balloon ascend-arrive-ASP sky

‘The balloon went up to the sky.’

b. *气球降了地面

*Qìqiú jiàng-le dìmiàn

balloon descend-ASP ground

b'. 气球降到了地面

Qìqiú jiàng-dào-le dìmiàn

balloon descend-arrive-ASP ground

‘The balloon went down to the ground.

(37) a. 他上/下了山

Ta shàng/xià-le shān

she ascend/descend-ASP hill

‘She went up/down the hill.’

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         However, xià hǎi is usually used as a frozen phrase meaning ‘go into business’ rather than showing its literal meaning ‘go into the sea’. A small corpus investigation also shows that when xià takes a goal NP, it usually does not encode physical descending motion. Of the first 1,000 instances of xià from the novel category of the PKU Corpus, there are 42 instances in which xià is used as the only morpheme in a motion construction. Of these 42 instances, 29 instances of xià takes a source NP, e.g., huǒchē ‘train’, shù ‘tree’, qìchē ‘car’, lóu ‘floor’, and shān ‘mountain’. Of the 13 instances in which xià takes a goal NP, the motion is figurative, e.g., xià fán ‘(a god) descended to the world’, xià dìyù ‘go to hell’, xià dì ‘go to the fields and work’. Therefore, it is possible that in Modern Chinese, a goal NP is less preferred following xià than a source NP.

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b. *他上/下了

*Tā shàng/xià le

she ascend/descend ASP

In addition, because shàng/xià can take a ground NP as complement directly, if the

NP can be understood as an endpoint of a motion event, then the ascending/descending

event can be understood as bounded. For example, in (36), shān ‘mountain’ is the NP

following shàng/xià. Because a mountain is a delimited entity, the ascent or descent is

delimited in this specific event. However, further study is necessary to explore why

shàng/xià requires explicitly expressed information about the ground.

3.4 The four types of Chinese motion morphemes according to their scale structure

Sections 3.1 and 3.2 introduced the notion of scale structure in the motion domain as well

as a set of independent tests for determining what kind of scale a Chinese motion verb

lexicalizes. In Section 3.3, I discussed several Chinese motion verbs that do not behave

exactly the same as other verbs that lexicalize the same types of scale. It is beyond the

scope of this dissertation to test the scale structure of every existing motion morpheme in

Chinese. However, the tests are expected to determine which type an individual motion

morpheme falls into, and thus to be able to classify all Chinese motion morphemes into

the four types based on their scale structure.

As shown in Section 3.2, four types of motion morphemes are identifiable in Chinese:

nonscalar change morphemes, open scale, multi-point closed, and two-point closed scale

motion morphemes. Of these four types, the first two are open classes with many

different morphemes, whereas the other two are closed classes with a limited number of

morphemes.19 Table 3.4 presents examples of Chinese motion morphemes of each type.

                                                                                                                         19 According to Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2010), scalar change motion verbs are fewer in number than nonscalar change motion verbs and the other type of scalar change verbs, i.e. change of state verbs; this is because location is the only dimension available for spatial scales, as opposed to the many dimensions such as temperature, length, width, and depth available for change of state scales.

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Table 3.4 Examples of Chinese motion morphemes classified according to their scale

structure

Types Nonscalar

change motion

morphemes

Open scale

motion

morphemes

Multi-point closed

scale motion

morphemes

Two-point closed

scale motion

morphemes

Inventory pǎo ‘run’

fēi ‘fly’

zǒu ‘walk’

chōng ‘rush’

etc.

shēng ‘ascend’

jiàng ‘descend’

luò ‘fall’

tuì ‘recede’

shàng ‘ascend’

xià ‘descend’

etc.

huí ‘return’

lái ‘come’

qù ‘go’

guò ‘cross’

jìn ‘enter’

chū ‘exit’

guò ‘cross’

dào ‘arrive’

Among these verbs, shàng ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’ are identified as open scale motion

morphemes, although they behave differently from other open scale motion morphemes

in that they take a locative NP directly as complement. Guò ‘cross’ is polysemic, so it is

listed both among the multi-point closed scale motion morphemes and two-point closed

scale change motion morphemes. In addition, although dào ‘arrive’ does not always

function as an independent motion verb, when occurring alone in a motion construction,

dào behaves like a two-point closed scale motion morpheme. Therefore, dào is listed in

the same category as jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’.

In addition, the classification and tests also apply to Chinese motion morphemes

which cannot be used as full verbs, i.e. bound motion morphemes. I introduce these

morphemes in the following section.

3.5 Bound motion morphemes and their scale structure

In Chinese, there are motion morphemes which only function as independent verbs, for

instance, fēi ‘fly’, gǔn ‘roll’, piāo ‘float’ and motion morphemes which can function

either as independent verbs or as path satellites, e.g., shàng ‘ascend’, huí ‘return’, jìn

‘enter’, dào ‘arrive’ (see Chapters 1 and 2). Because these morphemes can still function

as independent verbs, they are called “free morphemes” in this study (cf. Sun 2006,

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Packard 2000). In addition to free morphemes, Chinese also has morphemes which

cannot occur alone as an independent verb. For instance, rù ‘enter’ denotes the same type

of motion as the free morpheme jìn ‘enter’, but it can only occur in combination with

another morpheme, whereas jìn ‘enter’ can either occur alone or with another morpheme,

as illustrated in (38).

(38) a. 她*(跑)入了房间

tā *(pǎo)-rù-le fángjiān

she run-enter-ASP room

‘She ran into the room.’

b.她(跑)进了房间

tā (pǎo)-jìn-le fángjiān

she run-enter-ASP room

‘She entered the room (by running).’

Motion morphemes such as rù that cannot occur alone as independent verbs are called

“bound motion morphemes” in this study (cf. Sun 2006, Packard 2000). However, their

scale structure can also be identified via the tests proposed in Section 3.2. In this section,

I first give an introduction to Chinese bound motion morphemes, and then show how they

can be classified into the four previously introduced types according to their scale

structure.

3.5.1 Introduction to Chinese bound motion morphemes The inventory of scalar change motion morphemes in earlier stages of Chinese was much

larger than that in Modern Chinese (Ma 2008). However, many verbs used in the past

have undergone changes in their grammatical status or meaning, and some verbs are no

longer used. For instance, according to Ma (2008: 36-54), there were a variety of motion

verbs in Old Chinese (771 BCE – 220 CE) that denoted events of arrival, going or

coming: 造 zào ‘arrive’, 诣 yì ‘arrive’, 逝 shì ‘go’, 如 rú ‘go’, 适 shì ‘go’, 之 zhī ‘go’, 蹱

zhǒng ‘follow’, 趋 qū ‘rush, chase’, 及 jí ‘arrive’, 即 jí ‘approach, arrive’. Two examples

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are given in (39), in which诣 yì ‘arrive’ and适 shì ‘go’ are used as main verbs to denote

motion in the historical text Shǐjì (104 BCE- 91 BCE).

(39) a. 于是秦王大怒，益发兵诣赵 (史记)

yúshì qínwáng dà nù, yì fā bīng yì zhào

then Qin.King big angry more dispatch soldier arrive Zhao

‘Then the King of Qin flew into a fury and dispatched more soldiers to Zhao.’

(Old Chinese, Shǐjì, cited in Ma 2008: 51)

b. 孔子适周, 将问礼于老子 (史记)

kǒngzǐ shì zhōu jiāng wèn lǐ yú Lǎozi

Confucius go Zhou intend ask rites to Laozi

‘Confucius went to Zhou, and intended to ask Laozi about rites.’

(Old Chinese, Shǐjì, cited in Ma 2008: 39)

However, these verbs either have completely lost their motion meanings (e.g., 如 rú

‘go’, 适 shì ‘go’, 之 zhī ‘go’) or have disappeared (e.g., 蹱 zhǒng ‘follow’) in Modern

Chinese.20 In addition, some motion verbs in earlier stages of Chinese are still used in

Modern Chinese, but not as independent verbs. These verbs are of two types. One type

includes the verbs which only function as prepositions in Modern Chinese. For instance,

从 cóng denoted an event of following, but in Modern Chinese, it is only used as a

preposition equivalent to English from, as in cóng Běijīng ‘from Beijing’ and cóng

zǎoshana ‘from morning’. The other type includes verbs that now can only occur as

bound morphemes in combination with another morpheme, such as rù ‘enter’ in (38).

These bound morphemes still maintain the manner or the spatial directions associated

with the motion they denoted in the past. For most of these bound morphemes, there are

corresponding independent motion verb(s) in Modern Chinese. Table 3.5 lists some

                                                                                                                         20 A few of these verbs may appear in idioms or frozen phrases and are used in Modern Chinese, e.g., 趋 qū in 趋之若鹜 qū-zhī-ruò-wù rush-it-like-wild duck ‘a group of people scramble for something which is bad according to normal standards’.

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bound morphemes and the corresponding independent verbs lexicalizing the same

manner or directions of motion.

Table 3. 5 Bound motion morphemes and the corresponding free morphemes in Chinese

Motion Free morpheme Bound morpheme

‘run’ 跑 pǎo 奔 bēn

‘fly’ 飞 fēi 翔 xiáng, 翱 áo

‘arrive’ 到 dào 至 zhì, 达 dá

‘enter’ 进 jìn 入 rù

‘return’ 回 huí 归 guī, 返 fǎn

‘cross’ 过 guò 越 yuè

‘ascend’ 升 shēng 起 qǐ 21

‘apart, go away’ ? 开 kāi, 走 zǒu 22

                                                                                                                         21 When qǐ ‘rise’ was an independent verb denoting spontaneous motion, it usually did not denote motion involving the figure’s displacement in space, but rather positional change from a kneeling/lying/sitting position to a standing position. However, in Modern Chinese, when qǐ is a bound morpheme, it can occur in motion constructions where the figure carries out motion that involves displacement, as in (i); so qǐ ‘rise’ as a bound morpheme is discussed in this study.

(i) 太阳升起了 tàiyáng shēng-qǐ le sun ascend-rise ASP ‘The sun arose.’

22 Kāi ‘away’ and zǒu ‘away’ can also be used as free morphemes in Modern Chinese. However, when they are free morphemes, they function as nonscalar change motion morphemes (i.e. manner-of-motion morphemes): kāi denotes a motion event in a driving manner, and zǒu denotes a motion event in a walking manner. For instance, kāi and zǒu are the only motion morphemes in (i), and specify the manner of motion. (i) a. 我在酒店的院子里开一辆小面包车

wǒ zài jiǔdiàn de yuànzi-lǐ kāi yí-liàng xiǎo miànbāochē I at hotel POSS yard-inside drive one-CLF small bread.car ‘I drove a small microbus in the yard of the hotel.’ (PKU Corpus)

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Some of these bound morphemes can combine with a variety of motion verbs. For

instance, rù ‘enter’ can follow diverse motion verbs, as shown in (40).

(40) a. 它便马上跳入水中或钻入洞中

tā biàn mǎshàng tiào-rù shuǐ-zhōng huò zuān-rù dòng-zhōng

it then right.away jump-enter water-inside or dig-enter hole-inside

‘It [mudskipper] then immediately jumps into the water or digs into the hole.’

(PKU Corpus)

b. 已有一半陷入地下

yǐ yǒu yíbàn xiàn-rù dì-xià

already have one.half sink-enter ground-below

‘[Some wooden houses] have sank into the ground halfway.’ (PKU Corpus)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          b. 他每天在公园里走一圈

tā měitiān zài gōngyuán-lǐ zǒu yì quān he everyday at park-inside walk one circle ‘He walked around the park once every day.’ (PKU Corpus)

 When they function as free morphemes and specify a manner of motion, they are not

compatible with adverbials denoting another manner of motion. For instance, the sentences in (ii) are unacceptable because a driving/walking event cannot be carried out in a running manner.

(ii) a. *他跑着开了 b. *他跑着走了.

*tā pǎo-zhe kāi le * tā pǎo-zhe zǒu le he run-IMP drive ASP he run-IMP walk ASP # ‘He drove by running.’ # ‘He walked by running.’ (intended meaning)

In contrast, when kāi and zǒu occur immediately after a manner-of-motion morpheme, e.g., pǎo ‘run’, they function as complements and specify deictic directions, as in (iii), cf. (ii).

(iii) a. 他跑开了 b. 他跑走了 tā pǎo-kāi le tā pǎo-zǒu le he run-away ASP he run-away ASP ‘He ran away.’ ‘He ran away.’  

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c. 贺龙率领剩下的人退入湘西

hèlóng shuàilǐng shèngxià de rén tuì-rù xiāngxī

He.Long lead rest REL people recede-enter Xiang.west

‘He Long lead the rest people and receded into the west of Xiang [Hunan

Province].’ (PKU Corpus)

Such bound morphemes are called “productive bound motion morphemes” in this study.

In contrast, there are also bound morphemes which are relatively unproductive. For

instance, -fā ‘set off’ in (41) is a bound morpheme following the free morpheme chū

‘exit’.

(41) 哥伦布带着船队从西班牙出发

Gēlúnbù dài-zhe chuánduì cóng xībānyá chū-fā Columbus lead-IMP fleet from Spain depart

‘Columbus led the fleet and set off from Spain.’ (PKU Corpus)

However, -fā can only co-occur with a very limited set of morphemes to denote a directed

motion, as in chū-fā (lit.) ‘exit set out’ and jìn-fā (lit.) ‘enter set out’. It is usually not

productively compounded with other morphemes, e.g., *fēi-fā (lit.) ‘fly set off’, *tuì-fā

(lit.) ‘recede set out’, as opposed to other relatively more productive bound motion

mrophemes, e.g., -rù ‘enter’, as in jìn-rù ‘enter enter’, fēi-rù ‘fly enter’, tuì-rù ‘recede

enter’. Non-productive bound morphemes are not discussed in this dissertation.

This study discusses only productive bound motion morphemes for two reasons. First,

they still lexically specify manners or directions in Modern Chinese. As illustrated in (42),

the verbs fēi ‘fly’, piāo ‘drift’, and pǎo ‘run’ are nonscalar change motion morphemes

that do not specify a direction of motion, so it is the bound morphemes, rù ‘enter’, qǐ

‘rise’, kāi ‘apart’ that contribute the directional interpretation in the motion constructions

in (42).

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(42) a. 飞机飞入云层中

fēijī fēi-rù yúncéng-zhōng

plane fly-enter cloud-inside

‘The plane flew into the cloud.’

b. 湖面飘起烟雾

húmiàn piāo-qǐ yānwù

lake.surface drift-rise fog

‘Fog drifted up from the lake.’

c. 小猫跑开了

xiǎomāo pǎo-kāi le

little.cat run-apart ASP

‘The kitten ran away.’

Second, these productive bound motion morphemes were independent verbs denoting

directed motion in earlier stages of Chinese. A study of their distribution in Modern

Chinese may shed light on other motion morphemes such as dào ‘arrive’, lái ‘come’, and

qù ‘go’ in Modern Chinese which are claimed by previous studies to be in the process of

grammaticalization, that is, changing from more lexical morephemes to more

grammatical morphemes. In addition, Chapter 4 will discuss the constraints on the

ordering of motion morphemes in multi-morpheme motion constructions. The discussion

will be more comprehensive and consistent if it covers the ordering of these bound

morphemes as well. In the next section, I show how the scale structure of productive

bound motion morphemes can be identified via the tests proposed in Section 3.2.

3.5.2 Identifying the scale structure of productive bound motion morphemes The scales asscociated with bound motion morphemes can be identified via the tests

introduced in Section 3.2. In this section, the scale structure of four bound morphemes, -

dēng ‘climb, mount’, -kāi ‘away’ (lit.) ‘drive’, -yuè ‘cross’, and -rù ‘enter’ are analyzed

as examples.

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The first test is to determine whether these four morphemes lexicalize a scale. As

illustrated in (43), only -dēng ‘climb, mount’ is incompatible with a variety of manner-of-

motion morphemes.

(43) a. *飞/飘/跳登

*fēi/piāo/tiào-dēng

fly/float/jump-climb

#‘climb by flying/floating/jumping’ (intended meaning)

b. 飞/飘/跳开

fēi/piāo/tiào-kāi

fly/float/jump-away

‘move away by flying/floating/jumping’

c. 飞/飘/跳越

fēi/piāo/tiào-yuè

fly/float/jump-cross

‘move across [a ground] by flying/floating/jumping’

d. 飞/飘/跳入

fēi/piāo/tiào-rù

fly/float/jump-enter

‘move into [a ground] by flying/floating/jumping’

Therefore, -dēng ‘climb, mount’ lexicalizes a manner of motion, whereas -kāi ‘away’ (lit.

‘drive’), -yuè ‘cross’, and -rù ‘enter’ lexicalize a scale.

Then, it is necessary to identify what kind of scale is lexicalized in kāi ‘away’ (lit.

‘drive’), yuè ‘cross’, and rù ‘enter’. Because these morphemes do not occur alone, they

are tested in combination with a nonscalar change motion morpheme, e.g., fēi ‘fly’. A

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nonscalar change motion morpheme does not have scale, so it will not interfere with the

interpretation of the scale structure lexicalized by the bound morpheme.

The gèng ‘more’ comparative test is used to determine whether the three morphemes

lexicalize open scales. As shown in (44), fēi-kāi ‘fly away’ is compatible with the gèng

comparative, but fēi-yuè ‘fly-cross’ and fēi-rù ‘fly-enter’ are not, which indicates that kāi

lexicalizes an open scale, whereas yuè and rù lexicalize closed scales.

(44) a. 小鸟 5分钟前飞开了, 现在飞开得更远了

xiǎoniǎo 5-fēnzhōng qián fēi-kāi le,

little.bird 5-minute before fly-away ASP

xiànzài fēi-kāi de gèng yuǎn le

now fly-away MOD more far ASP

‘The little bird flew away five minutes ago, and now it flew further away.’

b.飞机 5分钟前飞越国境了, *现在飞越得更远了

fēijī 5-fēnzhōng qián fēi-yuè guójìnɡ le,

plane 5-minute before fly-cross nation.boundary ASP

*xiànzài fēi-yuè de gèng yuǎn le

now fly-cross MOD more far ASP

‘The plane flew across the national boundary five minutes ago, #and now it

flew across further.’ (intended meaning)

c.飞机 5分钟前飞入旧金山机场了, *现在飞入得更远了

fēijī 5-fēnzhōng qián fēi-rù Jiùjīnshān jīchǎng le ,

plane 5-minute before fly-enter San.Francisco airport ASP

*xiànzài fēi- rù de gèng yuǎn le

now fly-enter MOD more far ASP

‘The plane flew into the San Francisco Airport five minutes ago, #and now it

flew further. ’ (intended meaning)

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Finally, we need to determine whether yuè ‘cross’ and rù ‘enter’ lexicalize multi-

point or two-point closed scales. As illustrated in (45), fēi-yuè ‘fly-cross’ allows the

durative adverbial in (45a), where the ground hǎixiá ‘channel’ has a complex path (with

multiple points, see Section 3.3.2); but it is incompatible with the durative adverbial in

(45b), where the ground guójìng ‘national boundary’ is understood to be associated with

only two points.

(45) a. 飞机从法国飞越英吉利海峡到英国，飞越了 20分钟还没到英国

fēijī cóng Fǎguó fēi-yuè Yīngjílì-Hǎixiá dào Yīngguó,

plane from France fly-cross English-Channel arrive British

fēi-yuè-le 20-fēnzhōng hái méi dào Yīngguó

fly-cross-ASP 20-minute still NEG arrive British

‘The plane flew from France to British crossing the English Channel. It has

been flying for 20 minutes, but has not arrived at British yet.’

b. 飞机从法国飞越过境线到德国，*飞越了 20分钟还没到德国

fēijī cóng Fǎguó fēi-yuè guójìngxiàn dào Déguó,

plane from France fly-cross national.boundary arrive Germany

*fēi-yuè-le 20-fēnzhōng hái méi dào Déguó

fly-cross-ASP 20-minute still NEG arrive Germany

‘The plane flew from France to Germany crossing the national boundary. #It

has been flying for 20 minutes, but has not arrived at Germany yet.’

(intended meaning)

Therefore, like the corresponding free morpheme guò ‘cross’ (see Section 3.3.2), yuè

‘cross’ lexicalizes a closed scale, but it does not specify whether the scale is composed of

multiple points or two points. In contrast, the bound motion morpheme rù ‘enter’

lexicalizes a two-point closed scale; this is illustrated in (46), where a durative adverbial

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is not allowed to co-occur with -rù ‘enter’ even if the ground fángjiān ‘room’ can be

understood as a scale with multiple points.

(46) 小鸟从窗户外飞入房间，*飞入了 20分钟，还没到房间里

xiǎoniǎo cóng chuānghù-wài fēi-rù fángjiān,

small.bird from window-outside fly-enter room

*fēi-rù-le 20-fēnzhōng, hái méi dào fángjiān-lǐ

fly-enter-ASP 20-minute still NEG arrive room-inside

‘The small bird flew into the room from outside the window; #it has been

flying in for 20 minutes, but still has not yet arrived at the room.’

(intended meaning)

The tests above show that we can identify what kind of scales are lexicalized by Chinese

bound motion morphemes, which thus makes it possible to predict the order of motion

morphemes in Chapters 4 and 5. Table 3.6 presents the four types of bound motion

morphemes in Chinese classified according to their scale structure.

Table 3. 6 Examples of Chinese bound motion morphemes classified according to their

scale structure

Types Nonscalar

change

Open scale Multi-point

closed scale

Two-point

closed scale

Bound

motion

morphemes

xiáng ‘fly’

bēn ‘run’

xíng ‘walk’

yuè ‘jump’

etc.

kāi ‘apart’ (lit.) ‘drive’

zǒu ‘away’ (lit.) ‘walk’

qǐ ‘rise’

etc.

yuè ‘cross’

guī ‘return’

fǎn ‘return’

etc.

yuè ‘cross’

rù ‘enter’

zhì ‘arrive’

dá ‘arrive’

etc.

3.6 Summary

This chapter introduced the notion of scale structure. In addition, a set of independent

tests was proposed to classify Chinese motion morphemes into four types according to

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their scale structure. As shown in Section 3.5, these tests can also be applied to Chinese

bound motion morphemes. Given that the scale structure of all individual Chinese motion

morphemes can be determined, it is now possible to analyze the motion morphemes in all

types of multi-morpheme motion constructions.

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Chapter 4

The Order of Motion Morphemes in

Chinese MMMCs

In Chapter 3, I showed that Chinese motion morphemes can be classified into four types

according to the kind of scale they lexicalize: nonscalar change motion morphemes (e.g.,

fēi ‘fly’), open scale motion morphemes (e.g., tuì ‘recede’), multi-point closed scale

motion morphemes (e.g., huí ‘return’), and two-point closed scale motion morphemes

(e.g., jìn ‘enter’). Two or more motion morphemes, either lexicalizing the same or

different types of scale, can frequently occur in a motion construction in Chinese. For

instance, pǎo ‘run’, a nonscalar change motion morpheme, and jìn ‘enter’, a two-point

closed scale motion morpheme, can occur together in pǎo-jìn fánɡjiān run-enter room

‘run into the room’; both fǎn ‘return’ and huí ‘return’ are multi-point closed scale motion

morphemes, and they can occur together in fǎn-huí fánɡjiān return-return room ‘return to

the room’. This chapter first presents a comprehensive description of Chinese motion

constructions consisting of more than one motion morpheme, i.e. MMMCs. It then

presents examples showing that the order of motion morphemes in MMMCs is not easy

to describe generally. However, I argue that the order is predictable: the morphemes in an

MMMC follow a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy that is based on the scale structure of

motion morphemes.

In Section 4.1, I introduce the kinds of motion morphemes that can occur in an

MMMC. Section 4.2 shows that the motion morphemes can occur in various positions in

the construction. In Section 4.3, I propose the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy, which is

formulated to predict the order of the morphemes. As will be verified by two corpus

studies in Chapter 5, the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy is able to account for a large range

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of Chinese MMMCs. However, there are also a few motion constructions whose

morpheme order is not handled by the hierarchy. These motion constructions include

those with closed scale motion morphemes and dào ‘arrive’, those with the open scale

motion morphemes tuì ‘recede’ and shànɡ ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’, constructions in which

the deictic motion morphemes lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’ follow other motion morphemes,

and constructions consisting of morphemes denoting exactly the same type of motion

(“juxtaposed motion synonyms”). I present these motion constructions in Section 4.4 and

show that not all of them should be considered exceptions to the hierarchy.

4.1 Chinese MMMCs consisting of multiple motion morphemes

Multiple motion morphemes can occur together in a Chinese motion construction if these

morphemes are semantically compatible. Semantic compatibility in this study refers to

the compatibility of different components (e.g., manner, direction, medium) of a motion

event denoted by different motion morphemes. For instance, a figure usually can enter a

region in a running manner, so the morpheme denoting the direction of entering jìn ‘enter’

and the morpheme denoting the manner of running pǎo ‘run’ are compatible and thus can

occur together, as in pǎo-jìn fángjiān run-enter room. Similarly, pǎo ‘run’ denotes motion

along a physical path (e.g., street, field), and shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ specifies

motion either along a path or through the air, so zǒu and shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ can

occur together, as in pǎo-shàng shān-dǐng run-ascend summit ‘run up to the summit’. In

contrast, shēng ‘ascend’/jiàng ‘descend’ usually describes motion through the air/water.

A figure cannot move on a physical path (e.g., running, walking) and through the

air/water (e.g., flying or sinking) at the same time, so pǎo ‘run’ and shēng ‘ascend’/jiàng

‘descend’ are incompatible and do not occur together: *zǒu-shēng walk-ascend/*zǒu-

jiàng walk-descend.

4.1.1 Motion constructions consisting of two motion morphemes

Nonscalar change motion morphemes (i.e. manner-of-motion morphemes) and scalar

change motion morphemes (i.e. path morphemes) can occur together in an MMMC. For

example, the nonscalar change motion morpheme zǒu ‘walk’ and the scalar change

motion morpheme jìn ‘enter’ co-occur in (1).

  98  

(1) 他走进教室

tā zǒu-jìn jiàoshì

he walk-enter classroom

‘He walked into the classroom.’

In addition, two scalar change motion morphemes can occur together too, such as huí

‘return’ and dào ‘arrive’ in (2).

(2) 他回到教室

tā huí-dào jiàoshì

he return-arrive classroom

‘He returned to the classroom.’

As discussed in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, two nonscalar change motion morphemes

specifying different manners of motion usually do not co-occur because a motion event in

a particular manner cannot be realized in another manner at the same time, as in (3).

(3) *他跑跳

*tā pǎo-tiào

he run-jump

# ‘He jumped in a running manner/He ran in a jumping manner.’

(intended meaning)

Co-ocurring manner-of-motion morphemes are possible only when the first morpheme

loses its literal meaning and functions as a modifier of the second morpheme. As

illustrated in (4), the first morpheme fēi ‘fly’ does not specify a flying event, but is a

modifier of the morpheme pǎo ‘run’, indicating that the moving objects are running at a

very fast speed as if they are flying.

  99  

(4) 他们在车厢顶上飞跑，一个个都像野猴子似的

tāmen zài chēxiāng dǐng-shàng fēi-pǎo,

they at carriage top-on.top.of fly-run

yígègè dōu xiàng yě hóuzi shìde

one.CLF all like wild monkey like

‘They are running at a speed of flying on top of the carriage. Each looks like a

wild monkey.’ (PKU Corpus)

However, two nonscalar change motion morphemes expressing the same manner can

sometimes occur together, but usually only if at least one of the morphemes is a bound

morpheme. For instance, the free morpheme fēi ‘fly’ and the bound morphemes xiáng

‘soar’ and áo ‘soar’ all express motion in a flying manner. Among them, fēi ‘fly’ and

xiáng ‘soar’, and áo ‘soar’ and xiáng ‘soar’ can occur together, as in (5a-b). But in both

motion constructions, there is at least one bound morpheme.

(5) a. 小鸟在天上飞翔

xiǎoniǎo zài tiān-shàng fēi-xiáng little.bird at sky-above fly-soar

‘The bird is flying in the sky.’

b. 老鹰在天上翱翔

lǎoyīng zài tiān-shàng áo-xiáng old.eagle at sky-above soar-soar

‘The eagle is soaring in the sky.’

4.1.2 Motion constructions consisting of three motion morphemes

Constructions consisting of three motion morphemes are also found in Chinese. As

illustrated in (6), piāo ‘drift’, luò ‘fall’, and dào ‘arrive’ can occur together.

  100  

(6) 一枚雪花从空中飘落到地面

yì méi xuěhuā cóng kōng-zhōng piāo luò dào dìmiàn

one CLF snowflake from sky-inside drift fall arrive ground

‘A snowflake drifts and falls on the ground from the sky.’ (PKU Corpus)

More frequently, a three-morpheme motion construction ends with a deictic morpheme

lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’, as in (7).

(7) a. 小六子慌慌张张地跑进来

Xiǎoliùzǐ huānghuāngzhāngzhāngde pǎo jìn-lái Xiaoliuzi hastily run enter-come

‘Xiaoliuzi ran in (towards the speaker) hastily.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 必须今天赶回去 , 迟了恐怕会被单位辞退

bìxū jīntiān gǎn huí-qù, chí-le kǒngpà huì bèi dānwèi cítuì

must today rush return-go late-ASP afraid will PASS employer dismiss

‘[I] must go back today; [if] I am late, I am afraid I will be dismissed by the

employer.’ (PKU Corpus)

Furthermore, as illustrated in Chapter 3, when a ground NP is not explicitly expressed

in a motion construction, lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ occurs immediately after a motion

morpheme, as in (7); when a ground NP is expressed, lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ must occur after

the NP, as in (8).

(8) a. 一个年轻人跑进宫来

yí ɡè niánqīng rén pǎo-jìn ɡōng lái one CLF young person run-enter palace come

‘A young man ran into the palace (towards the speaker).’ (PKU Corpus)

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b. 所有人都已退回屋外去了

suóyǒu rén dōu yǐ tuì-huí wū-wài qù le

all person all already recede-return house-outside go ASP

‘All people have already receded back to the outside of the house.’

(PKU Corpus)

However, such MMMCs will be treated as two-morpheme MMMCs in this dissertation

because lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ in the final position of a motion construction is no longer a

typical motion morpheme. Further discussion about lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ will be given in

Section 4.4.

4.1.3 Motion constructions consisting of more than three motion morphemes Motion constructions consisting of four motion morphemes are also found in the PKU

Corpus. However, these constructions usually end with lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’: lái ‘come’/qù

‘go’ either occurs immediately after a motion morpheme if there is no ground NP (9a), or

after the ground NP if there is a ground NP (9b).

(9) a. 周遭如同雪花的花瓣又纷纷飘落回去

zhōuzāo rútóng xuěhuā de huābàn yòu fēnfēn piāo-luò huí-qù

around like snowflake REL petal again in.succession drift-fall return-go

‘The petals which are like snowflakes around [him] drifted and fell back

[away from him] in succession.’

(http://www.zongheng.com/rewu/read/61489/1348092.html)

b. 整个人就差点滑落到地上去。

zhěnggè rén jiù chàdiǎn huá-luò-dào dì-shàng qù

whole person then almost slide-fall-arrive floor-on.top.of go

‘The whole person then almost slid and fell onto the ground (away from

speaker).’ (PKU Corpus)

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Like the MMMCs ending with lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ mentioned in Section 4.1.2, the

four-morpheme MMMCs ending with lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ will be treated as three-

morpheme MMMCs in this dissertation because lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ in these constructions

is not real motion morphemes. (See Section 4.4 for a detailed discussion of lái ‘come’/qù

‘go’.)

Motion constructions consisting of more than four motion morphemes (including lái

‘come’/qù ‘go’) are not found in the corpus, although it might be possible that such

constructions are occasionally found in Chinese.

There are cases in which more than four motion morphemes are used together in a

sentence. For instance, (10) has five motion morphemes occurring together.

(10) 普希金跳出来走进了路旁的一家小旅店

Pǔxījīn tiào chū-lái zǒu-jìn-le lù-páng de yì-jiā xiǎo lǚdiàn

Pushkin jump exit-come walk-enter-ASP road-side REL one-CLF small hotel

‘Pushkin jumped out; walked into a small hotel on the roadside.’ (PKU Corpus)

However, this study does not treat the five morphemes in (10) as one motion construction.

Rather, they form two motion constructions: tiào chū-lái jump exit-come ‘jump out

towards the speaker’ and zǒu-jìn… lǚdiàn walk-enter … hotel ‘walk into the hotel’, and

thus express two motion events. The reason is that the two constructions can be separated

by a pause, as in (11a), or connective, as in (11b).

(11) a. 普希金跳出来，走进了路旁的一家小旅店

Pǔxījīn tiào chū-lái, zǒu-jìn-le lù-páng de yì-jiā xiǎo lǚdiàn

Pushkin jump exit-come, walk-enter-ASP road-side REL one-CLF small hotel

‘Pushkin jumped out; walked into a small hotel on the roadside.’

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b. 普希金跳出来 , 然后走进了路旁的一家小旅店

Pǔxījīn tiào chū-lái,

Pushkin jump exit-come

ránhòu zǒu-jìn-le lù-páng de yì-jiā xiǎo lǚdiàn then walk-enter-ASP road-side POSS one-CLF small hotel

‘Pushkin jumped out; then walked into the small hotel on roadside.’

A typical MMMC, e.g., tiào chū-lái jump exit-come or zǒu-jìn… lǚdiàn walk-enter …

hotel, does not allow the insertion of a pause or connective, as in (12) and (13).

(12) a. *普希金跳 , 出来

*Pǔxījīn tiào, chū-lái

Pushkin jump exit -come

#‘Pushkin jumped; came out.’ (intended meaning)

b. *普希金跳 , 然后出来

*Pǔxījīn tiào, ránhòu chū-lái Pushkin jump then exit -come

#‘Pushkin jumped; then came out.’ (intended meaning)

(13) a. *普希金走，进了路旁的一家小旅店

*Pǔxījīn zǒu, jìn-le lù-pánɡ de yì-jiā xiǎo lǚdiàn

Pushkin walk enter-ASP road-side REL one-CLF small hotel

#‘Pushkin walked; entered a small hotel on the roadside.’ (intended meaning)

b. *普希金走，然后进了路旁的一家小旅店

*Pǔxījīn zǒu, ránhòu jìn-le lù-pánɡ de yì-jiā xiǎo lǚdiàn

Pushkin walk then enter-ASP road-side REL one-CLF small hotel

#‘Pushkin walked; then entered a small hotel on the roadside.’

(intended meaning)

  104  

Therefore, this study does not treat sequences of motion morphemes such as the one in

(10) as a single motion construction.

To summarize, Chinese motion constructions can be composed of two or three

motion morphemes; there are also four motion morphemes occurring in a motion

construction, but the last morpheme is usually the deictic morpheme lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’.

(I will come back to the distribution of lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ in the following sections.)

Motion constructions consisting of different number of morphemes are not used with

equal frequencies in Chinese. Their frequencies in selected corpora will be presented in

the two corpus studies presented in Chapter 5.

4.2 Motion morphemes can occur in various positions in Chinese MMMCs As shown in Section 4.1, a motion construction in Chinese can consist of different

numbers of motion morphemes, and these morphemes can be associated with the same or

different scales. In this section, I focus on the order of motion morphemes in Chinese

motion constructions and present examples which might suggest that a generalization

over the morpheme order in the constructions cannot be easily formulated.

In a two-morpheme MMMC consisting of a nonscalar change motion morpheme and

a scalar change motion morpheme, the morpheme order is usually fixed: the nonscalar

change motion morpheme must precede the scalar change motion morpheme, as

illustrated in (14)-(16).

(14) Nonscalar change + open scale

a. 当飞机在晨光中准时飞上蓝天

dāng fēijī zài chénguāng-zhōng zhŭnshí fēi-shàng lántiān

when plane at morning.light-inside on.time fly-ascend blue.sky

‘When the plane flew up the sky in the morning light on time’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *上飞蓝天

*shàng-fēi lántiān

ascend-fly blue.sky

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(15) Nonscalar change + multi-point closed scale

a. 赶紧跑回村子告诉乡人

Gánjǐn pǎo-huí cūnzi gàosu xiāngrén

speedily run-return village tell fellow.villagers

‘[They] immediately ran back to the village and told [it] to their fellow

villagers.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *回跑村子

*huí-pǎo cūnzi

return-run village

(16) Nonscalar change + two-point closed scale

a. 当你走进他的商店

Dāng nǐ zǒu-jìn tā-de shāngdiàn

when you walk-enter he-POSS store

‘When you walk into his store’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *进走他的商店

*jìn-zǒu tā-de shāngdiàn

enter-walk he-POSS store

However, when two scalar change motion morphemes co-occur, their order does not

seem as predictable as in an MMMC consisting of one nonscalar change motion

morpheme and one scalar change motion morpheme. For instance, huí ‘return’ must

follow the scalar change motion morpheme jiànɡ ‘descend’ in (17), but must precede the

scalar change motion dào ‘arrive’ in (18).

  106  

(17) a. 飞机起飞半小时后又降回昆明。

Fēijī qǐfēi bàn -xiǎoshí hòu yòu jiàng-huí Kūnmíng

plane take.off half-hour after again descend-return Kunming

‘Half an hour after the plane took off, it descended back to Kunming.’

(http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2010-06-27/115617717194s.shtml)

b. *回降昆明

*huí-jiàng Kūnmíng

return-descend Kunming

(18) a. 航班起飞 1个小时后，居然又回到了虹桥机场。

Hángbān qǐfēi 1-ɡè xiǎoshí hòu,

flight take.off one -CLF hour after

jūrán yòu huí-dào-le Hóngqiáo-jīchǎng

unexpectedly again return-arrive-ASP Hongqiao-airport

‘After the flight took off one hour ago, it unexpectedly returned to Hongqiao

Airport.’ (http://old.jfdaily.com/gb/jfxww/xlbk/ishidai/node10394/node10397/

userobject1ai1507204.html)

b. *到回虹桥机场

*dào-huí Hóngqiáo-jīchǎng

arrive-return Hongqiao-airport

In addition, two scalar change motion morphemes lexicalizing similar directions may

occur in a construction. However, despite the similar directions expressed in these

morphemes, their relative order may not be flexible. For instance, both tuì ‘recede’ and

huí ‘return’ lexicalize backward motion, but tuì can only precede huí, and not the other

way around, as in (19).

  107  

(19) a. 8月满清军队退回关外。

8 yuè mǎn qīng jūnduì tuì-huí guānwài

8 month Manchu Qing army recede-return pass.outside

‘In August, the Manchurian army receded back to the outside of the pass.’

(http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=209111346)

b. *回退关外

*huí-tuì guānwài

recede-return pass.outside

Furthermore, a bound motion morpheme may occur in combination with its

corresponding free morpheme, i.e. the free morpheme lexicalizing the same meaning as

the bound morpheme, but there seems to be no rule predicting the relative order of the

bound and the free morpheme. For instance, the bound morpheme rù ‘enter’ must follow

its corresponding free morpheme jìn ‘enter’, as show in (20).

(20) a. 客人们进入了一个华丽的大厅

kèrén-men jìn-rù le yí-gè huálì de dàtīng

guest-PL enter-enter ASP one-CLF shining MOD hall

‘The guests entered a shining hall.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *入进大厅

*rù-jìn dàtīng

enter-enter hall

In contrast, the bound morpheme bēn ‘run’ must precede the free morpheme pǎo ‘run’, as

in (21).

  108  

(21) a. 兴冲冲地在马路上奔跑

xìngchōngchōng de zài mǎlù-shang bēn-pǎo

excitedly MOD at street-on.top.of run-run

‘[A Bao] ran excitedly on the street.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *在马路上跑奔

*zài mǎlù-shang pǎo-bēn at street-on.top.of run-run

In addition, although rare, examples are also found in which a free morpheme, e.g., huí

‘return’, and a bound morpheme, e.g., fǎn ‘return’, can occur in either order, as illustrated

in (22).

(22) a. 几个文士就回返了

jǐ gè wénshì jiù huí-fǎn le

several CLF scholar then return-return ASP

‘The several scholars then went back.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 3点钟启程返回学校

3 diǎnzhōng qǐchéng fǎn-huí xuéxiào

3 o’clock set.off return-return school

‘[They] started to go back to school at 3 o’clock.’ (PKU Corpus)

There are also a few motion morphemes that seem to be able to occur after all other

motion morphemes. For instance, dào ‘arrive’ can occur after all types of motion

morphemes. As illustrated in (22), dào can occur after the nonscalar change motion

morpheme pǎo ‘run’, the open scale motion morpheme tuì ‘recede’, the multi-point

closed scale motion morpheme huí ‘return’, and the two-point closed scale motion

morpheme jìn ‘enter’.

  109  

(23) 他跑/退/回/进到学校

tā pǎo/tuì/huí/jìn-dào xuéxiào

he run/recede/return/enter-arrive school

‘He ran to/receded to/returned to/enter the school.’

Like dào ‘arrive’, lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ also can occur after all types of motion morphemes:

(24) a. 他跑/退/回/进来了

tā pǎo/tuì/huí/jìn-lái le

he run/recede/return/enter-come ASP

‘He ran/receded/returned/enter towards the speaker.’

b. 他跑/退/回/进去了

tā pǎo/tuì/huí/jìn-qù le

he run/recede/return/enter-go ASP

‘He ran/receded/returned/enter away from the speaker.’

Dào ‘arrive’ and lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ can occur together too, but their relative orders

are subject to certain restrictions. As illustrated in (25), lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ can

immediately precede dào ‘arrive’.

(25) a. 1990年 10月，成洁又一次来到北京

1990 nián 10 yuè, Chéngjié yòu yí-cì lái-dào Běijīng

1990 year 10 month Cheng.Jie again one-CLF come-arrive Beijing

‘Cheng Jie came to Beijing (towards the speaker) again in October, 1990.’

(PKU Corpus)

  110  

b. 去到车站，车子老不来23

qù-dào chēzhàn, chēzi lǎo bù lái

go-arrive station car always NEG come

‘[I] went to the station, [but] the car always did not come’ (PKU Corpus)

In contrast, dào ‘arrive’ cannot immediately precede lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ (26); rather, it

must be followed by a ground NP before preceding lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ (27), cf. (25).

(26) *到来/去24

*dào-lái/qù

arrive-come/go

‘arrive (at a location) towards/away from the speaker’ (intended meaning)

                                                                                                                         23 However, qù-dào go-arrive is much less frequently used than lái-dào come-arrive, as shown by the PKU Corpus. There are about 30,000 instances of lái-dào, but only about 600 instances of qù-dào in the corpus. 24 Dào-lái arrive-come is found in the PKU Corpus. However, there is no instance in which dào-lái is used as a verbal compound and denotes physical arrival at a deictic center. Instead, it usually refers to non-physical motion, as in (i). (i) 我一生中最伟大的时刻到来了 wǒ yìshēng -zhōng zuì wěidà de shíkè dào-lái le my one.life-inside most great REL moment arrive-come ASP ‘The greatest moment in my life came.’ (PKU Corpus) In addition, unlike the motion morphemes in MMMCs, dào-lái has become a compound in that it does not allow the potential markers –de/bù, e.g., (ii). (ii) *最伟大的时刻到得来

*zuì wěidà de shíkè dào-de-lái most great REL moment arrive-POS.POT-come # ‘The greatest moment can come.’ (intended meaning)

Dào-lái is understood as physical motion only when it is used as a noun, as in (iii).

(iii) 中方工作人员鼓掌欢迎国王夫妇的到来 zhōngfāng gōngzuò rényuán ɡúzhǎng huānyíng ɡuówáng fūfù-de dàolái Chinese work staff applaud welcome king couple-POSS arrival ‘The Chinese working staff applauded to welcome the arrival of the King and the Queen.’ (PKU Corpus)

In contrast, dào-qù arrive-go is not allowed either as a verbal construction or a noun.  

  111  

(27) a. 我这次到北京来，去一个朋友家

wǒ zhè-cì dào Běijīng lái, qù yí-gè péngyou jiā

I this-time arrive Beijing come go one-CLF friend house

‘This time I came to Beijing, I went a friend’s house.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 她大概先到车站去了

tā dàgài xiān dào chēzhàn qù le

she probably in.advance arrive station go ASP

‘She probably has gone to the station in advance.’ (PKU Corpus)

In constructions consisting of more than two motion morphemes, the morphemes

must appear in a certain order as well. As illustrated in (28), piāo ‘drift’ must be followed

by luò ‘fall’, and then by dào ‘arrive’.

(28) a. 一枚雪花从空中飘落到地面

yì méi xuěhuā cóng kōng-zhōng piāo-luò-dào dìmiàn

one CLF snowflake from sky-inside drift-fall-arrive ground

‘A snowflake drifts and falls on the ground from the sky.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *飘到落/*落飘到/*落到飘/*到落飘/*到飘落/

*piāo-dào-luò/*luò-piāo-dào/*luò-dào-piāo/*dào-luò-piāo/*dào-piāo-luò

To summarize this section, when a nonscalar change motion morpheme and a scalar

change motion morpheme co-occur in a motion construction, the former precedes the

latter. However, when a construction consists of more than one scalar or nonscalar

change motion, the relative order of these morphemes requires further investigation.

Furthermore, the various orderings of Chinese motion morphemes indicate that the two-

way classification of motion morphemes into manner-of-motion and path morphemes (or

nonscalar change and scalar change motion morphemes) is not fine-grained enough to

  112  

provide a comprehensive account of the possible orders. Therefore, it is necessary to

investigate whether there is a better generalization that can predict the morpheme order;

and if so, what factors the generalization is based on.

4.3 Predicting morpheme order in MMMCs: The Motion Morpheme Hierarchy

In this section, I show that morpheme order in Chinese motion constructions is

predictable based on the scale structure the morphemes lexicalize. The motion

morphemes in an MMMC follow a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy.

Chapter 3 shows that Chinese motion morphemes can be classified into four major

types according to the scales that each lexicalizes: nonscalar change motion morphemes

(e.g., fēi ‘fly’), open scale motion morphemes (e.g., tuì ‘recede’), multi-point closed scale

motion morphemes (e.g., huí ‘return’), and two-point closed scale motion morphemes

(e.g., jìn ‘enter’). In this section, I argue that the order of motion morphemes in an

MMMC is closely associated with the types of scale that these morphemes lexicalize.

More specifically, their order can be characterized using a Motion Morpheme Hierarchy

consisting of the four types of motion morphemes that emerge based on the scale they

lexicalize:

(29)

When semantically compatible motion morphemes from different classes co-occur in a

motion construction, they will be ordered from left to right according to how their types

appear in the hierarchy in (29). Because a multi-point and a two-point closed scale

Nonscalar change:

fēi ‘fly’

piāo ‘float, drift’

pǎo ‘run’

zǒu ‘walk’

chōng ‘rush’

etc.

Open scale:

tuì ‘recede’

shàng ‘ascend’,

xià ‘descend’

shēng ‘ascend’,

jiàng ‘descend’

luò ‘fall’,

etc.

Closed scale:

(a) Multi-point closed scale: huí ‘return’, lái ‘come’

qù ‘go’, guò ‘cross’

(b) Two-point closed scale: jìn ‘enter’, chū ‘exit’,

guò ‘cross’, dào ‘arrive’

  113  

motion morpheme usually do not occur together in a motion construction and both occur

in the same position in sequences of multiple motion morphemes, these two types are not

differentiated in the hierarchy; instead, they are grouped together as one type, i.e. closed

scale motion morphemes, in the hierarchy.

As previously observed in Section 4.1, two or more motion morphemes can occur

together in a Chinese MMMC. I first provide examples of two-morpheme MMMCs to

illustrate how the hierarchy is intended to be used to predict morpheme order.

In a construction consisting of two motion morphemes, the hierarchy predicts that if

the type of the first motion morpheme is located to the left of the type of the second

motion morpheme in the hierarchy, then the morpheme of the first type precedes the

morpheme of the other type in an MMMC. Nonscalar change motion morphemes occupy

the leftmost position of the hierarchy in (29). Therefore, a nonscalar change motion

morpheme such as fēi ‘fly’ is predicted to precede any semantically compatible motion

morphemes that belong to the other three types in the hierarchy. As illustrated in (30)-

(32), there are attested examples of fēi preceding the open scale motion morpheme tuì

‘recede’, the multi-point closed scale motion morpheme huí ‘return’, and the two-point

closed scale motion morpheme jìn ‘enter’, as in the (a) sentences in (30)-(32); whereas

the reverse orders are not acceptable, as shown by the (b) sentences in (30)-(32).

(30) a. 向后飞退的黄土

xiàng hòu fēi-tuì de huángtǔ

toward back fly-recede REL yellow.dust

‘the yellow dust that is flying back’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *退飞

*tuì-fēi

recede-fly

  114  

(31) a. 野鸭刚飞回北方

yěyā gāng fēi-huí běifāng

wild.duck just fly-return north

‘The wild ducks just flew back to the north.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *回飞

*huí-fēi return-fly

(32) a. 一只燕子飞进教室

yì.zhī yànzi fēi-jìn jiàoshì

one.CLF swallow fly-enter classroom

‘A swallow flew into the classroom.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *进飞

*jìn-fēi

enter-fly

Similarly, the class of open scale motion morphemes is located to the left of the class

of closed motion morphemes, i.e. multi-point and two-point closed scale motion

morphemes. Therefore, an open scale motion morpheme, e.g., tuì ‘recede’, is predicted to

precede a closed scale motion morpheme. (33)-(34) illustrate that tuì ‘recede’ can precede

the multi-point closed scale motion morpheme huí ‘return’ and the two-point closed scale

motion morpheme jìn ‘enter’, but not vice versa.

(33) a. 军队退回陕西

jūnduì tuì-huí Shǎnxī

army recede-return Shaanxi

‘The army receded back to Shaanxi. ’ (PKU Corpus)

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b. *回退陕西

*huí-tuì Shǎnxī

return-recede Shaanxi

(34) a. 鲁鲁慢慢退进了里屋

Lǔlǔ mànmàn tuì-jìn-le lǐwū

Lulu slowly recede-enter-ASP back.room

‘Lulu slowly receded into the back room.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *进退里屋

*jìn-tuì lǐwū

enter-recede back.room

In a construction consisting of three motion morphemes with each lexicalizing a

different type of scale, the order of the three morphemes from left to right should follow

the hierarchy from left to right, too. For instance, (28), repeated here as (35), has an

MMMC with three motion morphemes and the three morphemes, piāo ‘drift’, luò ‘fall’,

and dào ‘arrive’ indeed follow the order predicted by the hierarchy:

(35) 一枚雪花从空中飘落到地面

yì méi xuěhuā cóng kōng-zhōng piāo-luò-dào dìmiàn

one CLF snowflake from sky-inside drift-fall-arrive ground

‘A snowflake drifts and falls on the ground from the sky.’ (PKU Corpus)

Section 4.1 introduced motion constructions consisting of more than three motion

morphemes, and pointed that these usually include a deictic motion morpheme lái

‘come’/qù ‘go’, e.g., piāo-luò-huí-qù drift-fall-return-go in (9a), repeated as (36).

Nonscalar change

piāo ‘drift

Open scale luò ‘fall’

(two-point) closed scale dào ‘arrive’

  116  

(36) 周遭如同雪花的花瓣又纷纷飘落回去

zhōuzāo rútóng xuěhuā de huābàn yòu fēnfēn piāo-luò-huí-qù

around like snowflake REL petal again in.succession drift-fall-return-go

‘The petals which are like snowflakes around [him] drifted and fell back [away

from him] in succession.’

(http://www.zongheng.com/rewu/read/61489/1348092.html)

In such constructions, the order of the non-deictic motion morphemes usually is

consistent with the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy too, as shown in (37) for (36).

(37)

However, the position of qù ‘go’ in (37) is not predicted by the hierarchy. I will argue

that the distribution of qù ‘go’ (as well as lái ‘come’) at the end of a motion construction

is not an exception to the hierarchy. I will come back to these constructions when lái

‘come’/qù ‘go’ is analyzed in Section 4.4.3.

(31)-(34) show that both multi-point and two-point closed scale motion morphemes

can follow nonscalar change and open scale motion morphemes. However, the two types

of closed scale motion morphemes usually do not occur together in a construction. For

instance, huí ‘return’ is a multi-point closed motion morpheme and jìn ‘enter’ is a two-

point closed motion morpheme, but neither *huí-jìn fángjiān return-enter room nor *jìn-

huí fángjiān enter-return room is acceptable in Chinese. Therefore, although these two

types differ in whether they lexicalize multi-point or two-point scales, they are grouped

together as “closed scale motion morphemes” in the rightmost position in the hierarchy.

Two corpus studies that verify the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy will be presented in

Chapter 5. Before that, in the next section, I first introduce a few motion constructions

that are not covered by the hierarchy.

Nonscalar change

piāo ‘drift

Open scale luò ‘fall’

(multi-point) closed scale huí ‘return’

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4.4 Motion constructions not covered by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy

The Motion Morpheme Hierarchy in (29) is intended to predict the order of motion

morphemes of different types that occur in an MMMC. There are also motion

constructions in which morphemes of the same type occur together that are not covered

by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy. There are four such types of motion constructions:

(a) constructions involving closed scale motion morphemes and dào ‘arrive’; (b)

constructions consisting of the open scale motion morphemes tuì ‘recede’ and shànɡ

‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’, (c) motion constructions ending with lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’, and (d)

motion constructions consisting of morphemes denoting exactly the same motion events

(“juxtaposed motion synonyms”). In this section, I introduce each of them and show that

(a) and (b) are MMMCs whose order is not predicted by the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy, whereas (c) and (d) should not be treated in the same way as the other

MMMCs discussed in this study, thus they should not be considered exceptions to the

hierarchy.

4.4.1 Constructions with closed scale motion morphemes and dào ‘arrive’

As shown in Section 3.3.1 in Chapter 3, dào ‘arrive’ is a two-point closed scale motion

morpheme. Like other two-point closed scale motion morphemes such as jìn ‘enter’ and

chū ‘exit’, dào ‘arrive’ can follow a nonscalar change motion morpheme as in (38) or an

open scale motion morpheme as in (39), and it cannot precede these morphemes. This

pattern is consistent with the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy.

(38) a. 那群小鸟飞到树上

nà qún xiǎoniǎo fēi-dào shù-shàng

that group little.bird fly-arrive tree-on

‘That group of birds flew onto the tree.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *到飞树上

*dào-fēi shù-shàng

arrive-fly tree-on.top.of

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(39) a. 球员退到了场外

qiúyuán tuì-dào-le chǎng-wài

player recede-arrive-ASP court-outside

‘The players receded outside of the court.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *到退场外

*dào-tuì chǎng-wài

arrive-recede court-outside

However, unlike other two-point closed scale motion morphemes which usually do

not co-occur with closed scale motion morphemes, dào ‘arrive’ can also follow multi-

point closed scale motion morphemes as in (40), and two-point closed scale motion

morphemes, as in (41) and (42); again, it cannot precede these morphemes.

(40) a. 我们回到树村

wǒmen huí-dào Shùcūn

we return-arrive tree.village

‘We returned to Tree Village.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *到回树村

*dào-huí Shùcūn

arrive-return tree.village

(41) a. 新娘由女媒人陪同进到屋内

xīnniáng yóu nǚ méiren péitóng jìn-dào wū-nèi

bride by female matchmaker accompany enter-arrive room-inside

‘The bride went into the room, accompanied by the female matchmaker.’

(PKU Corpus)

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b. *到进屋内

*dào-jìn wūnèi

arrive-enter room-inside

(42) a. 大家又出到神厅外面来坐25

dàjiā yòu chū-dào shéntīng-wàimiàn lái zuò

everyone again exit -arrive shrine-outside come sit

‘Everyone came outside of the shrine to sit.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. *到出神厅外面

*dào-chū shéntīng-wàimiàn

arrive-exit shrine-outside

                                                                                                                         25 The two-point closed scale motion morpheme chū ‘exit’ in Modern Mandarin Chinese usually takes a source NP as its complement, whereas dào ‘arrive’ takes a goal NP as its complement. Therefore, dào is not expected to follow chū and share one locative NP, e.g., ?chū-dào fángzi-wài exit-arrive house-outside. However, some examples of chū-dào followed by a locative NP are found the PKU Corpus, such as (42). In these examples, the locative NP is understood as the goal of the arrival event, but not the source of the exiting event. In other words, the source NP is not explicitly expressed, although it can be inferred from the context. For example, the source of the exiting event in (42) is shrine.

Levin et al. (2009:16) observe that in English as well as some other languages, prepositions such as in and on can have a directional goal reading when they occur after some manner-of-motion verbs, e.g., jump on the bed (ibid.). They propose that the reading does not come from the manner-of-motion verb, but from the context, and usually is only possible when the length of the motion event is short. For instance, only if the moving object is standing right besides the bed, can on in jump on the bed have the meaning of onto.

Levin et al.’s proposal can also be applied to explaning the interpretation of the NP after chū-dào. When chū and dào occur together and take a locative NP, the length of the path from exiting a source location to the arrival at the goal location is very short. The goal is usually right outside the source of the exiting event. For example, (i) is much more acceptable than (ii). This explains why chū-dào is occasionally found in the PKU Corpus.

(i) ?(从房里)出到房外 ?(cóng fáng-lǐ ) chū-dào fáng-wài from house-inside exit-arrive house-outside ‘exit (the house) and arrive at the outside of the house’ (ii) *(从家里)出到学校

*(cóng jiā-lǐ) chū-dào xuéxiào from house-inside exit-arrive school # ‘exit (the house) and arrive at the school.’ (intended meaning)

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Therefore, dào ‘arrive’ is special in that it can follow any type of motion morpheme in

Chinese. In this study, I treat MMMCs consisting of closed scale motion morpheme and

dào ‘arrive’ as a special type of construction. Such MMMCs will be further investigated

in the corpus studies in Chapter 5, and its behavior will be discussed there.

4.4.2 Constructions with the open scale motion morphemes tuì ‘recede’ and shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’

Although shàng ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’ usually require explicitly expressed

information about the ground, they lexicalize open scales according to the tests in

Chapter 3. Furthermore, as predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy, shàng/xià can

follow nonscalar change motion morphemes (43a-b), precede multi-point closed scale

motion morphemes (44a-b), and two-point closed scale motion morphemes (45a-b).26

(43) a. 它也随之飞上天空

tā yě suí zhī fēi-shàng tiānkōng

it also follow them fly-ascend sky

‘It [the bird] also followed them and flew up to the sky.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 一只大黑乌鸦飞下来27

yì zhī dà hēi wūyā fēi xià-lái

one CLF big black crow fly descend-come

‘A big black crow flew down (towards the speaker).’ (PKU Corpus)

                                                                                                                         26 However, the number of attested instances of shàng/xià followed by closed scale motion morphemes that denote motion events is very small both in the PKU Corpus and the internet. Further study is necessary for their low frequencis of occurrence. 27 There is more discussion of lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ as the final morpheme of an MMMC in Section 4.4.3.  

  121  

(44) a. 斐邂一进家门立即打算上回房间去

Fěixiè yí jìn jiāmén lìjí dǎsuan shàng-huí fángjiān qù

Feixie one enter house.door instantly plan ascend-return room go

‘Once Fei Xie entered the door, he instantly planned to go up and

return to his room.’

(http://wenku.baidu.com/view/2042a8db50e2524de5187e58.html)

b. 张菲菲笑了笑，道：“我有些累了,下回房间休息了,…”

Zhānɡ Fēifēi xiào-le xiào, dào: “wǒ yǒu xiē lèi le,

Zhang Feifei smile-ASP smile say I have some tired ASP

xià-huí fángjiān xiūxi le,…”

descend-return room rest ASP

‘Zhang Feifei smiled and said, “I am a little tired. I am going to go down and

return to the room to rest.”’

(http://vip.book.sina.com.cn/book/chapter_119202_85474.html)

(45) a. 如果没有吊绳的话，想上进房间来，那简直比登天还难。

rúguǒ méiyǒu diàoshéng dehuà, xiǎng shàng-jìn fángjiān lái,

if NEG sling if want ascend-enter room come

nà jiǎnzhí bǐ dēng tiān hái nán

then almost than climb sky even difficult

‘If there is no sling, to ascend and go into the room is even more difficult than

to climb the sky.’ (http://www.17k.com/chapter/55124/2472620.html)

b. 雨下进心里了

yǔ xià-jìn xīn-lǐ le

rain descend-enter heart-inside ASP

‘The rain fell into our hearts.’ (http://www.xici.net/#d5917593.htm)

  122  

However, shàng and xià are special in that they can follow the open scale motion

morpheme tuì ‘recede’, which is not predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy, as in

(46).

(46) a. 车退上斜坡后

chē tuì-shàng xiépō hòu

car recede-ascend slope after

‘After the car receded up to the slope’ (http://edwin1230.blog.163.com/)

b. 过几天水就会退下去

guò jǐ tiān shuǐ jiù huì tuì xià-qu

pass few day water then will recede descend-go

‘After a few days, the water will then recede down away.’ (PKU Corpus)

The two morphemes in (46) lexicalize different motion information. For instance in (46a),

tuì ‘recede’ describes backward motion in an event, whereas shàng ‘ascend’ describes

ascending motion in an event. The two directions are compatible because a moving object

can move in a backward and ascending direction at the same time.

Tuì ‘recede’ is the only motion verb in the class of open scale motion morphemes that

co-occurs with shàng/xià and lexicalizes a direction different from the direction in

shàng/xià. Shàng/xià can occur with other open scale motion morphemes, e.g., shēng-

shàng ascend-ascend, jiàng-xià descend-descend, diào-xià fall-descend. However, the

morphemes in each of these pairs express exactly the same motion type, i.e. an ascending

or descending event. This study treats them as “juxtaposed motion synonyms” and

distinguishes them from tuì-shànɡ/xià ‘recede up/down’. More discussion of such co-

occurring pairs will be presented in Section 4.4.4.

Although tuì and shàng/xià belong to the same class of motion morphemes, when

they co-occur, their relative order is fixed, that is, tuì precedes shàng/xià, and the order is

not predicted by the Motion Morheme Hierarchy. This dissertation treats tuì-shàng/xià

  123  

‘recede up/down’ as a special type of MMMC. Further discussion of tuì-shàng/xià and its

relation to the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy is given in Chapter 5.

4.4.3 Motion constructions ending with the deictic morpheme lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’

Lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’ are multi-point closed scale motion morphemes as identified in

Section 3.2 in Chapter 3. As predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy, lái ‘come’/qù

‘go’ can occur after a nonscalar change motion morpheme as in (47) or an open scale

motion morpheme as in (48).28

(47) 跑来学校

pǎo-lái xuéxiào

run-come school

‘run to school towards the speaker’

(48) 退去北京

tuì-qù Běijīng

recede-go Beijing

‘recede to Beijing away from the speaker’                                                                                                                          28 Lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ can occur before a motion morpheme (e.g., pǎo ‘run’) or other types of morphemes, and functions as a purpose marker. For instance, the first part of (i) is said by a senior person who wants to run to show others that he is in good health, whereas the sentence in the parentheses is an aside describing the actions done by the senior person and the audience around him.

(i)“我来跑一下给大家看！”（非常快速地原地跑，全场鼓掌） “wǒ lái pǎo yíxià gěi dàjiā kàn!” (fēicháng kuàisù de yuándì pǎo, I come run a.bit give everyone see very fast MOD on.site run

quánchǎng gŭzhǎng) full.court applaud

‘“Let me run and show you!” ([He] ran very fast on the spot; the whole audience applauded.) (http://www.chinajilin.com.cn/zhuanti/content/2008-08/07/content_1336939.htm)

In (i), lái ‘come’ does not describe a real event of coming because the figure moves on the same spot; rather, lái ‘come’ functions as a purpose marker indicating that the figure ran in order to show the audience that he could. This study does not discuss lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ as a purpose marker in detail.

  124  

However, lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’ are special in that they can also occur after all

closed scale motion morphemes, which is inconsistent with the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy. (49) and (50) are examples in which lái/qù occurs after a multi-point closed

scale motion morpheme (huí ‘return’) and a two-point closed scale motion morpheme (jìn

‘enter’).

(49) 回来/去

huí-lái/qù

return-come/go

‘return to/away from the speaker’

(50) 进来/去

jìn-lái/qù

enter-come/go

‘come in/go out’

(49)-(50) seem not to accord with the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy because the

hierarchy is intended to predict that two closed scale motion morphemes do not co-occur.

However, I argue that when lái and qù occur after another motion morpheme, as in (47)-

(50), they are no longer typical motion morphemes. Rather, they have been

grammaticalized and have lost part of their meanings. Specifically, although they specify

directions towards or away from a deictic center, they no longer show boundedness, nor

are they specific about whether the scales they lexicalize are multi-point.

I classify motion constructions with such uses of lái/qù into three types: (a)

constructions where lái/qù occurs after a nonscalar change motion morpheme; (b)

constructions where lái/qù occurs after an “intransitive” scalar change motion morpheme;

(c) constructions where lái/qù occurs after a “transitive” scalar change motion morpheme.

In the rest of this section, I introduce these three constructions and present evidence

showing that lái/qù does not behave like a multi-point closed scale motion morpheme in

  125  

these constructions. Before that, I introduce the notion of transitivity as it applies to

motion morphemes in this study.

A motion morpheme is said to be transitive in this study if it can take a ground NP

(e.g., source, desitnation, route NPs) as its complement. All nonscalar change motion

morphemes (e.g., zǒu ‘walk’, pǎo ‘run’) are intransitive because they usually cannot take

a ground NP as their complement. However, some scalar change motion morphemes are

transitive, whereas others are intransitive. For instance, huí ‘return’ is transitive; it

cannot occur alone, but needs an explicitly expressed ground NP, as in (51).

(51) a. *敌人回了

dírén huí le

enemy return ASP

b. 敌人回关外了

dírén huí guān-wài le

enemy return pass-outside ASP

‘The enemy returned to the outside of the pass.’

In contrast, tuì ‘recede’ is intransitive in that it can occur alone and usually cannot be

followed by a ground NP directly, as in (52).

(52) a. 敌人退了

dírén tuì le

enemy recede ASP

‘The enemy receded.’

b. *敌人退关外了

*dírén tuì guān-wài le

enemy recede pass-outside ASP

#‘The enemy receded to the outside of the pass.’ (intended meaning)

  126  

4.4.3.1 Lái/qù following a nonscalar change motion morpheme

When lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ occurs after nonscalar change motion morphemes, e.g., zǒu

‘walk’, pǎo ‘run’, and fēi ‘fly’, it can be followed by a goal ground NP, as in (53).

(53) a. 一家人突然跑来书房内喊道

yì jiārén tūrán pǎo-lái shūfáng-nèi hǎndào

one servant suddenly run-come study-inside shout

‘A servant suddenly ran to the study [towards me] and shouted.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 开拓者的首发中锋, 走去替补席

kāituòzhě de shǒufāzhōngfēng, zǒu-qù tìbǔxí

Blazers POSS starting.center walk-go substitute.bench

‘The starting center [player] of the Blazers [of NBA], walk to the substitute

bench.’ (PKU Corpus)

In addition, a “nonscalar change motion morpheme + lái/qù” sequence can be preceded

by a ‘toward’ PP, as in (54).

(54) a. 他们向我走来，压低声音问…

tāmen xiàng wǒ zǒu-lái, yā dī shēngyīn wèn

they toward me walk-come press low voice ask

‘They walked toward me and lowered their voices, asking…’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 一个穿着拖鞋的人向电梯走去

yí gè chuān zhe tuōxié de rén xiàng diàntī zǒu-qù

one CLF wear IMP slippers REL person toward elevator walk-go

‘A person who is wearing slippers walked toward the elevator.’ (PKU Corpus)

A ‘toward’ PP is usually only compatible with an unbounded event (Lamarre 2009, Hsiao

2009, among others), as in (55a).

  127  

(55) 他向教室里跑

tā xiàng jiàoshì-lǐ pǎo

he toward classroom-inside run

‘He ran towards the classroom.’

A ‘toward’ PP cannot co-occur with motion morphemes which describe bounded motion

events. For instance, huí ‘return’ denotes a bounded event, and it is not compatible with

the ‘toward’ PP xiàng jiàoshì-lǐ ‘toward the classroom’, as shown in (56).

(56) *他向教室里回

tā xiàng jiàoshì-lǐ huí

he toward classroom-inside arrive

#‘He returned towards the classroom.’ (intended meaning)

The reason for this restriction is that such a PP does not entail the figure’s arrival at the

endpoint of the path of motion at the end of a motion event; rather, the figure can stop at

any position in the path.

As illustrated in (57), when lái/qù is the only motion morpheme in a motion

construction, it does not allow a ‘toward’ PP, which indicates that the coming/going

event expressed with lái/qù is bounded.29

(57) *他向学校来/去了

*tā xiànɡ xuéxiào lái/qù le

he toward school come/go ASP

# ‘He came/went toward the school.’ (intended meaning)

                                                                                                                         29  According to Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), English deictic verbs can have atelic uses. For instance, come in (i) can co-occur with a towards PP.

(i) One of them came towards us and spotted that we were machine gunners. (http://www.aftermathww1.com/interviews1.asp, cited from Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010: 32, (20))

  128  

However, the compatibility of “nonscalar change motion morpheme + lái/qù” with

‘toward’ PPs in (54) indicates that the sequence denotes an unbounded motion event: the

figure is not entailed to arrive at the endpoint of the scale, but can stop at any place while

s/he is moving towards the endpoint. For instance, in (54b), the sequence zǒu-qù walk-go

co-occurs with the PP xiàng diàntī ‘towards elevator’, but the figure is not entailed to

arrive at the elevator.

Furthermore, “nonscalar change motion morpheme + lái/qù” sequences are frequently

found with ‘toward’ PPs. For instance, in the first 100 instances of zǒu-lái walk-come and

the first 100 instances of zǒu-qù walk-go in the PKU Corpus, 42 instances of zǒu-lái and

92 instances of zǒu-qù occur with a ‘toward’ PP, e.g., (54).30 In contrast, both zǒu-lái and

zǒu-qù each have only one instance in which a goal ground NP is explicitly expressed, as

in (53). The remaining 57 instances of zǒu-lái and seven instances of zǒu-qù do not

explicitly indicate whether the motion expressed by zǒu-lái/qù is telic or not. However,

most instances of zǒu-qù do not imply an endpoint. For instance, zǒu-qù in (58) can co-

occur with the modifier yìzhí ‘continously’, which indicates that the motion does not have

any endpoint.

(58) 他…随着这道光明，一直走去

tā … suí-zhe zhè dào guāngmíng, yìzhí zǒu-qù

he follow-IMP this CLF brightness continuously walk-go

‘He followed this brightness, walked away from the speaker continuously.’

(PKU Corpus)

The high frequency of co-occurrence with ‘toward’ PPs indicates that zǒu-lái/qù can

express motion with unbounded paths. In other words, although lái and qù must express

bounded events when they occur alone, as in (57), they do not function as closed scale

motion morphemes when they occur after a nonscalar change motion morpheme.

                                                                                                                         30  In the PKU Corpus, there are 3,968 instances of the sequence zǒu-lái walk-come and 6,803 instances of zǒu-qù walk-go in total.  

  129  

4.4.3.2 Lái/qù following an intransitive scalar change motion morpheme

As mentioned in Section 4.4.3, an intransitive scalar change motion morpheme in this

study refers to a morpheme that cannot take a ground NP directly as its complement. In

Chinese, most open scale motion morphemes (e.g., tuì ‘recede’, shēng ‘ascend’, jiàng

‘descend’, luò ‘fall’) are intransitive scalar change motion morphemes; the exceptions are

shànɡ ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’ (see Section 3.3.3 in Chapter 3).

Lái and qù can occur after intransitive scalar change motion morphemes, but they do

not contribute closed scales either. For instance in (59), tuì-lái recede-come and shēng-qù

ascend-go occur with a ‘toward’ PP; both sentences describe unbounded motion events in

that the figures are not entailed to move to the endpoint of the scales.

(59) a. 但是众人迎面又向她退来

dànshì zhòngrén yíng miàn yòu xiàng tā tuì-lái but everyone meet face again towards her recede-come

‘But everyone again receded towards her, facing her.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 这片浓雾慢慢地向天上升去

zhè piàn nóngwù mànmànde xiàng tiān-shàng shēng-qù

this piece thick.fog slowly toward sky-top ascend-go

‘The thick fog went up toward the sky slowly.’ (PKU Corpus)

Even when no ‘toward’ PP co-occurs with it, qù ‘go’ is still not associated with a

closed scale when it occurs after an intransitive scalar change motion morpheme. As

illustrated in (60), tuì-qù does not imply an endpoint of the receding event.

(60) 洪水退去后，就出现了一座…石峰

hóngshuǐ tuì-qù hòu, jiù chūxiàn-le yí-zuò … shífēng

flood recede-go after then appear-ASP one-CLF stone.peak

‘After the flood receded away, a stone peak appeared.’ (PKU Corpus)

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Similarly, although an endpoint of motion (the deictic center) is always implied with lái,

a figure is not entailed to arrive at the deictic center in an event described by an

“intransitive scalar change motion morpheme + lái” sequence. As illustrated in (61), the

motion expressed by tuì-lái recede come is not necessarily bounded because the modifier

yìzhí ‘continuously’ indicates that the motion may not have an endpoint.

(61) 海梦幽尖叫一声，立即慌乱的一直退来

Hǎimèngyōu …,lìjí huāngluànde yìzhí tuì-lái

Haimengyou … immediately hastily continuously recede-come

‘Hai Meiyou immediately receded (towards the deictic center) hastily.’

(http://bbs.readnovel.com/htm_data/154/0904/417274.html)

Therefore, when lái and qù occur after intransitive scalar change motion morphemes,

they lose information about the boundedness of their scales, i.e. they become unspecified

as to whether the motion they denote is bounded or not.

4.4.3.3 Lái/qù following a transitive scalar change motion morpheme Previous studies (e.g., Y. Liu 1998, Liang 2007) observe that a ground NP is required by

some directional motion morphemes, e.g., chū ‘exit’, shàng ‘ascend’, xià ‘descend’, huí

‘return’, and jìn ‘enter’. If these morphemes are not followed by a locative NP, they must

be followed by lái/qù (Ju 1992, Y. Liu 1998, Qi 1998, Lamarre 2008), as in (62).

(62) a. *他回了

tā huí le

he return ASP

b. 他回学校了

tā huí xuéxiào le

he return school ASP

‘He returned to school.’

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c. 他回来/去了

tā huì-lái/qù le

he return-come/go ASP

‘He came/went back.’

The constraint is also true when these morphemes are preceded by a manner-of-motion

morpheme.

(63) a. *他跑回了

tā pǎo-huí le

he run-return ASP

b. 他跑回学校了

tā pǎo-huí xuéxiào le

he run-return school ASP

‘He ran back to school.’

c. 他跑回来/去了

tā pǎo huí-lái/qù le

he run return-come/go ASP

‘He ran back to the speaker/away from the speaker.’

These directional morphemes are called “transitive scalar change motion morphemes” in

this dissertation. The set of transitive scalar change motion morphemes include closed

scale motion morphemes and the open scale motion morphemes shàng ‘ascend’ and xià

‘descend’.31 (62)-(63) indicate that lái/qù is required when a transtive motion morpheme

is not immediately followed by a ground NP.32

                                                                                                                         31  Although dào ‘arrive’ is also a transitive motion morpheme, unlike other transitive motion morphemes, dào cannot be followed by lái/qù immediately when a locative NP is absent (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3). Instead, dào must be immediately followed by a ground NP before it is followed by lái/qù (see Section 4.1). However, because dào can be used as an

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Lamarre (2008: 77-78, 85) proposes that the use of lái/qù after transitive motion

morphemes is a reflection of a “tendency for monosyllabic words to develop into

disyllabic words” in Chinese (cf. Lü 1963, Feng 1998, among others). All transitive

motion morphemes, e.g., huí ‘return’, jìn ‘enter’, chū ‘exit’, are monosyllabic morphemes,

so the addition of the monosyllabic lái/qù after these morphemes makes the whole form

disyllabic.

However, I argue that the co-occurrence of a transitive scalar change motion

morpheme and lái/qù cannot be simply ascribed to the tendency towards disyllabic words

in Chinese. Two reasons are presented here. First, transitive motion morphemes are not

always followed by a monosyllabic morpheme in these instances and thus the two

together do not form a disyllabic word. For instance in (62b), huí ‘return’ and xuéxiào

‘school’ together have three syllables. Second, only when no ground NP is present is a

transitive motion morpheme immediately followed by lái/qù, as in (64a); in contrast,

when a ground NP is present, the NP must be inserted in between the morpheme and

lái/qù, as in (64b-c).

(64) a. 他跑进来了。

tā pǎo jìn-lái le

he run enter-come ASP

‘He ran in towards the speaker.’

b. 他跑进学校来了。

tā pǎo-jìn xuéxiào lái le

he run-enter school come ASP

‘He ran into the school towards the speaker.’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          independent verb and takes a ground NP as complement, this dissertation treats dào as a transitive motion morpheme. 32  Lái/qù is optional after an intransitive scalar change motion morpheme. As illustrated in (i), no lái/qù is necessary after tuì ‘recede’ and shēng ‘ascend’, cf. (58-59). (i) a. 向她退 b. 向天上升 xiàng tā tuì xiàng tiān-shàng shēng toward her return toward sky-on.top.of ascend ‘return toward her’ ‘ascend up to the sky’

  133  

c. *他跑进来学校了。

*tā pǎo jìn-lái xuéxiào le

he run enter-come school ASP

In other words, when a ground NP is present, the transitive motion morpheme and lái/qù

must be separated as the NP occurs in between them. Therefore, there must be some other

reason other than the syllabic account for a transitive scalar change motion morpheme to

require lái/qù when there is no explicitly expressed ground NP. I propose that the

function of lái and qù after these transitive motion morphemes is to satisfy their

requirement for ground information.

As shown above, some scalar change motion morphemes such as chū ‘exit’, huí

‘return’ and jìn ‘enter’ require explicitly expressed information about the ground in a

motion event. Besides direction of motion, the deictic verbs lái and qù also lexically

specify information about the ground (the deictic center indicated by lái/qù). Therefore,

as illustrated in (62), repeated here as (65), when a ground NP is absent, lái/qù must be

present.

(65) a. *他回了

tā huí le

he return ASP

b. 他回学校了

tā huí xuéxiào le

he return school ASP

‘He returned to school.’

c. 他回来/去了

tā huì-lái/qù le

he return-come/go ASP

‘He came/went back.’

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However, when a ground NP is used after the motion morpheme, since the NP expresses

ground information, the ground information indicated by a co-occuring lái/qù is no

longer needed, but only understood as additional information. Therefore, lái/qù becomes

optional, as illustrated in (66).

(66) 他回学校(来/去)了

tā huí xuéxiào (lái/qù) le

he return school (come/go) ASP

‘He returned to school (towards/away from the speaker).’

(65) and (66) suggest that the use of lái/qù after a transitive scalar change motion

morpheme is determined by the presence of a locative NP: lái/qù is required if an NP is

absent, and optional if the NP is present.

Like the lái/qù occurring after nonscalar change motion morphemes and intransitive

scalar change motion morphemes, lái/qù occurring after a transitive scalar change motion

morpheme no longer lexicalizes a closed scale. Instead, the boundedness and duration of

the motion event is determined by the telicity and duration of the motion morphemes

preceding lái/qù.

The motion event is bounded if the transitive scalar change motion morphemes

lexicalize closed scales. For instance, huí ‘return’ and chū ‘return’ denote bounded events;

and when they are followed by lái/qù, e.g., huí-lái return-come and chū-qù exit-go, they

still denote bounded events and do not allow ‘toward’ PPs, as in (67).

(67) a. *向房里回来

*xiàng fáng-lǐ huí-lái

toward room-inside return-come

b. *向房外出去

*xiàng fáng-wài chū-qu

toward room-outside exit -go

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In contrast, if lái/qù occurs after shàng ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’, which are open

scale motion morphemes, the motion events are unbounded. As in (68), chōng shàng-lái

‘rush up’ and fēi shàng-qù ‘fly up’ are compatible with ‘toward’ PPs.

(68) a. 敌人…，向观音山冲上来

dírén …, xiàng Guānyīnshān chōng shàng-lái enemy …, toward Guanyin.mountain rush ascend-come

‘The enemy rush up the Guanyin Mountain.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 许多帽子向空中飞上去

xǔduō màozi xiàng kōng-zhōng fēi shàng-qù many hat toward sky-inside fly ascend-go

‘Many hats flew up toward the sky.’ (PKU Corpus)

Similarly, a motion event is durative if the motion morpheme preceding lái/qù

describes a durative event. For instance, huí ‘return’ is a multi-point closed scale motion

morpheme and describes a durative event. When it is followed by lái/qù, the construction

huí-lái/qù still describes a durative event, as in (69).

(69) 他 8点钟下课回来/去，可是现在还没到家

tā 8 diǎnzhōng xiàkè huí-lái/qù, kěshì xiànzài hái méi dào jiā

he 8 o’clock finish.class return-come/go but now yet NEG arrive home

‘He finished classes and has been on the way returning to home (toward/away

rom the speaker) since 8 o’clock, but he has not arrived at home yet.’

In contrast, jìn ‘enter’ as a two-point closed scale motion morpheme denotes a

punctual event. When it is followed by lái/qù, the motion event described by jìn- lái/qù is

still punctual. For instance, entering a room is usually instantaneous, so (70) is not

allowed.

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(70) 他 8点钟进来/去了，*可是现在还没到房间里

tā 8 diǎnzhōng jìn-lái/qù le, *kěshì xiànzài hái méi dào fángjiān-lǐ

he 8 o’clock enter-come/go ASP but now yet NEG arrive room-inside

#‘He has been coming/going inside the room at 8 o’clock, but now he still has

not arrived at the inside yet.’ (intended meaning)

4.4.3.4 Summary This section shows that lái/qù can occur after all types of motion morphemes. However,

in such uses, lái and qù no longer function as closed scale motion morphemes with the

meaning of ‘movement to a destination along a multi-point scale’. They are semantically

bleached and only function to add information about deictic direction and ground to the

description of a motion event. In other words, lái and qù become neutral in terms of

boundedness and duration when they occur after another motion morpheme, and the

boundedness and duration of the motion event are contributed by the morpheme(s)

preceding lái/qù. Specifically, when lái/qù occurs after a nonscalar change or an open

scale motion morpheme, the motion event is unbounded, but when lái/qù occurs after a

closed scale motion morpheme (either multi-point or two-point), the event is bounded. In

addition, when lái/qù occurs after a multi-point scale motion morpheme, the event is

durative, but when lái/qù occurs after a two-point scale motion morpheme, the event is

punctual.

Because such instances of lái/qù occur in the final position of a motion construction,

either after a motion morpheme or after a “motion morpheme + ground NP” sequence, I

call such instances of lái/qù “construction final lái/qù” in the rest of this dissertation.

Construction final lái/qù is not treated as a motion morpheme in this study. Section

4.1 presents constructions with four motion morphemes, including the construction final

lái/qù, as in (9), repeated here as (71).

  137  

(71) a. 周遭如同雪花的花瓣又纷纷飘落回去

zhōuzāo rútóng xuěhuā de huābàn yòu fēnfēn piāo-luò huí-qù

around like snowflake REL petal again in.succession drift-fall return-go

‘The petals which are like snowflakes around [him] drifted and fell back

[away from him] in succession.’

(http://www.zongheng.com/rewu/read/61489/1348092.html)

b. 整个人就差点滑落到地上去。

zhěnggè rén jiù chàdiǎn huá-luò-dào dì-shàng qù

whole person then almost slide-fall-arrive floor-on.top.of go

‘The whole person then almost slid and fell onto the ground (away from

speaker).’ (PKU Corpus)

As mentioned in Section 4.1, these motion constructions are considered to be three-

morpheme constructions in the reminder of this dissertation because the final lái/qù is not

functioning as a motion morpheme. The order of the three motion morphemes preceding

lái/qù is consistent with the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy: in (71a), piāo ‘drift’, luò ‘fall’,

huí ‘return’ follow the order “nonscalar change + open scale + multi-point closed scale”;

in (71b), huá ‘slide’, luò ‘fall’, and dào ‘arrive’ follow the order “nonscalar change +

open scale + two-point closed scale”.

Similarly, in the reminder of this dissertation, a construction consisting of a non-

deictic motion morpheme and a construction final lái/qù as in (72a) is treated as a one-

morpheme motion construction, whereas a construction consisting of two non-deictic

motion morphemes and a contruction final lái/qù as in (72b) is treated as a two-

morpheme MMMC.

(72) a. 他回来了

tā huì-lái le

he return-come ASP

‘He came back.’

  138  

b. 他跑回去了

tā pǎo huí-qù le

he run return-go ASP

‘He ran back away from the speaker.’

It is not unique to Chinese for a deictic motion morpheme to occur in the final

position of a motion construction. For instance, according to Muansuwan (2000b, also

Muansuwan 2000a, Thepkanjana 1986), when deictic verbs in Thai are present in a serial

verb motion construction, they must occur as the final verb in the sequence of motion

verbs, as illustrated in (73).

(73) a. khǎw dɘn troŋ Ɂɔ̀ɔk maa he walk go.straight exit come

‘He walked straight out, towards the speaker.’ (Muansuwan 2000b: 145, (8a))

b. khǎw dɘn khaw paj

he walk enter go

‘He walked in, away from the speaker.’ (Muansuwan 2000b: 145, (9a))

It is not clear whether maa ‘come’ and paj ‘go’ still function as motion verbs, but their

fixed positions indicate that they are different from other Thai motion verbs, just as lái

‘come’ and qù ‘go’ are different from other Chinese motion morphemes.

4.4.4 Juxtaposed motion synonyms

Chinese also has constructions with motion morphemes lexicalizing the same kind of

scale and contributing the same information to the description of a motion event. For

instance, both fēi and -xiáng are nonscalar change motion morphemes and describe

motion in a flying manner; they can occur together in the description of a motion event as

in (74a). Both fǎn and huí are multi-point closed scale motion morphemes and describe a

  139  

returning event; they too can occur together in the description of a motion event as in

(74b):

(74) a. 小鸟在飞翔

xiǎoniǎo zài fēi-xiáng

little.bird PROG fly-fly

‘The little bird is flying’

b. 学生返回学校了

xuéshēng fǎn-huí xuéxiào le

student return-return school ASP

‘The student returned to school.’

In addition, such motion constructions as a whole express the same motion events as

the individual motion morphemes that constitute the construction. For example, fēi-xiáng

in (74a) denotes a flying event, just like its motion morphemes fēi ‘fly’ and -xiáng ‘fly’.

Examples of such motion constructions can be found with every type of motion

morpheme. For instance, bēn-pǎo run-run consists of two nonscalar change motion

morphemes, zhuì-luò fall-fall consists of two open scale motion morphemes, fǎn-huí

xuéxiào return-return school consists of two multi-point closed scale motion morphemes,

jìn-rù fángjiān enter-enter room and dào-dá xuéxiào arrive-arrive school consist of two

two-point closed scale motion morphemes.

Because the two morphemes in these constructions denote exactly the same motion

event or the same component (e.g., manner, path) of a motion event, these two

morphemes are usually understood as synonyms, contributing equally to the description

of a motion event. This dissertation calls these motion constructions “juxtaposed motion

synonyms”.

4.4.4.1 Juxtaposed motion synonyms are not MMMCs

As mentioned above, juxtaposed motion synonyms consist of two synonymous motion

morphemes that describe the same motion event. Unlike other two-morpheme motion

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morphemes where the first and second morpheme form a “main morpheme +

complement morpheme” relationship (see Chapter 1), the morphemes in juxtaposed

motion synonyms do not have such a relationship. For instance, a potential marker –de/bu

can be inserted in between the two morphemes in a regular MMMC, e.g., pǎo-jìn fáng

jiān run-enter room as in (75), but cannot be inserted in juxtaposed motion synonyms,

e.g., bēn-pǎo run-run, as in (76).

(75) a. 他跑得进房间

tā pǎo-de-jìn fángjiān

he run-POS.POT-enter room

‘He can run into the room.’

b. 他跑不进房间

tā pǎo-bu-jìn fángjiān

he run-NEG.POT-enter room

‘He cannot run into the room.’

(76) a. *奔得跑

*bēn-de-pǎo

run-POS.POT-run

b. *奔不跑

*bēn-bu-pǎo

run-NEG.POT-run

Semantically, the two morphemes in juxtaposed motion synonyms contribute equally

to the description of a motion event because they denote exactly the same motion type. In

contrast, the morphemes in a regular MMMC contribute different information. For

instance, in pǎo-jìn jiàoshì run-ascend classroom, which consists of motion morphemes

lexicalizing different types of scale, pǎo ‘run’ specifies how the motion event is carried

out and jìn ‘enter’ specifies in which direction the motion event is carried out. In tuì-

  141  

shànɡ shāndǐnɡ recede-ascend summit, which consists of motion morphemes lexicalizing

the same scales, tuì ‘recede’ specifies backward motion in an event and shànɡ ‘ascend’

specifies upward motion in the event. Therefore, the semantics of juxtaposed motion

synonyms is different from that of the MMMCs discussed in this dissertation.

In fact, juxtaposed motion synonyms belong to a larger class of Chinese compounds

that are composed of two parallel morphemes. In addition to the domain of motion, such

compounds can be found in other domains. For example, xǐ-huɑn like-like ‘like’, xiū-xi

rest-rest ‘rest’, kū-qì cry-cry ‘cry’, hǎn-jiào shout-shout ‘shout’ are all formed from two

synonymous morphemes, and each compound as a whole describes the same non-motion

event as its individual morpheme does. Furthermore, two synonymous adjectives or

nouns can form such a compound too. For instance, kùn-fá tired-tired ‘tired’, qín-fèn

diligent-diligent ‘diligent’, jí-bìng disease-disease ‘disease’, yán-miàn face-face ‘face’.

These constructions are called 同义并列双音词 tóngyì bìngliè shuāngyīncí (lit.)

‘synonymous juxtaposed disyllabic words’ in previous studies (Mao 2008, Tian 2008, cf.

Zheng 1964, Chen and Yu 1979, Packard 2000, among others).

Therefore, this study distinguishes juxtaposed motion synonyms from MMMCs and

does not treat them as exceptions to the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy, even though the

hierarchy cannot predict the order of their constituent morphemes. This study does not

discuss the order of morphemes in these compounds in detail. A brief introduction is

given in the next section to previous studies of the order of morphemes in juxtaposed

synonyms in the motion domain, as well as other domains.

4.4.4.2 Previous studies of the order of morphemes in juxtaposed synonyms

Although the two morphemes in juxtaposed motion synonyms express exactly the same

motion event, their order is usually fixed: for instance, *xiáng-fēi fly-fly, *luò-zhuì fall-

fall, *guò-chuān cross-cross, *rù-jìn enter-enter. Only a few instances are found in which

the two morphemes can occur in either order, for instance, fǎn-huí return-return and huí-

fǎn return-return in (22).33

                                                                                                                         33 However, even though both fǎn-huí return-return and huí-fǎn return-return are found in the PKU Corpus, fǎn-huí is much more frequent than huí-fǎn: there are more than 7,000 instances of fǎn-huí, but only about 100 instances of huí-fǎn.

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Two major explanations of the order of morphemes in juxtaposed synonyms are

proposed in previous studies. One explanation is based on phonetics and phonology.

According to Chen and Yu (1979), among others, the order of the juxtaposed morphemes

is to a large extent determined by the tones of these morphemes.34 Specifically, if the

juxtaposition was formed in earlier stages of Chinese, when voiced initials and the

entering tone still existed, the left-to-right order of its morphemes follows the tonal

hierarchy from left to right in (77).35

(77) high even > low even > high rising > low rising > high departing > low

departing > high entering > low entering

If the juxtaposition was formed later, i.e. when voiced initials and the entering tone

disappeared from Modern Chinese, the left-to-right order of its morphemes follows the

tonal hierarchy in (78) from left to right:

(78) high even > low even > rising > departing

For example, in Modern Chinese, the tone of bēn is even, whereas the tone of pǎo ‘run’ is

rising, so bēn must precede pǎo, but not vice versa.

Unlike Chen and Yu (1979) and others, Mao (2008) proposes that the more

commonly used morpheme precedes the less commonly used one if two synonyms occur

together to form a combination. For instance, she finds that途 tú ‘road’ (which has a low

even tone in Modern Chinese) appeared in oracle bone scripts (ca. 16th – 11th century

BCE), whereas its synonym 路 lù ‘road’ (which has a departing tone in Modern

Mandarin Chinese) appeared later in Western Zhou (11th century – 770 BCE). When tú

and lù were juxtaposed to form a combination, tú preceded lù, which follows the tonal

                                                                                                                         34 Chinese also has combinations consisting of two antonymous elements, e.g., chí-zǎo late-early ‘sooner or later’, ài-hèn love-hate ‘love and hate’, hǎo-huài good-bad ‘no matter what’, shēng-jiàng ascend-descend ‘rise and fall’. Chen and Yu’s proposal also aims to explain these juxtaposed antonyms; however, this dissertation limits its discussion to juxtaposed synonyms. 35 Entering tones are not typical phonetic tones; rather, they are syllables that end in a stop consonant, e.g., p, t, k, or glottal stop.    

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hierarchy. However, in later periods, the reverse order, lù-tú road-road ‘road’, came into

use and gradually replaced tú-lù road-road ‘road’, and finally only lù-tú ‘road’ is used in

Modern Chinese. Mao claims that the tonal rule was unable to explain why the order of lù

and tú reversed while their tones remained the same. Instead, she proposes that it is

because lù became more commonly used than tú that lù-tú replaced tú-lù.

However, counterexamples to both explanations can be found. For example, in the 89

instances of juxtaposed synonyms found in the text 朱子语类 Zhūzǐ Yǔlèi (1270,

Southern Song Dynasty), there are 28 instances (31%) whose order of morphemes

violates the tonal rule (Mao 2008). Mao’s explanation also is unable to account for a

comprehensive range of data. There are many juxtaposed synonyms that

counterexamplify it in Modern Chinese: they consist of a less commonly used morpheme

(especially a bound morpheme) occurring before a more commonly used morpheme, e.g.,

奔跑 bēn-pǎo run-run ‘run’, 愚蠢 yú-chǔn stupid-stupid ‘stupid’, 疾病 jí-bìng disease-

disease ‘disease’, 颠倒 diān-dǎo stumble-stumble ‘stumble’. If Mao’s proposal were

correct, we would expect the morphemes in these combinations to occur in the reverse

order in Modern Chinese.

To summarize, it is likely that more than one constraint determines the order of

juxtaposed synonyms. This dissertation will leave this issue for future study.

4.5 Summary

In this chapter, I showed what kinds of motion morphemes can occur together to form an

MMMC. In addition, the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy was proposed to predict the order

of motion morphemes lexicalizing different types of scales. In addition, I also illustrated

four types of motion constructions that are not covered by the hierarchy. Two of these

types are treated as special MMMCs and will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5:

these are constructions where dào ‘arrive’ follows closed scale motion morphemes, and

constructions where the open scale motion morphemes shàng/xià ‘ascend/descend’ and

tuì ‘recede’ co-occur.

Furthermore, this chapter shows that the deictic morphemes lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’

are no longer functioning as multi-point closed scale motion morphemes when they occur

after another motion morpheme, but simply indicate deictic direction and ground

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information. Finally, this chapter introduces a special type of motion construction,

juxtaposed motion synonyms. Such constructions are syntactically and semantically

distinct from the other motion constructions discussed in the study, so the morpheme

order in these constructions is left for future study.

In the reminder of the dissertation, I focus on regular MMMCs composed of motion

morphemes of different types, and the special MMMCs consisting of closed scale motion

morphemes and dào ‘arrive’, as well as tuì-shàng/xià recede ascend/descend. Two corpus

studies will be presented in Chapter 5 to verify the hierarchy in (28), followed by further

discussion of the hierarchy.

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Chapter 5

Corpus Studies Verifying the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy and the Encoding of Motion Events in Chinese

In Chapter 4, I proposed the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy that is used to predict the order

of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs. This hierarchy was formulated based on

limited data, so this chapter verifies the hierarchy by investigating a larger amount of data.

To do so, two corpus studies are carried out in which MMMCs are collected from natural

Chinese data and the order of their motion morphemes is investigated to determine

whether the hierarchy is valid. The two corpus studies and their results are presented in

Section 5.1 and Section 5.2. Chapter 4 also recognizes two types of special MMMCs

which are not predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy: MMMCs consisting of

closed scale motion morphemes and dào ‘arrive’, and MMMCs with the open scale

motion morphemes tuì ‘recede’ and shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’. These MMMCs are

also investigated in the corpus studies.

Section 5.3 discusses why the hierarchy is valid and what it implies about the

encoding of motion events in Chinese. I propose that the order of motion morphemes in

Chinese MMMCs conforms to a “More Specific Constraint”: that the morpheme which is

more specific about the scale in a motion event must precede the morpheme with less

specific information about the scale. The constraint is able to provide a unified account of

morpheme order in both two- and three-morpheme MMMCs, of why two closed scale

motion morphemes typically do not co-occur in Chinese, and of why tuì ‘recede’ can co-

occur with the other open scale motion morphemes shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’. Section

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5.4 discusses the reason why dào ‘arrive’ can occur after other closed scale motion

morphemes and the function of such instances of dào ‘arrive’.

For convenience, the motion morphemes in an MMMC are labeled M1, M2, M3, etc.

according to their left to right order in the MMMC. As mentioned in Section 4.4.3,

motion construction final lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ is not treated as a motion morpheme and not

taken into account in the corpus studies. For instance, in zǒu-huí xuéxiào lái walk-return

school come ‘walk back to school towards the speaker’, zǒu ‘walk’ is M1 and huí ‘return’

is M2, while lái is ignored.

5.1 Corpus study 1

In this corpus study, I collected all MMMCs from selected chapters of four recent

Chinese novels. Then, the motion morphemes in these MMMCs were investigated to see

whether they occur in the order predicted by the hierarchy.

5.1.1 Data sources Information on the four Chinese novels used to collect MMMCs is given in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Novels selected for Corpus study 1

Novel Author Year Selection

analyzed

Number of

characters

Tàiyáng Chūshì

(The Sun was Born)

Chí Lì 1992 Entire novel 35,433

Dìqiú de Hóng Piāodài

(The Earth's Red Flying Ribbon)

Wèi Wēi 1988 First six

chapters

34,108

Kōngzhōng Xiǎojiě

(Flight Attendant)

Wáng Shuò 1985 Entire novel 29,185

Tàiyáng Zhào zài Sānggānhé-shàng

(The Sun Shines over the Sanggan

River)

Dīng Líng 1952 First twelve

chapters

28,935

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All four novels in Table 5.1 have great popular appeal in China. Among them, Dìqiú de

Hóng Piāodài (The Earth's Red Flying Ribbon) and Tàiyáng Zhào zài Sānggānhé-shàng

(The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River) are legacies of Chinese revolutionary literature,

whose language is accessible to workers and soldiers.36 In contrast, Tàiyáng Chūshì (The

Sun was Born) and Kōngzhōng Xiǎojiě (Flight Attendant) are based on the lives of

urbanites in two large cities in China, Wuhan and Beijing, and thus the language is closer

to that of urbanites. The novels are of different length. In order to keep the number of

words considered relatively balanced among the four novels, only the first six chapters

were selected from Dìqiú de Hóng Piāodài (The Earth's Red Flying Ribbon), and the first

twelve chapters were selected from Tàiyáng Zhào zài Sānggānhé-shàng (The Sun Shines

over the Sanggan River). Given their differences in content and style, these four novels

represent a reasonable diversity for the purpose of this study.

For convenience, in the rest of this dissertation, Tàiyáng Chūshì (The Sun was Born)

is referred to as Chūshì, Dìqiú de Hóng Piāodài (The Earth's Red Flying Ribbon) is

referred to as Hóng Piāodài, Kōngzhōng Xiǎojiě (Flight Attendant) is referred to as

Xiǎojiě, and Tàiyáng Zhào zài Sānggānhé-shàng (The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River)

is referred to as Sānggānhé-shàng.

5.1.2 Data selection

Although all motion constructions were initially collected from the novels (see Table 5.2),

only motion constructions with multiple motion morphemes, i.e. MMMCs, were selected

and examined for purposes of verifying the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy. In this section,

I introduce the motion constructions that were included and excluded from the analysis.

                                                                                                                         36 These two novels were also used by Chen and Guo (2009) in their investigation of Chinese motion constructions. However, Chen and Guo only examined motion constructions in twenty randomly selected “episodes”. An episode is defined as “movement of a major protagonist, beginning from a stationary position and continuing to move until arriving at another stationary position where a plot-advancing event occurs” (Özçalışkan and Slobin, 2003:260). However, in this dissertation, I select all MMMCs that appear in the selected chapters of these two novels, and thus the number of MMMCs investigated in this dissertation is larger than that in Chen and Guo’s study.

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5.1.2.1 MMMCs to be analyzed

The MMMCs to be analyzed include “general MMMCs” and the two special types of

MMMCs, i.e. MMMCs consisting of a closed scale motion morpheme and dào ‘arrive’,

and MMMCs with the open scale motion morphemes tuì ‘recede’ and shànɡ ‘ascend’/xià

‘descend’. I introduce them briefly in this section.

General MMMCs

“General MMMCs” refers to MMMCs consisting of multiple motion morphemes

lexicalizing different types of scale (again construction final lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ is not

counted as a motion morpheme). For instance, the construction in (1) consists of two

motion morphemes, zǒu ‘walk’ and chū ‘exit’, and thus was included for analysis.

(1) 她走出了院子

tā zǒu-chū-le yuànzi

she walk-exit-ASP yard

‘She walked out of the yard.’ (Sānggānhé-shàng)

The motion construction in (2) contains two motion morphemes and construction

final lái ‘come’, but only the order of M1 and M2, kuà ‘stride’ and jìn ‘enter’, is taken

into consideration.

(2) 张裕民走在她的前面跨进房来

Zhāng Yùmín zǒu zài tā-de qiánmian kuà-jìn fáng lái Zhang Yumin walk at she-POSS front stride-enter house come

‘Zhang Yumin walked in front of her, and strode into the house towards the

speaker.’ (Sānggānhé-shàng)

The Motion Morpheme Hierarchy is intended to predict the order of motion morphemes

in general MMMCs.

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Special MMMCs: MMMCs with a closed scale motion morpheme and dào ‘arrive’

As presented in Section 4.4.1 in Chapter 4, there are motion constructions in which dào

‘arrive’ can follow closed scale motion morphemes (both multi-point and two-point), e.g.,

huí-dào xuéxiào returen-arrive school ‘return to school’, jìn-dào fángjiān enter-arrive

room ‘enter into the room’. The morpheme order in these constructions is not predicted

by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy, and thus the constructions were treated as special

MMMCs.

However, the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy predicts that dào ‘arrive’, like other

closed scale motion morphemes, should follow a nonscalar change motion morpheme,

e.g., kuà ‘stride’ in kuà-dào yuànzi-lǐ stride-arrive yard-inside or an open scale motion

morpheme. e.g., tuì ‘recede’ in tuì-dào fáng-lǐ recede-arrive room-inside. Therefore,

motion constructions containing dào ‘arrive’ and nonscalar change/open scale motion

morphemes were not treated as special MMMCs, but as general MMMCs.

Special MMMCs: MMMCs with tuì ‘recede’ and shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’

As mentioned in Chapter 4, the open scale motion morphemes shàng ‘ascend’ and xià

‘descend’ can follow the open scale motion morpheme tuì ‘recede’, e.g. tuì-xià shān

recede-descend mountain. Such constructions are not predicted by the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy either, and thus were treated as special MMMCs in the analysis.

5.1.2.2 Motion constructions to be excluded from the analysis

The following types of motion constructions were excluded from the analysis.

Motion constructions with only one motion morpheme This study examines the relative order of motion morphemes in MMMCs. Therefore,

motion constructions with only one motion morpheme were excluded. For instance, (3)

was excluded from the study because it has only one motion morpheme, qù ‘arrive’.

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(3) 我们一起去笕桥机场

wǒmen yìqǐ qù jiǎnqiáo jīchǎng

we together go Jianqiao airport

‘We went to the Jianqiao Airport together.’ (Xiǎojiě)

In addition, as discussed in Section 4.4.3, construction final lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’ were

not treated as motion morphemes, so motion constructions consisting of a motion

morpheme and construction final lái/qù, e.g., (4), were considered to be constructions

with only one motion morpheme, and thus were not included for analysis.

(4) 可是一出来

kěshì yì chū-lái

but once exit -come

‘But once [she] came out [towards the speaker].’ (Sānggānhé-shàng)

Juxtaposed motion synonyms

As shown in Section 4.4.4 in Chapter 4, juxtaposed motion synonyms (e.g., fēi-xiánɡ fly-

fly ‘fly’, jìn-rù enter-enter ‘enter’) are structurally different from MMMCs, so they were

excluded from the study.

Others exclusions: Conventionalized or highly lexicalized motion constructions

There are also motion constructions that have been conventionalized or highly lexicalized

in Chinese. A few examples are given in (5).

(5) a. 蜂拥而下

fēng-yōng-ér-xià

bee-crowd-and-descend

‘[a crowd] swarm down like bees’ (Xiǎojiě)

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b. 跑来跑去

pǎo-lái-pǎo-qù

run-come-run-go

‘run back and forth’ (Chūshì)

c. 登山临水

dēng-shān-lín-shuǐ

climb-mountain-face-water

‘travel around’ (Xiǎojiě)

Although such constructions contain more than one motion morpheme and are used as a

single motion construction, this study did not include them because the motion

morpheme sequence has become highly lexicalized, and thus less analyzable. For

example, the first three elements in (5a) are fixed so that none of them can be replaced by

other elements, even synonyms. As illustrated in (6), the meaning of the verb jǐ is similar

to that of yōng in (5a), i.e. to crowd, but jǐ is not allowed to replace yōng.

. (6) *蜂挤而入

fēng-jǐ-ér-rù

bee-crowd-and -enter

5.1.3 Motion constructions found in the data sources Table 5.2 lists all types of motion constructions found in the novels, including those that

were excluded for purposes of evaluating the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy.

A total of 926 motion constructions were found in the novels and grouped into “MMMCs

to be analyzed” and “Non-MMMCs to be excluded”. Among the non-MMMCs, motion

constructions with only one motion morpheme (253 instances) or a single motion

morpheme followed by a construction final lái/qù (317 instances) form the biggest group

(570 instances) in the data. They make up 61.6% of the motion constructions.

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Table 5. 2 Motion constructions found in the data sources

Chūshì Hóng piāodài

Xiǎojiě Sānggānhé-shàng

Total

With construction final lái/qù

No Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes

MMMCs to be analyzed (28.4%)

General MMMCs 18 9 44 28 35 23 41 34 232 (25.1%)

Special MMMCs: Closed scale + dào

6 0 9 1 11 0 4 0 31 (3.3%)

Special MMMCs: tuì + shàng/xià

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (0%)

Non-MMMCs to be excluded (71.6%)

MCs with only one morpheme

16 105 51 117 110 40 76 55 570 (61.6%)

Juxtaposed motion synonyms

5 0 34 1 19 0 3 0 62 (6.7%)

Others 7 0 6 0 11 0 7 0 31 (3.3%)

Total 52 114 141 150 185 63 124 97 926 (100%) 166

(17.9%) 291 (31.4%)

248 (26.8%)

221 (23.9%)

MMMCs to be analyzed represent 28.4% of the total. Table 5.3 lists the number of

instances of each type of MMMCs. (For each type, the MMMCs with lái/qù and without

lái/qù are combined in Table 5.3).

Table 5. 3 MMMCs found in the novels MMMCs to be analyzed

Chūshì Hóng piāodài

Xiǎojiě Sānggānhé-shàng

Total

General MMMCs (+ lái/qù)

27 72 58 75 232 (88.2%)

Special MMMCs: Closed scale + dào (+ lái/qù)

6 10 11 4 31 (11.8%)

Special MMMCs: tuì + shàng/xià (+ lái/qù)

0 0 0 0 0 (0%)

Total 33 (12.6%)

82 (31.2%)

69 (26.2%)

79 (30%)

263 (100%)

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Of the different types of MMMCs to be analyzed, general MMMCs (88.2% of the

MMMCs to be analyzed, and 25.1% of the total number of motion constructions, see

Table 5.2) represent the type whose motion morphemes should occur in an order

predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy if the hierarchy is correct. The other two

types of MMMCs in Table 5.3 are not predicted by the hierarchy. There are 31 instances

in which dào ‘arrive’ follows a closed scale motion morpheme (11.8% of the MMMCs to

be analyzed, and 3.3% of the total number of motion constructions, see Table 5.2).

Motion constructions in which the special motion morphemes shànɡ/xià follow tuì

‘recede’ are not found in the novels.

In addition, there is only one instance with three motion morphemes, given in (7).

(7) 生怕她滑落到地上

shēngpà tā huá-luò-dào dì-shàng

fear she slide-fall-arrive floor-on.top.of

‘[They were] afraid that she would slide and fall onto the floor.’ (Chūshì)

The motion construction in (7) contains dào ‘arrive’ as well as a nonscalar change motion

morpheme huá ‘slide’ and an open scale motion morpheme luò ‘fall’, so it is included

among the general MMMCs in Table 5.3.

Because most instances of general MMMCs consist of only two motion morphemes,

the hierarchy is tested based on two-morpheme MMMCs (231 instances). The MMMC

consisting of three motion morphemes, i.e. (7), is discussed separately. Motion

constructions in which dào ‘arrive’ follows a closed scale motion morpheme are analyzed

separately, too.

5.1.4 Hypotheses and data coding

As shown in Chapter 4, the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy consists of four types of motion

morphemes which are identified by three features, i.e. existence of a scale, boundedness

of the scale, and punctuality of the scale. The hierarchy is repeated here as (8a); features

of each type of motion morpheme figuring in the hierarchy are illustrated in (8b).

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(8) a. Motion Morpheme Hierarchy

b. Features of each type of motion morpheme figuring in the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy

Based on the tests introduced in Chapter 3, each motion morpheme can be described

in terms of the three features. For instance, fēi ‘fly’ is a nonscalar change motion

morpheme, so it is coded as [-scale]. In addition, a motion morpheme that is not

associated with a scale denotes motion that is usually durative and has no endpoint, so fēi

is also coded as [-bounded] and [-punctual]. Tuì ‘recede’ is an open scale motion

morpheme, so it has a scale and the scale is unbounded. Therefore, tuì is coded as

([+scale], [-bounded], [-punctual]). Huí ‘return’ is a multi-point closed scale motion

morpheme, so it is coded as ([+scale], [+bounded], [-punctual]).

Therefore, to evaluate the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy, we can examine whether the

features of motion morphemes are distributed in MMMCs in the way suggested by (8b)

rather than by examining the morphemes themselves. The evaluation can be carried out

separately in terms of each of these features. Specifically, in order to verify the hierarchy

in (8a), three hypotheses can be tested. These hypotheses are laid out in (9), with

examples and a further interpretation given in (10).37

                                                                                                                         37 According to the hierarchy, punctuality does not affect the order of motion morphemes because a multi-point closed scale and a two-point closed scale motion morpheme are not expected to co-occur. However, in order to test whether the hierarchy is correct about punctuality, I examine whether there are MMMCs in which two closed scale motion morphemes occur together.

Nonscalar change fēi ‘fly’

Open scale tuì ‘recede’

Closed scale (a) multi-point huí ‘return’ (b) two-point jìn ‘enter’

-scale -bounded -punctual

+scale -bounded -punctual

+scale +bounded

-/+punctual

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(9) If the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy is correct, then in an MMMC with M1 and

M2,

(a) M2 must be [+scale].

Specifically, while M1 can be [+scale] or [-scale], M2 can only be [+scale],

but not [-scale].

(b) M1 must be [-bounded].

Specifically, while M2 can be [+bounded] or [-bounded], M1 can only be

[-bounded], but not [+bounded].

(c) M1 must be [-punctual].

Specifically, while M2 can be [+punctual] or [-punctual], M1 can only be

[-punctual], but not [+punctual].

Pairs of M1 and M2 can form four possible types of combination with respect to each

feature, and an MMMC with M1 and M2 must instantiate one of the four combinations.

Take the feature [+/-scale] for example. The four combinations in terms of [+/-scale] are

illustrated in (10), where each is given with an example. (The examples are constructed to

instantiate each possible combination, so some examples may not exist in natural Chinese

usage; such examples are marked with a question mark.)

(10)

M1 M2 Example

a. (-scale, -scale) ?pǎo-fēi run-fly

b. (-scale, +scale) fēi-jìn fángjiān fly-enter room

c. (+scale, -scale) ?jìn-fēi fángjiān enter-fly room

d. (+scale, +scale) tuì-jìn fángjiān recede-enter room

However, according to the hypothesis in (9a), M2 cannot be [-scale], so (-scale, -scale),

i.e. (10a), and (+scale, -scale), i.e. (10c), are not expected to appear in Chinese.

Similarly, there are four possible combinations of M1 and M2 with respect to

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[+/-bounded], as in (11).

(11)

M1 M2 Examples

a. (-bounded, -bounded) fēi-tuì fly-recede, piāo-luò drift-fall

b. (-bounded, +bounded) tuì-jìn recede-enter, tuì-huí recede-return

c. (+bounded, -bounded) ?huí-tuì return-recede, ?huí-fēi return-fly

d. (+bounded, +bounded) ?huí-jìn return-enter, ?jìn-huí enter-return

According to Hypothesis (9b), M1 must be [-bounded], so (+bounded, -bounded), i.e.

(11c), and (+bounded, +bounded), i.e. (11d), are not expected to occur in Chinese.

Finally, the four possible combinations of M1 and M2 with respect to [+/-punctual]

are given in (12).

(12)

M1 M2 Examples

a. (-punctual, -punctual) fēi-huí fly-return, tuì-huí recede-return

b. (-punctual, +punctual) fēi-jìn fly-enter, fēi-dào fly-arrive

c. (+punctual, -punctual) ?huí-fēi return-fly, ?jìn-fēi enter-fly

d. (+punctual, +punctual) ?jìn-chū enter-exit, ?chū-jìn exit-enter

Similarly, according to Hypothesis (9c), M1 must be [-punctual], so the combinations

(+punctual, -punctual), i.e. (12c), and (+punctual, +punctual), i.e. (12d), are not expected

to exist in Chinese.

Therefore, to test the hypotheses in (9), we need to examine whether there are any

MMMCs in the data sources that illustrate a feature combination not predicted by one of

the hypotheses.

5.1.4 Results Table 5.4 presents all possible combinations of M1 and M2 in an MMMCs in terms of

their features, [+/-scale], [+/-bounded], and [+/-punctual]. The combinations marked with

  157  

“?”, i.e. (-scale, -scale), (+scale, -scale), (+bounded, -bounded), (+bounded, +bounded),

(+punctual, -punctual), and (+punctual, +punctual), are predicted not to exist.

Table 5. 4 Numbers of occcurrences of (M1, M2) in terms of features of scales in the data Existence of a scale Boundedness Punctuality

(M1, M2) (M1, M2) (M1, M2)

(M1, M2)

with

respect

to each

feature

?(-scale, -scale): 0 (-bounded, -bounded): 37 (-punctual, -punctual): 95

(-scale, +scale): 221 (-bounded, +bounded): 194 (-punctual, +punctual): 136

?(+scale, -scale): 1 ?(+bounded, -bounded): 0 ?(+punctual, -punctual): 0

(+scale, +scale): 9 ?(+bounded, +bounded): 0 ?(+punctual, +punctual): 0

Total 231 231 231

The number of occurrences of each combination of M1 and M2 found in the novels are

also given in Table 5.4. The numbers show that among the six combinations that are not

predicted by the hypotheses, five combinations indeed do not occur in the novels. There

is only one instance of (-scale, +scale) found in the novels which is unexpected. This

instance of (+scale, -scale) is given in (13).

(13) 一无所有地飘飘升飞

yìwúsuóyǒu de piāopiāo shēng-fēi with.nothing MOD drifting ascend-fly

‘[She] is ascending and flying in a drifting manner; nothing is with her.’

(Xiǎojiě)

The M1 shēng ‘ascend’ is an open scale motion morpheme, whereas M2 fēi ‘fly’ is a

nonscalar change motion morpheme. Therefore, shēng-fēi in (13) is a counterexample to

the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy because according to the hierarchy, fēi ‘fly’ should

precede shēng ‘ascend’. Nonetheless, this counterexample does not represent a strong

challenge to the hierarchy for two reasons.

  158  

First, there are in total 35 MMMCs consisting of a nonscalar change motion

morpheme (e.g., zǒu ‘walk’, pǎo ‘run’, tiào ‘jump’) and an open scale motion morpheme

(e.g., shàng ‘ascend’, xià ‘descend’, kāi ‘apart, away’, zǒu ‘away’). Shēng-fēi ascend-fly

is the only instance in which the open scale motion morpheme precedes the nonscalar

change motion morpheme, whereas in all the other 34 instances, the order of the

morphemes follows the hierarchy, i.e. an open scale motion morpheme is preceded by a

nonscalar change motion morpheme.

Second, in order to determine whether shēng must precede fēi whenever shēng

‘ascend’ and fēi ‘fly’ occur together, both the orders, shēng-fēi ascend-fly and fēi-shēng

fly-ascend, were searched for in the PKU Corpus. The results show that there are 119

instances of fēi-shēng fly-ascend and only one instance of shēng-fēi ascend-fly found in

the corpus.

Of the 119 instances of fēi-shēng fly-ascend, 82 of them refer to a flying-upward

motion event, as in (14), and 37 instances refer to metaphorical ascending (e.g., increases

in cost of social security, housing prices, and stock prices).

(14) a. 为苹果落地而不是飞升生疑

wèi píngguǒ luò dì ér bù fēi-shēng shēng-yí

for apple fall ground but NEG fly-ascend grow-question

‘[Newton] had the question why apples fall onto the ground but not fly up.’

(PKU Corpus)

b. 英国诗人布鲁克 … 突然觉得“飘然飞升”

yīngguó shīrén Bùlǔkè ... tūrán juéde “piāorán fēi-shēng”

British poet Brooke suddenly feel drift.manner fly-ascend

‘The British poet Brooke suddenly felt he was flying and ascending in a drifting

manner.’ (PKU Corpus)

In contrast, the only instance of shēng-fēi ascend-fly found in the PKU Corpus is

exactly the one found in the novel Xiǎojiě, i.e. (13), because this novel is part of the novel

collection in the PKU Corpus.

  159  

Therefore, it is likely that the instance of shēng-fēi ascend fly in (13) is a nonce use

by the author and does not represent the usual order of shēng and fēi, not to mention an

instance of a nonscalar change motion morphemes following an open scale motion

morpheme.

Besides this instance of shēng-fēi ascend-fly, all other MMMCs found in the data

sources are consistent with the hierarchy. Figure 5.1 presents the frequencies of the types

of “M1+M2”. There are in total six types of “M1+M2” attested in the data. Among them,

the first five (starting from the left edge of the figure; 230 out of 231 instances) are

predicted by the hierarchy.

Figure 5.1 Frequencies of the types of “M1 + M2” MMMCs in the data sources

5.1.5 MMMCs consisting of closed scale motion morphemes and dào ‘arrive’

In Chapter 4, dào ‘arrive’ is treated as a special two-point closed scale motion morpheme

in that it can not only follow nonscalar change motion morphemes and open scale motion

morphemes, but also multi-point closed scale motion morphemes and two-point closed

scale motion morphemes. There are in total 31 instances of two-morpheme MMMCs that

contain dào ‘arrive’ and closed scale motion morphemes. All 31 of these consist of a

multi-point closed scale motion morpheme followed by dào ‘arrive’, e.g., huí-dào Běijīng

return-arrive Beijing ‘arrive at Beijing’, lái-dào tā-de wūlǐ come-arrive his room ‘come to

35  

56  

128  

3   8  1  

0  

20  

40  

60  

80  

100  

120  

140  

nonscalar  change  +  open  

scale  

nonscalar  change  +  mul>-­‐point  closed  

scale  

nonscalar  change  +  two-­‐point  closed  

scale  

open  scale  +  mul>-­‐point  closed  scale  

open  scale  +  two-­‐point  closed  scale  

open  scale  +  nonscalar  change  

  160  

his room’. However, there is no instance found in which dào ‘arrive’ is preceded by a

two-point closed scale motion morpheme. Although such constructions are found in the

PKU Corpus, the lack of occurrence in the novel corpus indicates that dào ‘arrive’ does

not follow a two-point closed scale motion morpheme very frequently. Further discussion

of this phenomenon is given in Section 5.4.

5.1.6 MMMCs with three motion morphemes The corpus study illustrates that the hierarchy in (8) holds for the morpheme order of

most two-morpheme MMMCs (231 out of 232 instances). As mentioned above, there is

also a three-morpheme MMMC found in the novels, repeated here as (15).

(15) 生怕她滑落到地上

shēngpà tā huá-luò-dào dì-shàng

fear she slide-fall-arrive floor-on.top.of

‘[They were] afraid that she would slide and fall onto the floor.’ (chūshì)

In (15), M1 huá ‘slide’ is a nonscalar motion morpheme with no inherent direction, M2

luò ‘fall’ is an open scale motion morpheme, followed by the M3 dào ‘arrive’ which is a

closed scale motion morpheme. Their relative order is consistent with the Motion

Morpheme Hierarchy as well, as illustrated in (16).

(16)

5.1.7 Summary

The results of this corpus study show that the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy can predict

most naturally occurring MMMCs in a corpus of Chinese, which indicates that a motion

morpheme’s order in an MMMC with respect to other motion morphemes is determined

by the type of scale lexicalized in the morphemes. In addition, the study also shows that

Nonscalar change

huá ‘slide’

Open scale luò ‘fall’

Closed scale dào ‘arrive’

  161  

MMMCs consisting of a closed scale motion morpheme and dào ‘arrive’ indeed exist in

Chinese as a type in addition to the MMMCs predicted by the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy.

5.2 Corpus Study 2

The purpose of this study is to verify the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy once again by

investigating MMMCs in another corpus. The most frequently used motion morphemes

of each morpheme type found in Corpus Study 1 were selected for studies. These

morphemes were then searched for in a larger corpus, the PKU Corpus, to investigate

whether they and their co-occurring motion morphemes follow the order expected from

the hierarchy.

5.2.1 Data sources

The chosen motion morphemes were searched for in the novel category of the PKU

Corpus. Novels were used in this study for two reasons. First, novels reflect spoken

language more directly than other genres such as news reports or academic writings.

Second, using the same type of data, that is, novels, in this study can better cross-validate

the results of Corpus Study 1. To make the study feasible, only the first 1,000 instances

retrieved from the search of each motion morpheme were collected for further analysis.

5.2.2 Data Selection

The most frequently used motion morphemes in each class in the hierarchy found in

Corpus Study 1 are listed in (17); the number of occurrences of each morpheme from that

study is listed besides each morpheme.

(17) a. Nonscalar change motion morphemes: zǒu ‘walk’ (90), pǎo ‘run’ (20)

b. Open scale motion morphemes: shànɡ ‘ascend’ (23), xià ‘descend’ (13), tuì

‘recede’ (4)

c. Closed scale motion morphemes: huí ‘return’ (37), chū ‘exit’ (51)

  162  

As discussed in Chapter 3, shàng ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’ behave differently from

other open scale motion morphemes in that they usually require explicitly expressed

information about the ground, and in that they can occur after an other open scale motion

morpheme, tuì ‘recede’. Therefore, although shànɡ ‘ascend’ and xià ‘descend’ are the

two most frequently used open scale motion morphemes, the third most frequently used

open scale motion morpheme, tuì ‘recede’, is also included in this study. Multi-point and

two-point closed scale motion morphemes are grouped together as closed scale motion

morphemes in the hierarchy because, with the exception of dào ‘arrive’, motion

morphemes of these two types do not co-occur (see Chapter 4). The most frequently used

multi-point closed scale motion morpheme is huí ‘return’ (37 instances), and the most

frequently used two-point closed scale motion morpheme is chū ‘exit’ (51 instances).

In addition, because dào ‘arrive’ behaves differently from other two-point closed

scale motion morphemes, and it occurs very frequently with other motion morphemes (86

instances in Corpus Study 1), dào was also searched for in the PKU Corpus.

All MMMCs were collected in the same way as in Corpus Study 1 (see Section 5.1.2).

5.2.3 Hypotheses and data coding

The corpus study is intended to examine the relative order of a particular morpheme (the

ones in (17), “key morphemes” hereafter) and the motion morphemes it co-occurs with.

For each key morpheme that belongs to a certain type of motion morpheme, the Motion

Morpheme Hierarchy (repeated here as (18)) predicts what types of motion morphemes

can precede or follow the key morpheme. In other words, if the hierarchy is correct, then

a nonscalar change motion morpheme (zǒu ‘walk’, pǎo ‘run’) can only precede an open

or closed scale motion morpheme; an open scale motion morpheme (shàng ‘ascend’, xià

‘descend’, tuì ‘recede’) can follow a nonscalar change motion morpheme and precede a

closed scale motion morpheme; and a closed scale motion morpheme (huí ‘return’, chū

‘exit’) can follow the other two types of motion morphemes.

  163  

(18)

Furthermore, as mentioned above, there are two special types of MMMCs that are not

predicted by the hierarchy: MMMCs with the open scale motion morphemes tuì ‘recede’

and shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’, and MMMCs with closed scale motion morphemes

and dào ‘arrive’. The use of these MMMCs is also analyzed in this study.

Because we already know what kind of scale each key morpheme lexicalizes, we can

directly investigate the distribution of key morphemes and their co-occurring motion

morphemes, and then determine whether their relative order follows the Motion

Morpheme Hierarchy. To do so, each motion morpheme that co-occurs with the key

morpheme was also classified according to what kind of scale it has (i.e. nonscalar

change, open, and closed) using the tests introduced in Chapter 3. Then, I examined

whether the relative order of the key morpheme and the morphemes it co-occurs with is

consistent with the hierarchy.

5.2.4 Results

As shown in Table 5.5, 1,242 MMMCs were collected in the search.38 Among them,

1,231 (99.1%) are MMMCs with two motion morphemes (with or without construction

final lái/qù), and 11 (0.09%) are MMMCs with three motion morphemes.39 In what

                                                                                                                         38 The first 1,000 instances of each key morpheme searched for in the PKU Corpus were collected, so there were in total 8,000 instances for the eight key morphemes. However, not all 8,000 instances are MMMCs, e.g., some key morphemes occur as the only verb in a construction, and some key morphemes are used as nouns instead of verbs, so the final number of MMMCs selected for analysis (1,242 instances) is much less than 8,000. 39 There are cases in which the same MMMCs appeared in the search results of different key morphemes. For instance, the MMMC tuì-chū wŭchǎng recede-exit ballroom ‘recede from the ballroom’ was found in both the searches for tuì ‘recede’ and chū ‘exit’. However, the number of repeated MMMCs is not large. For example, in the first 1,000 instances of tuì, there are 80 instances of MMMCs consisting of tuì and chū, but in the first 1,000 instance of chū, there are only three instances consisting of tuì and chū, so only three repeated MMMCs are found in the searches for these two morphemes. For convenience, this study did not delete the repeated MMMCs, but included them in the results for each key morpheme.      

Nonscalar change fēi ‘fly’

Open scale tuì ‘recede’

Closed scale (a) multi-point huí ‘return’ (b) two-point jìn ‘enter’

  164  

follows, the morpheme order of two-morpheme MMMCs is analyzed first, then the

MMMCs with three motion morphemes are analyzed.

Table 5.5 MMMCs collected for Corpus Study 2

Key morphemes

Nonscalar

change motion

morpheme

Open scale motion morpheme Closed scale

motion

morpheme

dào

‘arrive’

SUM

zǒu

‘walk’

pǎo

‘run’

shàng

‘ascend’

xià

‘descend’

tuì

‘recede’

huí

‘return’

chū

‘exit’

dào

‘arrive’

Two-

morpheme

MMMC

334 327 28 30 169 119 85 139 1, 231

99.1%

Three-

morpheme

MMMC

1 0 0 0 2 5 0 3 11

0.09%

SUM 335

27%

327

26.3%

28

2.3%

30

2.4%

171

13.7%

124

10%

85

6.9%

142

11.4%

1,242

100%

5.2.4.1 Two-morpheme MMMCs

Figures 5.2-5.9 display the distribution of each key morpheme in two-morpheme

MMMCs. In each figure, there are three columns, with the middle column representing

the key morpheme, the column to its left representing the number of occurrences of

different types of motion morphemes that precede the key morpheme, and the column to

its right representing the number of occurrences of different types of motion morphemes

that follow the key morpheme in MMMCs. Take Figure 5.2, for example: the motion

morpheme in the middle column is zǒu ‘walk’, which is the key morpheme. In total, 334

instances of zǒu were found to occur in MMMCs. The column to its right represents the

different types of motion morphemes that occur after zǒu: 99 instances of dào ‘arrive’,

201 instances of closed scale motion morphemes (including both multi-point closed and

two-point closed scale motion morphemes, e.g., huí ‘return’ in zǒu huí-lái walk return-

  165  

come, jìn ‘enter’ in zǒu-jìn shāngdiàn walk-enter store), and 34 instances of open scale

motion morphemes (e.g., shàng ‘ascend’ in zǒu-shàng chē walk-ascend car). The column

to the left of the zǒu column represents the types of motion morphemes that precede zǒu

in MMMCs. However, as illustrated in Figure 5.2, no motion morpheme occurring before

zǒu was found in the corpus search.

Figure 5.2 Zǒu ‘walk’

Figure 5.3 Pǎo ‘run’

Figure 5.3 illustrates the order of the nonscalar change motion morpheme pǎo ‘run’

and its co-occurring motion morphemes. Like zǒu ‘walk’, there is no motion morpheme

preceding pǎo. In addition, pǎo is found to precede all other types of motion morphemes,

as shown in the column to the right of the pǎo column. Therefore, both the distributions

34  

201  

99  

0  

50  

100  

150  

200  

250  

300  

350  

400  

M  preceding  zǒu  (0%)  

zǒu  'walk'     M  following  zǒu  (100%)  

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

0  

327  

1  

183  

143  

0  

50  

100  

150  

200  

250  

300  

350  

M  preceding  pǎo  (0%)  

pǎo  'run'     M  following  pǎo  (100%)  

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

  166  

of zǒu ‘walk’ and pǎo ‘run’ are consistent with the hierarchy. Furthermore, for both zǒu

and pǎo, closed scale motion morphemes are the most frequent co-occurring type,

followed by dào ‘arrive’ and then open scale motion morphemes.

Figures 5.4-5.6 display the distribution of the most frequently used open scale motion

morphemes in Corpus Study 1, shàng ‘ascend’, xià ‘descend’, and tuì ‘recede’. As

mentioned above, shàng and xià are not typical open scale motion morphemes, so the

distribution of the third most frequently used open scale motion morpheme tuì ‘recede’

was also investigated.

Figure 5.4 Shàng ‘ascend’

Figure 5.5 Xià ‘descend’

28  

0  

5  

10  

15  

20  

25  

30  

M  preceding  shànɡ  (100%)  

shànɡ  'ascend'    

M  following  shànɡ  (0%)    

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

29  

1  

30  

0  0  

5  

10  

15  

20  

25  

30  

35  

M  preceding  xià  (100%)  

xià  'descend'     M  following  xià  (0%)  

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

  167  

 

Figure 5.6 Tuì ‘recede’

The three figures indicate that shànɡ and xià indeed behave differently from tuì.

Although according to the hierarchy, all three morphemes can be preceded by nonscalar

change motion morphemes, in this corpus study, only shàng and xià are preceded by

nonscalar change motion morphemes (e.g., dēng ‘climb’ in dēng-shàng shāndǐng climb-

ascend summit and tiào ‘jump’ in tiào-xià chē jump-descend car). In addition, the

hierarchy also suggests that all three morphemes should be followed by dào ‘arrive’, but

only tuì is found to be followed by dào ‘arrive’, as in tuì-dào mén-wài recede-arrive door-

outside. When these three morphemes were searched for in the whole PKU Corpus,

examples could be found in which tuì is preceded by nonscalar change motion

morphemes, and shànɡ and xià are followed by dào ‘arrive’, as predicted by the hierarchy,

as in (19).

(19) a. 向后飞退的黄土

xiàng hòu fēi-tuì de huáng tǔ

towards back fly-recede REL yellow dust

‘the yellow dust which is flying backward’ (PKU Corpus)

0  

169  

19  

122  

28  

0  

20  

40  

60  

80  

100  

120  

140  

160  

180  

M  preceding  tuì  (0%)  

tuì  'recede'     M  following  tuì  (100%)  

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

  168  

b. 然后沿山路一直上到山顶

ránhòu yán shānlù yìzhí shàng-dào shāndǐng

then along mountain.road straight ascend-arrive summit

‘Then go up to the summit all the way along the mountain road.’ (PKU Corpus)

c. 他们下到山沟里

tāmen xià-dào shāngōu-lǐ

they descend-arrive valley-inside

‘They went down into the valley.’ (PKU Corpus)

However, Figures 5.4-5.6 indicate that the three morphemes have preferences for co-

occurring with certain types of motion morphemes. Specifically, shàng and xià prefer to

occur with nonscalar change motion morphemes, whereas tuì prefers closed scale motion

morphemes.

Furthermore, the corpus finds that xià occurs with the other open scale motion

morpheme investigated, tuì, to form MMMCs. As shown in Figure 5.5 one of such

MMMCs is found with xià as the key morpheme, whereas in Figure 5.6, 19 instances are

found of such MMMCs where tuì is the key morpheme. In all 20 instances, tuì always

precedes xià, as in (20).

(20) 潮水一批批退下去

cháoshuǐ yìpīpī tuì xià-qù

tide one.CLF recede descend-go

‘The tides receded down (away from the speaker) one by one.’ (PKU Corpus)

However, no instances of tuì-shàng recede-ascend are found, although as illustrated in

Chapter 4, these two morphemes may occur together.

Nonetheless, the occurrences of tuì-xià recede-descend suggest that open scale

motion morphemes show some properties that are not predicted by the hierarchy in (18).

Further discussion will be provided in Section 5.3.

  169  

Figures 5.7-5.8 display the distribution of multi-point closed motion morpheme huí

‘return’ and the two-point closed motion morpheme chū ‘exit’.

Figure 5.7 Huí ‘return’

Figure 5.8 Chū ‘exit’

Figure 5.7 indicates that huí ‘return’ may be preceded by both open scale motion

morphemes, e.g., tuì ‘recede’ in tuì huí-lái recede return-come and nonscalar change

motion morphemes, e.g., gǎn ‘rush’ in gǎn-huí Hángzhōu rush-return Hangzhou, and

followed by dào ‘arrive’, as in huí-dào jiā-lǐ return-arrive home-inside. In addition, huí

does not co-occur with other closed scale motion morphemes.

As illustrated in Figure 5.8, chū ‘exit’ is also preceded by both open scale motion

morphemes, e.g., tuì ‘recede in tuì-chū wŭchǎng return-exit dancing-court, and nonscalar

motion morphemes, e.g., chōng ‘rush’ in chōng-chū jiàshǐshì rush-exit operating-room

36  

4  

119  

79  

0  

20  

40  

60  

80  

100  

120  

140  

M  preceding  huí  (33.6%)  

huí  'return'     M  following  huí  (66.4%)  

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

82  

0  

3  

85  

0  

10  

20  

30  

40  

50  

60  

70  

80  

90  

M  preceding  chū  (100%)  

chū  'exit'     M  following  chū  (0%)  

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

  170  

and fēi ‘fly’ in fēi-chū cháo fly-exit nest. In addition, similar to huí ‘return’, chū ‘exit’ is

not found to co-occur with closed scale motion morphemes, including dào ‘arrive’. The

distribution of huí ‘return’ and chū ‘exit’ is thus consistent with the hypothesis.

Figure 5.9 shows the distribution of dào ‘arrive’. All three types of motion

morphemes are found before dào ‘arrive’, whereas no motion morpheme is found to

follow dào ‘arrive’.

Figure 5.9 Dào ‘arrive’

5.2.4.2 Three-morpheme MMMCs Besides the two-morpheme MMMCs, 11 three-morpheme MMMCs are found in the

study. Three types of morpheme order are observed in the 11 attested MMMCs. The first

type is “nonscalar change + open scale + dào ‘arrive’”. One instance is found of this

order, as illustrated in (21).

(21) 鸭舌帽从病床无声地滑落到水泥地上

yāshémào cóng bìngchuáng wúshēng de huá-luò-dào

peaked.hat from sickbed silently MOD slide-fall-arrive

shuǐnídì-shàng

concrete.floor

‘The peaked hat slid and fell onto the concrete floor silently.’ (PKU Corpus)

38  

45  

56  

139  

0  0  

20  

40  

60  

80  

100  

120  

140  

160  

M  preceding  dào(100%)  

dào  ‘arrive’   M  following  dào  (0%)  

dào  ‘arrive’  

closed  scale  

open  scale  

nonscalar  change  

  171  

The order of the three morphemes in (21) is consistent with the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy. The second type is “nonscalar change + closed scale + dào ‘arrive’”. Six

instances are found in this order, with one example given in (22).

(22) 一步一步地踱回到……办公台旁

yí bù yi bù de duó-huí–dào …. bàngōngtái-páng

one step one step MOD stroll-return-arrive office.desk-side

‘[He] strolled back to the office desk, one step by one step.’ (PKU Corpus)

The third type is “open scale + closed scale + dào ‘arrive’”. Four instances are found in

this order, with one example in (23).

(23) 默默地退回到自己的床上

mòmò de tuì-huí-dào zìjǐ-de chuáng-shàng

silently MOD recede-return-arrive self -POSS bed-on.top.of

‘[She] returned to her own bed silently.’ (PKU Corpus)

Both the second and third type of three-morpheme motion constructions have dào ‘arrive’

following a closed scale motion morpheme, which is an exception to the hierarchy.

However, the non-dào ‘arrive’ motion morphemes, i.e. M1 and M2, in both types occur

in the order predicted by the hierarchy.

5.2.5 Summary The results of Corpus Study 2 are consistent with those of Corpus Study 1. This study

again shows that the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy can predict the order of motion

morphemes of different types in both two-morpheme and three-morpheme MMMCs. It

also shows that MMMCs with tuì-shànɡ/xià recede-ascend/descend and MMMCs with a

closed scale motion morpheme and dào ‘arrive’ exist in Chinese in addition to the types

of MMMCs predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy.

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5.3 The encoding of Chinese motion events

The two corpus studies in Sections 5.1 and 5.2 show that the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy, repeated in (24), is able to account for a large range of MMMCs in Chinese.

(24)

In this section, I discuss what the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy implies about the

encoding of motion events in Chinese as well as related issues, including why other

closed scale motion morphemes do not co-occur, why dào ‘arrive’ can follow all other

types of motion morphemes, as well as why the open scale motion morphemes shàng

‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ and tuì ‘recede’ can occur together.

5.3.1 The Motion Morpheme Hierarchy and the “More Specific Constraint” Both corpus studies presented in Section 5.1 and Section 5.2 show that most Chinese

MMMCs consist of only two motion morphemes (not including construction final lái/qù).

A total of 1,505 MMMCs were analyzed in the two studies (263 in Corpus Study 1 and

1,242 in Corpus Study 2), but only twelve of them were three-morpheme motion

constructions. The small number of occurrences of three-morpheme MMMCs indicates

that motion events are primarily expressed with two motion morphemes in Chinese. In

addition, when two morphemes occur together in an MMMC, their relative order must be

one of the three orders allowed by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy:

(25) a. nonscalar change morpheme+open scale morpheme, e.g., gŭn ‘roll’+luò ‘fall’

b. nonscalar change morpheme+closed scale morpheme, e.g., gŭn ‘roll’+ jìn

‘enter’

c. open scale morpheme+closed scale morpheme, e.g., luò ‘fall’＋jìn ‘enter’

Nonscalar change fēi ‘fly’

Open scale tuì ‘recede’

Closed scale (a) multi-point huí ‘return’ (b) two-point jìn ‘enter’

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In each of the three orders, M2 is always more specific than M1 in terms of the

information it provides about the scale associated with a motion event. Specifically, in

(25a), the M2 is more specific than the M1 in that the M2 indicates the existence of a

scale in the motion event, whereas the M1 provides no information about a scale; in (25b),

the M2 is more specific than the M1 in that M2 indicates that the motion event has a scale

and the scale is bounded, whereas the M1 provides no information about a scale; in (25c),

although both the M1 and M2 indicate the existence of a scale in the motion event, the

M2 is more specific than the M1 in that the M2 indicates the scale is bounded, whereas

M1 provides no information about boundedness. Therefore, the order of motion

morphemes in a Chinese MMMC conforms to a constraint that the morpheme that adds

more specific information about the scale in a motion event must occur in the M2

position. In this study, I call this constraint the “More Specific Constraint”.

In the rest of this section, I show that the More Specific Constraint is able to provide a

more consistent account for the morpheme order of all types of two-morpheme MMMCs

than the RVC account and the temporal iconicity account introduced in Chapter 2. In

addition, the More Specific Constraint is able to explain the ordering in three-morpheme

MMMCs as well as why two closed scale motion morphemes typically do not co-occur in

Chinese.

5.3.1.1 The More Specific Constraint vs. the RVC account As discussed in Chapter 2, Chinese directional motion constructions are treated by some

previous studies (e.g., Li and Thompson 1981) as a type of RVC in which the second

element expresses the result of the action denoted by the first element. However, such an

account can only explain the orders in (25a) and (25b) in which the M2 (open scale in

(25a) and closed scale in (25b)) can be understood as a result. It does not account for the

order in (25c), where an open scale morpheme must precede a closed scale morpheme,

although both are result morphemes. For instance, according to the RVC account, the M2

luò ‘fall’ in (26a) and jìn ‘enter’ in (26b) both qualify as results and, thus, can occur after

the nonscalar change motion morpheme gǔn ‘roll’. However, when the two result

morphemes, luò ‘fall’ and jìn ‘enter’, occur together, the RVC account cannot explain

why only the order luò-jìn fall enter is allowed, as in (26c) vs. (26d).

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(26) a. 滑坡处不断有悬石滚落

Huápō chù búduàn yǒu xuánshí gŭn-luò,

landslide place continuously have hanging.stone roll-fall

‘There were hanging stones continuously rolling and falling from the place of

landslide.’ (PKU Corpus)

b. 那块条石滚进了岩下的水涧

nà-kuài tiáoshí gŭn-jìn-le yán-xià de shuǐ-jiàn

that-CLF square.stone roll-enter-ASP cliff-below REL water.stream

‘That square stone rolled into the stream under the cliff.’ (PKU Corpus)

c. 忽然一块石子落进了水里

hūrán yī-kuài shízi luò-jìn-le shuǐ-lǐ

suddenly one.CLF pebble fall-enter-ASP water-inside

‘Suddenly, a pebble fell into the water.’(PKU Corpus)

d. *忽然一块石子进落了水里

*hūrán yī-kuài shízi jìn-luò-le shuǐ-lǐ

suddenly one.CLF pebble enter-fall-ASP water-inside

In contrast, the More Specific Constraint is able to provide an explanation for (26c)

and (26d). The constraint assumes that all Chinese scalar change motion morphemes

express result meanings, and can be further classified into different types based on the

kind of associated scale. Both luò ‘fall’ and jìn ‘enter’ are scalar change motion

morphemes. However, luò ‘fall’ lexicalizes an open scale, whereas jìn ‘enter’ lexicalizes

a scale with an endpoint, so jìn ‘enter’ is a type of scalar change motion morpheme that

provides more specific information about the scale than luò ‘fall’ does. When luò ‘fall’

and jìn ‘enter’ occur together, the More Specific Constraint requires the motion

morpheme with more specific information about the scale to follow the morpheme with

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less specific information about the scale. Therefore, jìn ‘enter’ must follow luò ‘fall’, and

not vice versa.

5.3.1.2 The More Specific Constraint vs. the temporal iconicity account Chapter 2 presents an account that relates word order in Chinese to the temporal order of

the events denoted by the words (Tai 1986, Y. Li 1993), i.e. the temporal iconicity

account. This account predicts that a morpheme denoting a temporally later event cannot

precede a morpheme denoting a temporally earlier event. However, it cannot explain the

order of morphemes denoting events that occur simultaneously. For instance, a person

can be running and ascending at the same time if s/he was standing at the lower end of

stairs before starting to run up them. However, only the morpheme denoting running (pǎo

‘run’) can precede the morpheme denoting ascending (shàng ‘ascend’), but not vice versa,

(27).

(27) a. 他跑上楼梯

tā pǎo-shàng lóutī

he run-ascend stairs

‘He went up the stairs running.’

b. *上跑楼梯

*shàng-pǎo lóutī

ascend-run stairs

The More Specific Constraint is able to explain the order of morphemes in

such MMMCs: the open scale motion morpheme shàng ‘ascend’ is more specific

than the nonscalar change motion morpheme pǎo ‘run’ in that it has an associated

scale, so shàng ‘ascend’ must occur after pǎo ‘run’.

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5.3.1.3 The More Specific Constraint accounts for three-morpheme MMMCs

The More Specific Constraint can also be applied to three-morpheme MMMCs, although

the two corpus studies in Sections 5.1 and 5.2 show that three-morpheme MMMCs are

not frequent in Chinese. In a three-morpheme MMMC consisting of morphemes

lexicalizing different types of scale, the order of morphemes must conform to the More

Specific Constraint; that is, the morphemes must be ordered according to how much

information about the scale they specify. The morpheme denoting the least specific

information about the scale must occur as the leftmost of the three morphemes, whereas

the morpheme denoting the most specific information about the scale must occur as the

rightmost. As schematized in (28), huá ‘slide’, which does not specify a scale, is followed

by luò ‘fall’, which specifies an open scale, which is then followed by dào ‘arrive’, which

specifies a closed scale.

(28) 生怕她滑落到地上

shēngpà tā huá-luò-dào dì-shàng

fear she slide-fall-arrive floor-on.top.of

‘[They were] afraid that she would slide and fall onto the floor.’ (Chūshì)

5.3.1.4 The incompatibility of two closed scale motion morphemes in an MMMC As shown in previous sections, unless one of the two morphemes is dào ‘arrive’, two

closed scale motion morphemes typically do not occur together in an MMMC. In this

section, I focus on closed scale motion morphemes other than dào ‘arrive’, which I will

come back to in the next section.

Both multi-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., huí ‘return’) and two-point

closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., jìn ‘enter’) are associated with a bounded scale.

Although the two types of motion morphemes differ from each other in whether they

lexicalize a multi-point or two-point scale, morphemes of either type are able to express a

Nonscalar change

Open scale

Closed scale

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single delimited motion event in which a moving object moves along a path in a certain

direction to an endpoint. For instance, both huí ‘return’ and jìn ‘enter’ independently

specify a delimited motion event: huí ‘return’ denotes an event in which a figure moves

back to the location it comes from, whereas jìn ‘enter’ denotes an event in which a figure

crosses a boundary and moves into an enclosed region. A motion construction consisting

of both huí ‘return’ and jìn ‘enter’ would describe two delimited events with two

independent directions, paths, and endpoints, which thus is a violation of the Single

Delimiting Constraint (Tenny 1994) (see Section 3.2.1.2). Therefore, a motion

construction cannot involve two co-occurring closed scale motion morphemes.

In terms of the degree of specification of a scale, a two-point closed scale motion

morpheme is not more specific than a multi-point closed scale motion morpheme, or vice

versa: both specify the existence of a scale and the existence of an endpoint for the scale.

In this sense, the More Specific Constraint does not predict the relative ordering of two

closed scale motion morphemes.

As mentioned above, the two-point closed scale motion morpheme dào ‘arrive’ is a

special motion morpheme that can occur with closed scale motion morphemes. I will

provide possible reasons for why dào ‘arrive’ is able to do so in Section 5.4.

5.3.1.4 Tuì-shàng/xià is consistent with the More Specific Constraint Both shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ and tuì ‘recede’ lexicalize open scales, so the

existence of motion constructions in which they co-occur is not predicted by the Motion

Morpheme Hierarchy or the More Specific Constraint. However, in this section, I explain

why shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ can follow tuì ‘recede’ in an MMMC such as (20),

repeated here as (29), and argue that their co-occurrence is not a counterexample to the

constraint, but supports it.

(29) 潮水一批批退下去

cháoshuǐ yìpīpī tuì xià-qù

tide one.CLF recede descend-go

‘The tides receded down (away from the speaker) one by one.’ (PKU Corpus)

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As shown in Section 3.3.3 in Chapter 3, shàng and xià can be distinguished from

other open scale motion morphemes in that they require explicitly expressed information

about the ground.40 Therefore, shàng and xià cannot occur alone, but have to be either

followed by a ground NP (30b) or by the deictic morpheme lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ (30c).

(30) a. *他上/下了

*tā shàng/xià le

he ascend/descend ASP

b. 他上二楼了

tā shàng èrlóu le

he ascend second.floor ASP

‘He went up to the second floor/he went down from the second floor.’

c. 他下来了

tā xià-lái le

he descend-come ASP

‘He went down (towards the deictic center).’

Because shàng and xià are always specific about ground information, the

ascending/descending events denoted by shàng and xià are usually specific in terms of

boundedness. For instance, although an ascending event is by default understood as an

unbounded event, in which a figure can ascend without limitation, the ground NP èrlóu

‘second floor’ required by shàng ‘ascend’ in (30b) delimits the ascending event, so it

ends at the second floor; similarly, the deictic morpheme lái ‘come’ in (30c) delimits the

descending event at the deictic center. In other words, the ascending event stops when the

figure moves to the second floor, and the descending event stops when the figure arrives

at the deictic center. In this sense, “shàng/xià + ground NP/lái/qù” can be understood as a

combination that specifies both that a scale exists and that it is bounded. Thus, when the                                                                                                                          40 As mentioned in Chapter 3, this dissertation leaves the reasons why shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ requires explicitly expressed information about ground for future study.  

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combination is in an MMMC preceded by tuì ‘recede’, as in (29), the combination

denotes more specific information about the scale of motion than tuì, which only

specifies the existence of scale. Therefore, the fact that shàng/xià not only can co-occur

with tuì but also must follow tuì further supports the More Specific Constraint: the

morpheme with more specific information about the scale must follow the one with less

specific information about scale.

Because tuì ‘recede’ is the only motion morpheme in the class of open scale motion

morphemes that denotes non-vertical motion, tuì-shàng/xià recede-ascend/descend is the

only motion construction in which shàng/xià may follow an open scale motion

morpheme.41 However, according to the More Specific Constraint, if Chinese were to

have other non-vertical open scale motion morphemes, shàng/xià should be able to co-

occur with and follow them.

5.4 The two-point closed scale motion morpheme dào ‘arrive’ As shown in Chapter 4 and previous sections of Chapter 5, the two-point closed scale

motion morpheme dào ‘arrive’ can follow other closed scale motion morphemes, as in

huí-dào fángjiān return-arrive room ‘return to the room’, jìn-dào fángjiān enter-arrive

room ‘enter the room’, whereas other two-point closed scale motion morphemes such as

jìn ‘enter’ cannot follow another closed scale motion morpheme, as in *huí-jìn fángjiān

return-enter room and *lái-jìn fángjiān come-enter room. In terms of the degree of

specification of scale information, dào ‘arrive’ is as specific as other two-point closed

scale motion morphemes, i.e. they all specify the existence of a scale, as well as the

existence of an endpoint for the scale. Therefore, the fact that dào ‘arrive’ can follow

closed scale motion morphemes represents an exception to the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy and the More Specific Constraint.

In this section, I suggest why dào ‘arrive’ is able to do this, and explore the function

of dào ‘arrive’ when it occurs after closed scale motion morphemes.

                                                                                                                         41 Shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ can follow other semantically compatible vertical motion morphemes, e.g., shēng ‘ascend’ jiàng ‘descend’, zhuì ‘fall’, chén ‘sink’. This study treats such combinations as instances of juxtaposed motion synonyms rather than as instances of MMMCs as tuì-shàng/xià recede-ascend/descend is. See Section 4.4.4 in Chapter 4.

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5.4.1 A possible reason that dào ‘arrive’ follows closed scale motion morphemes

Chapter 3 has shown that dào ‘arrive’, jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’ all denote bounded and

instantaneous events and are two-point closed scale motion morphemes. However, dào

‘arrive’ differs from jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’ with respect to the degree of specification it

provides about the ground and path involved in the motion event (Lin 2011). I propose

that this difference makes it possible for dào ‘arrive’ to follow other closed scale motion

morphemes.

Both jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’ are highly specific about the ground and path: jìn ‘enter’

expresses a boundary-crossing motion event involving motion from the outside to the

inside of an enclosed region, whereas chū ‘exit’ expresses a boundary-crossing motion

event involving motion from the inside of an enclosed region to the outside (Lin 2011).

For instance, jìn and chū only select NPs expressing enclosed regions (e.g., house, but not

table) as their complements, as in (31a), cf. (31b).

(31) a. 他进/出房子了

tā jìn/chū fángzi le

he enter/exit house ASP

‘He entered/exited the house.’

b. *他进/出桌子了

*tā jìn/chū zhuōzi le

he enter/exit table ASP

In addition, both jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’ are specific about the path of motion, and thus

express a very precise spatial relationship between the figure and the ground, e.g., for jìn,

whether the figure moves into the ground and is located there at the end of an entering

event. Thus, localizers that express spatial relationships (e.g., -lǐ ‘inside’) need not co-

occur with an NP taken as complement by jìn and chū (Lin 2011). As illustrated in (31a),

although a localizer such as -lǐ ‘inside’ is not explicitly expressed, it is understood that in

an event of entering denoted by jìn ‘enter’, the figure moves from the outside to the

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inside of an enclosed region, whereas in an event of exiting denoted by chū ‘exit’, a

figure moves in the reverse direction.

In contrast, dào ‘arrive’ is not specific about the ground and the path of the motion it

denotes (ibid.). First, dào does not specify what kind of ground is involved in the motion

event, so it is able to take any kind of ground NP as its complement. As (32) illustrates,

both fángzi ‘house’ (enclosed region) and zhuōzi ‘table’ (non-enclosed region) can be the

complements of dào, cf. jìn ‘enter’ in (31).

(32) a. 他到房子里了

tā dào fángzi-lǐ le

he arrive house-inside ASP

‘He went into the house.’

b. 他到桌子上了

tā dào zhuōzi-shàng le

he arrive table-on.top.of ASP

‘He went onto the table.’

Second, dào ‘arrive’ is not specific about the path along which a figure moves to the

ground, and thus provides no information about the precise spatial relationship between

the figure and the ground at the end of a motion event. For instance, when dào is

followed by the bare NP fángzi ‘house’, it does not indicate whether the figure arrived at

the outside or the inside of the house, and thus dào fángzi arrive house is usually not

allowed in Chinese, as shown in (33).

(33) *他到房子了

*tā dào fángzi le

he arrive house ASP

Instead, a localizer such as -lǐ ‘inside’ must be explicitly expressed to specify the figure’s

final location, as in (32a).

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Therefore, when dào ‘arrive’ occurs with another closed scale motion morpheme, it

does not add new information about the ground or path that may be different from or

incompatible with the information denoted by the co-occurring motion morpheme. This

may explain why dào ‘arrive’ can co-occur with other closed scale motion morphemes,

whereas jìn ‘enter’ and chū ‘exit’ cannot. For instance, huí ‘return’ in (34a) denotes a

returning event, and when it is followed by dào ‘arrive’, the sequence huí-dào return-

arrive still denotes an event of returning, as in (34b); similarly, both (35a) (without dào

‘arrive’) and (35b) (with dào ‘arrive’) denote an event of entering a classroom.

(34) a. 他回教室了

tā huí jiàoshì le

he return classroom ASP

‘He returned to the classroom.’

b. 他回到教室了

tā huí-dào jiàoshì le

he return-arrive classroom ASP

‘He returned to the classroom.’

(35) a. 他进教室了

tā jìn jiàoshì le

he enter classroom ASP

‘He entered the classroom.’

b. 他进到教室了

tā jìn-dào jiàoshì le

he enter-arrive classroom ASP

‘He entered the classroom.’

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In contrast, as illustrated in (36), huí ‘return’ is usually not allowed to be followed by the

two-point closed scale motion morpheme jìn ‘enter’, while still expressing an event of

returning.

(36) ?他回进教室了

tā huí-jìn jiàoshì le

he return-enter classroom ASP

Table 5.6 lists the number of occurrences of huí-dào return-arrive and huí-jìn return-

enter taking a selection of different ground NPs in the PKU Corpus. It suggests that dào

‘arrive’ frequently follows multi-point closed scale motion morphemes, but it is very rare

for the other two-point closed scale motion morpheme, jìn ‘enter’, to do so.

Table 5.6 Number of occurrences of huí-dào and huí-jìn in the PKU Corpus

X + Locative NP X = huí-dào return-arrive X = huí-jìn return-enter

X + fángjiān ‘room’ + (localizer) 137 1

X + jiā ‘home’ + (localizer) 2,668 1

X + xuéxiào ‘school’ + (localizer) 129 0

X + chē ‘car’ + (localizer) 94 1

Total 3,028 3

5.4.2 The function of dào ‘arrive’ after closed scale motion morphemes As shown above, dào ‘arrive’ does not express a more specific scale than the closed scale

motion morpheme that precedes it. However, the information about motion denoted by

dào ‘arrive’ does not contradict the information about motion denoted by the closed scale

motion morphemes preceding dào, so dào is able to co-occur with such morphemes. In

this section, I discuss the function of dào ‘arrive’ when it occurs after closed scale motion

morphemes. Specifically, I suggest that dào ‘arrive’ helps reinforce the endpoint of a

motion event when it occurs after a multi-point closed scale motion morpheme such as

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huí ‘return’, but it is redundant when it occurs after a two-point closed scale motion

morpheme such as jìn ‘enter’.

Chapter 3 shows that a multi-point closed scale motion morpheme such as huí ‘return’

lexicalizes a bounded scale consisting of multiple points, and thus motion along such a

scale usually has duration. Therefore, a multi-point closed scale motion morpheme

indicates the existence of an endpoint for the path of motion, but does not always entail

that the moving object has reached the endpoint. For instance, (37) may have two

interpretations: on one, the figure is located at school at 8am; and on the other, the figure

started to return to school at 8am and was on the way to school at speech time (cf.

MacDonald 2008: 100).

(37) 他早上八点回学校了

tā zǎoshang bā-diǎn huí xuéxiào le

he morning eight-o’clock return school ASP

‘He returned to school at 8am.’

‘He started to return to school at 8am.’

In contrast, a two-point closed scale motion morpheme such as jìn ‘enter’ lexicalizes a

scale with only two points, and thus the motion events it is used to describe are usually

instantaneous. Therefore, when an event of entering happens, a figure must have moved

into an enclosed region. For instance, the figure must be located inside the school at 8am

in the event described in (38).

(38) 他早上八点进学校了

tā zǎoshang bā-diǎn jìn xuéxiào le

he morning eight-o’clock enter school ASP

‘He entered the school at 8am.’

When dào ‘arrive’ follows a multi-point closed scale motion morpheme such as huí

‘return’, it reinforces the arrival of the figure at the endpoint of the motion event, and thus

only one interpretation is possible for the returning event, the one where the figure must

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have returned to the endpoint. For instance, (39) can only be understood as expressing

that the figure was located at school at 8am, cf. (37).

(39) 他早上八点回到学校了

tā zǎoshang bā-diǎn huí-dào xuéxiào le

he morning eight-o’clock return-arrive school ASP

‘He returned to school at 8am.’

However, as illustrated in (38), jìn ‘enter’ denotes instantaneous motion which entails a

figure’s arrival at the endpoint, so regardless of the presence or absence of dào ‘arrive’,

the moving object must be at school at 8am, as illustrated in (40), cf. (38).

(40) 他早上八点进到学校了

tā zǎoshang bā-diǎn jìn-dào xuéxiào le

he morning eight-o’clock enter-arrive school ASP

‘He entered school at 8am.’

(40) indicates that jìn ‘enter’ or other two-point closed scale motion morphemes do not

need to be followed by dào ‘arrive’ in order to reinforce the attainment of the endpoint of

motion. In other words, the use of dào ‘arrive’ after jìn ‘enter’ is redundant, although the

two morphemes are compatible in a motion construction. The different functions of dào

‘arrive’ may also explain why the number of occurrences of huí-dào return-arrive (79

instances) is much higher than jìn-dào enter-arrive (1 instance) in the first 1,000 instances

of huí ‘return’ and jìn ‘enter’ found in the PKU Corpus.42

To summarize, dào ‘arrive’ is compatible with closed scale motion morphemes and

follows them in an MMMC because it is unspecific about the ground and the path

involved in the motion. When dào ‘arrive’ occurs after a multi-point closed scale motion

                                                                                                                         42 Hsiao (2009) has also observed that huí-dào return-arrive (696 instances) occurs much more frequently than jìn-dào enter-arrive (26 instances) in the Academia Sinica Corpus 4.0 (7.95 million characters), although she does not explicitly point out that their difference in frequency of occurrence could be ascribed to the different contribution that dào ‘arrive’ makes in huí-dào return-arrive and jìn-dào enter-arrive.

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morpheme, it contributes to the description of the motion event in that it reinforces the

moving object’s arrival at the endpoint of the scale; in contrast, because a two-point

closed scale motion morpheme always entails instantaneous arrival at the endpoint, the

use of dào ‘arrive’ with such a morpheme is redundant. Accordingly, dào ‘arrive’ is

frequently used after multi-point closed scale motion morphemes, but is relatively less

frequent after two-point closed scale motion morphemes.

5.4.3 Dào ‘arrive’ vs. English to Tenny (1994: 79) proposes the Single Delimiting Constraint: the event described by a

verb can only be delimited once unless the second delimiting expression further specifies

the endpoint of the event (also Gruber 1965, cf. Goldberg 1991, Levin and Rappaport

Hovav 1995, among others). For instance, (41a) has two to PPs to delimit the event of

transferring the book: although New York in the first to PP can be understood as the

endpoint for the path of book transfer, Bill, who is located in New York, is more specific

than New York as the endpoint for the path, and thus it is possible for a second to PP to

occur (Gruber 1965, Tenny 1994).

(41) a. John sent the book to New York to Bill.

b. *John sent the book to Bill to New York.

(Gruber 1965, cited in Tenny 1994: 78)

In other words, the second to PP in (41a) functions to further specify the endpoint for the

scale of sending. In contrast, (41b) is not allowed because the second to PP is less

specific than the first to PP in specifying information about the endpoint.

However, as discussed in the Section 5.4.1, dào ‘arrive’ does not further specify the

endpoint for a motion event because dào ‘arrive’ is the ground and the path. On the

contrary, the closed scale motion morpheme preceding dào ‘arrive’, e.g., jìn ‘enter’, is

more specific than dào ‘arrive’ in terms of information about the endpoint. For instance,

jìn ‘enter’ specifies that the endpoint of an event of entering must be the inside of an

enclosed region. Therefore, although both dào ‘arrive’ and English to PPs can occur in a

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construction that has a preexisting expression specifying the endpoint, they do not have

the same functions (cf. Poteet 1987, among others).

In summary, this section discusses the two-point closed scale motion morpheme dào

‘arrive’, which can occur after other closed scale motion morphemes and represents an

exception to the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy and the More Specific Constraint.

However, although dào is equally specific in terms of scale to other closed scale motion

morphemes, it is unspecific about the ground and the path involved in the motion denoted

by dào. Therefore, the addition of dào after another closed scale motion morpheme does

not add information about motion that would be incompatible with the information

denoted by the co-occurring closed scale motion morpheme. The special meaning and

distribution of dào, however, may also lead to another question: is the dào in an MMMC

a typical motion morpheme or has it been grammaticalized, behaving like the dào in

expressions of non-motion events such as kàn-dào look-arrive ‘see’ and xiǎng-dào think-

arrive ‘come up with (a thing/idea)’? I treated dào in MMMCs as a motion morpheme,

but further study of this morpheme is necessary.

5.5 Summary This chapter presented two corpus studies that verified the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy

that is used to predict the order of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs. It shows that

that the two types of special MMMCs, MMMCs with closed scale motion morphemes

and dào ‘arrive’, and MMMCs with the open scale motion morphemes tuì-shàng/xià

recede-ascend/descend, exist in addition to the types of MMMCs predicted by the Motion

Morpheme Hierarchy.

Furthermore, this chapter proposed that Chinese MMMCs conform to a More

Specific Constraint: a motion morpheme lexicalizing more specific information about the

scale of a motion event occurs after the one lexicalizing less information about the scale.

This constraint can provide a more unified account of the distribution of motion

morphemes in Chinese than the RVC account or the temporal iconicity account proposed

in previous studies. In addition, it explains why two closed scale motion morphemes

(with the exception of dào ‘arrive’) do not co-occur, and why the open scale motion

morphemes tuì ‘recede’ and shàng ‘ascend’/xià ‘descend’ can occur together.

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Chapter 6

Conclusions

This chapter provides a summary of the dissertation and reviews issues for future

research. The summary is given in Section 6.1. Section 6.2 introduces possible directions

for future study that are suggested by the results of this study.

6.1 Summary of the findings

Motion constructions consisting of two or more motion morphemes, i.e. MMMCs, are

used frequently in Chinese. This dissertation raised key questions regarding MMMCs: Is

the order of the motion morphemes in an MMMC predictable? If yes, what is the

generalization over the order of the morphemes? And what underlies the generalization?

By analyzing the scale structure associated with motion morphemes, I classified

Chinese motion morphemes into four types: nonscalar change motion morphemes (e.g.,

fēi ‘fly’, pǎo ‘run’), open scale motion morphemes (e.g., tuì ‘recede’, shēng ‘ascend’),

multi-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., huí ‘return’, lái ‘come’, qù ‘go’), and

two-point closed scale motion morphemes (e.g., jìn ‘enter’, chū ‘exit’, dào ‘arrive’). A set

of tests was proposed to identify which type each Chinese motion morpheme falls into.

Then, the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy based on scale structure was formulated to

predict the order of motion morphemes in Chinese MMMCs:

(1)

Nonscalar change fēi ‘fly’

Open scale tuì ‘recede’

Closed scale (a) multi-point huí ‘return’ (b) two-point jìn ‘enter’

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This dissertation proposed that in an MMMC, the motion morphemes are ordered from

left to right according to how their types appear in the hierarchy. The hierarchy was then

verified by two extensive studies of MMMCs based on corpora of recent Chinese novels.

In addition, I proposed the More Specific Constraint: in an MMMC, each morpheme

is more specific in terms of the scale it specifies than the preceding morpheme. The

constraint explains why the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy emerges: an open scale motion

morpheme follows a nonscalar change motion morpheme because it specifies a scale,

whereas the latter does not; further, a closed scale motion morpheme follows an open

scale because it specifies a scale and an endpoint of the scale, whereas the latter does not.

The constraint also explains why certain motion morphemes can or cannot occur together.

For instance, a multi-point and a two-point closed scale motion morpheme (except dào

‘arrive’), usually do not occur together because closed scale motion morphemes are

equally specific about the scale they specify, that is, both a multi-point and two-point

closed scale motion morphemes specify the existence of a scale and the existence of an

endpoint on the scale.

I also discussed certain special motion morphemes that do not behave exactly like

other motion morphemes having the same type of scale, as well as motion constructions

whose morpheme order is not predicted by the hierarchy. For instance, shàng ‘ascend’

and xià ‘descend’ lexically specify open scales, but they require explicitly expressed

information about the ground involved in the motion events they denote, taking locative

NPs or lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ as their complements. In this way they behave like closed scale

motion morphemes. Also, shàng/xià can follow the open scale motion morpheme tuì

‘recede’, which is not predicted by the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy. However, the

existence of the sequence “tuì + shàng/xià + ground NP/lái/qù” is consistent with the

More Specific Constraint, because in terms of the degree of specification of a scale, tuì is

less specific than shàng/xià +ground NP/lái/qù.

In addition, this dissertation argued that when lái ‘come’/qù ‘go’ occur at the end of a

motion construction, they have been grammaticalized and no longer function as the lái

‘come’/qù ‘go’ when they occur alone (See Section 4.4.3 in Chapter 4).

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Furthermore, the special two-point closed scale motion morpheme dào ‘arrive’ was

discussed in detail. Dào can occur after all types of motion morphemes including other

closed scale ones, but this distribution is not predicted by the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy or explained by the More Specific Constraint. However, I tried to provide an

alternate explaination: although dào is equally specific in terms of scale as other closed

scale motion morphemes (it lexically specifies the existence of a scale and an endpoint

for the scale), dào is unspecific about the path of motion and what kind of ground a figure

arrives at. Therefore, the addition of dào after another closed scale motion morpheme

does not add information about motion that would contradict the information denoted by

the given closed scale motion morpheme. The special meaning and distribution of dào,

however, may also lead to another question: is the dào in an MMMC a typical motion

morpheme or has it been grammaticalized in a different function, behaving like the dào in

expressions of non-motion events such as kàn-dào look-arrive ‘see’ and xiǎng-dào think-

arrive ‘come up with (a thing/idea)’? Although I treated dào in MMMCs as a motion

morpheme, an alternate analysis may hold that even in MMMCs, dào has been

semantically bleached and functions as an attainment marker. However, this dissertation

leaves that issue for future study.

Besides MMMCs, this study also found that two synonymous motion morphemes can

occur together and form a parallel verbal compound, e.g., jìn-rù enter-enter ‘enter’ and

chè-tuì recede-recede ‘recede’. Such compounds were not treated as MMMCs because

the two types are structurally and semantically different (see Section 4.4.4 in Chapter 4),

and the order of motion morphemes in these compounds may be determined by factors

other than scale structure.

In sum, this dissertation proposed a generalization that can be used to predict the

order of motion morphemes in a large range of MMMCs in Chinese, and provided a more

unified and comprehensive explanation of morpheme order. Meanwhile, it also dealt with

a few special motion morphemes and their distribution in motion constructions, and

indicated that while most motion morphemes fall into the four types of motion

morphemes defined by the structure of scales, a few may behave like the morphemes of

the adjacent type on the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy.

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6.2 Directions for future study

I now review some possible directions for future study, including the historical

development of Chinese motion morphemes and constructions and the application of the

scale structure approach to the distribution of motion verbs in other serial verb languages

as well as to the distribution of verbs in other domains.

6.2.1 The historical development of Chinese motion morphemes and constructions Not all motion morphemes in earlier stages of Chinese had exactly the same distribution

as the morphemes of Modern Chinese. For instance, as mentioned in previous chapters,

scalar change motion morphemes such as chū ‘exit’ require explicitly expressed

information about ground in Modern Chinese, but in Old Chinese, they did not

necessarily take ground NPs or deictic motion morphemes as their complements, as

illustrated in (2a), cf. (2b) and (2c).

(2) a. 晏子出，见之曰 (Old Chinese)

yànzi chū, jiàn zhī yuē

Yanzi exit cause.to.meet him say

‘Yanzi went out [from the room], asked him [Yueshifu] to meet, and said…’

(Yànzi Chūnqiū)

b. *晏子出 (Modern Chinese)

*yànzi chū Yanzi exit

c. 晏子出了房间 (Modern Chinese)

yànzi chū-le fángjiān

Yanzi exit-ASP room

‘Yanzi went out of his room.’

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In addition, as discussed in Chapter 2, some manner-of-motion verbs such as táo

‘escape’ and bēn ‘rush’ in earlier stages of Chinese could take a ground NP directly as

their complement (Ma 2008), but cannot in Modern Chinese. An example of táo ‘escape’

is given (3).

(3) a. 伍子胥逃楚而之吴 (Old Chinese)

Wǔzǐxū táo Chǔ ér zhī Wú

Wuzixu escape Chu then arrive Wu

‘Wuzixu escaped from Chu and went to the State of Wu.’

(Zhànɡuócè, cited in Ma 2008: 29)

b. *伍子胥逃楚国而到了吴国 (Modern Chinese)

*Wŭzǐxū táo Chŭguó ér dào-le Wúguó

Wuzixu escape Chu.state then arrive-ASP Wu.state

Chapter 2 argues that it is possible that the ground NP is introduced by a hidden

directional preposition 于/於 yú instead of the manner-of-motion verb táo ‘escape’ in Old

Chinese. However, a comprehensive study is necessary to provide a systematic account

of the change in the distribution of manner-of-motion verbs.

Furthermore, the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy was used to predict that two closed

scale motion morphemes (other than dào ‘arrive’) usually do not occur together in

Modern Chinese. However, instances can be found in earlier stages of Chinese where two

closed scale motion morphemes do occur together, as illustrated in (4).

(4) a. 回进内房 (Early Modern Chinese)

huí jìn nèifang

return enter inner.room

‘[He] went back [to the house] and entered the inner room.’

(Shuōyuè Quánzhuàn)

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b. ??回进里屋 (Modern Chinese)

??huí jìn lǐwū

return enter inner.room

Therefore, a study is necessary to investigate Chinese motion morphemes and

constructions from a diachronic perspective and find out how and when the Motion

Morpheme Hierarchy came into being as a generalization over the distribution of Chinese

motion morphemes. Furthermore, such an investigation can also shed light on why some

motion morphemse are special in Modern Chinese, for instance, how and why the deictic

motion morphemes lái ‘come’ and qù ‘go’ grammaticalized and lost their basic meanings

of boundedness and duration (see Chapter 4).

6.2.1 The distribution of motion verbs in other serial verb languages Like Chinese, many serial verb languages, such as Thai, Ewe and Akan, allow multiple

motion verbs to occur in a motion construction (Thepkanjana 1986, Muansuwan 2000,

Zlatev and Yangklang 2004, Ameka and Essegbey 2001, among others). Therefore, it is

interesting from a cross-linguistic perspective to investigate whether the scale structure

approach and even the Motion Morpheme Hierarchy are extensible to these languages. In

this section, I give a brief introduction to serial verb motion constructions in Thai

drawing on previous studies, and suggest that given the “complexity” of Thai motion

constructions, an alternate approach might be to analyze Thai motion verbs based on their

scale structure, and to see whether a generalization similar to the Motion Morpheme

Hierarchy can be drawn over the order of Thai motion verbs.

According to Thepkanjana (1986), Thai is a serial verb language in which up to six

motion verbs can occur together in a motion construction:

(5) Khăw wìŋ troŋ yɔ́ɔn klàp khâw pay he run go.straight reverse return enter go

‘He ran along straight back in (away from the speaker).’

(Thepkanjana 1986: 136-137, (8))

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Thepkanjana proposes a constraint, as given in Table 6.1 (adapted from Thepkanjana

1986: 136), that when multiple motion verbs co-occur, their left-to-right word order must

follow the order of their types in the constraint.

Table 6.1 Linear order of Thai motion verbs 1

Manner-of-

motion verbs

(or “initial

verb”

Thepkanjana

(1986: 136))

2

Geometric

shape of the

path

3

Direction with

respect to the

previous path

4

Direction with respect to the

outside world

5

Direction

with respect

to speech

act

participants

4a

Diection with

respect to an

object located

in the outside

world

4b

Direction

resulting from

interaction

between the

path and the

outside world

Examples:

wiŋ ‘run’

dɘn ‘walk’

Examples:

won ‘circle’

troŋ ‘go

straight’

Examples:

jɔ ́ɔn ‘reverse’

thɔ ̌ɔj ‘retreat’

Examples:

lɘɘj ‘pass’

khâam ‘cross’

klàb ‘return’

Examples:

khâw ‘enter’

Ɂɔ ̀ɔk ‘exit’

hkw ̂n ‘ascend’

loŋ ‘descend’

Examples:

paj ‘go’

maa ‘come’

For instance, (5) has six motion verbs, each instantiating a type of motion verb in Table

6.1, and the verbs follow the order as predicted by the constraint, as illustrated in (6).

(6) Khăw wìŋ troŋ yɔ́ɔn klàp khâw pay he run go.straight reverse return enter go

(1) (2) (3) (4a) (4b) (5)

‘He ran along straight back in (away from the speaker).’

(Thepkanjana 1986: 136-137, (8))

Thepkanjana (ibid: 137) points out two representations of violating the linear order in

Table 6.1. The first is that sentences with such verb orders are unacceptable, as in (7).

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(7) *Khăw pay loŋ khâam saphaan

he go descend cross bridge

(5) (4b) (4a)

#‘He went to go down to cross the bridge.’ (intended meaning) (ibid: 138, (10c))

The second is that to the extent such sentences are acceptable, they differ from serial verb

constructions in their structure and meaning: they go from expressing “a single complex

movement” to expressing “separate motion” (ibid: 137). For instance, according to

Thepkanjana, the motion verbs in (8a) follow the linear order in Table 6.1 and express a

single movement, ‘cross the bridge down’, whereas in (8b), the three motion verbs do not

follow the constraint, but are understood to occur in two constructions expressing two

movements, and the verbs within each construction follow the linear order constraint.

(8) a. Khăw khâam saphaan loŋ pay

he cross bridge descend go (4a) (4b) (5)

‘He crossed the bridge down (away from the speaker’s center of attention).’

(ibid: 137, (10a))

b. Khăw loŋ pay khâam saphaan

he descend go cross bridge

(4b) (5) (4a)

construction 1 construction 2

‘He went down to cross the bridge.’ (ibid: 137-138, (10b))

However, Muansuwan (2000a, 2000b, 2002) argues that Thai motion verbs do not

necessarily follow the linear order proposed by Thepkanjana (1986). For instance, the

motion verbs in (9) may occur in three different orders and all three orders express the

same motion event.

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(9) a. Piti jɔ́ɔn khâam saphaan troŋ Ɂɔ̀ɔk paj Piti reverse cross bridge go.straight exit go

(3) (4b) (2) (4b) (5)

b. Piti troŋ Ɂɔ̀ɔk jɔ́ɔn khâam saphaan paj

Piti go.straight exit reverse cross bridge go

(2) (4b) (3) (4b) (5)

c. Piti Ɂɔ̀ɔk troŋ khâam saphaan jɔ́ɔn paj Piti exit go.straight cross bridge reverse go

(4b) (2) (4b) (3) (5)

= ‘Piti went back straight, crossing the bridge, out away from the speaker.’

(Muansuwan 2002: 55, (36a-c))

Rather, Muansuwan classifies Thai motion verbs into three types—manner-of-motion

verbs, non-deictic path verbs, and deictic path verbs—and proposes an alternate

constraint on the order of Thai motion verbs: the manner-of-motion verb must be the first

verb, the deictic verb must be the final verb, while the non-deictic path verbs occur in

between manner-of-motion verbs and deictic verbs; if there are multiple non-deictic path

verbs, their relative order is flexible as long as they are located in between the manner-of-

motion verb and the deictic verb.

Unlike Thepkanjana and Muansuwan, Zlatev and Yangklang (2004: 164) take a third

position. They argue that the order among non-deictic path verbs is neither as strict as

Thepkanjana (1986) proposes, nor as free as Muansuwan claims it to be. For instance,

both khâw ‘enter’ and jɔ́ɔn ‘reverse’ are non-deictic path verbs, but their order is not

flexible (ibid.):

(10) *chán khâw jɔ́ɔn hɔ́ɔŋ

I enter reverse room

(4b) (3) (Zlatev and Yangklang 2004: 164, (6))

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Furthermore, Zlatev and Yangklang (2004: 167) argue that in addition to manner-of-

motion verb and path verb, Thai has a type of motion verb which lexicalizes both manner

and path, i.e. a “MP verb” (also see Chapter 2). They propose that the order of motion

verbs in a serial verb clause follows the sequence in (11), where the asterisks indicate that

multiple verbs of a given type may occur together.

(11) [Manner verb* > MP verb > path verb* > deictic verb]clause

(Zlatev and Yangklang 2004: 168, (18))

However, they also point out that the constraints on the relative order of these verbs are

still not clear.

The three studies above indicate that a generalization over the distribution of Thai

motion verbs is not apparent, although careful analysis is also necessary to determine

whether the three studies are describing the same structures.

Thai does share some features with Chinese. For instance, like Chinese, the deictic

motion morphemes usually occur at the end of motion constructions, and the manner-of-

motion morphemes, i.e. nonscalar change motion morphemes, usually occur at the

beginning of a motion construction. Therefore, it may be typologically interesting to

investigate whether the scale structure approach can shed some light on the order of Thai

motion verbs.

6.2.2 Scale structure and Chinese RVCs As introduced in Chapter 2, a resultative verbal compound (RVC) is a two-element

compound in which the first element expresses the action/process and the second element

expresses the result of the action/result. However, the RVC approach is unable to provide

a sufficiently fine-grained account of the relationships between the elements of all

compounds that are treated as RVCs. In this subsection, I suggest the possible application

of the scale structure approach to Chinese RVCs in order to obtain a better understanding

of the semantics of their elements.

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Besides motion verbs, change of state verbs, e.g., sǐ ‘die’, pò ‘break’, and deadjectival

verbs in resultative verbal compounds, e.g., gāo ‘tall’ in zhǎng-gāo ‘grow tall’, gān ‘dry’

in chuī-gān ‘blow dry’, and shú ‘well-cooked’ in zhŭ-shú ‘cook well’, also lexicalize

scalar changes (cf. Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010, Kennedy and McNally 2005,

among others). For instance, we can analyze the constituents in the RVCs in (12) in terms

of their scale structure, just as this dissertation did for motion morphemes.

(12) a. 工人把路面铺宽了三米

gōngrén bǎ lùmiàn pū-kuān-le sān mǐ

worker BA road.surface pave-wide-ASP three meter

‘The worker paved the road three meters wider. ’

b. 大风吹干了衣服

dàfēng chuī-gān-le yīfú

big.wind blow-dry-ASP clothes

‘The strong wind blew the clothes dry.’

c. 他打死了一只蚊子

tā dǎ-sǐ-le yì-zhī wénzi

he hit-die-ASP one -CLF mosquito

‘He hit a mosquito to death.’

The first element in the three RVCs in (12), pū ‘pave’, chuī ‘blow’, and dǎ ‘hit’, are

nonscalar change verbs in the domain of change of state, like zǒu ‘walk’ and pǎo ‘run’

are in the domain of motion. In contrast, kuān ‘wide’, gān ‘dry’, and sǐ ‘dead’ are scalar

change (deadjectival) verbs in that the resultant states they express can be understood as

values on scales of different dimensions: kuān ‘wide’ in (12a) lexicalizes an open scale

because an entity can potentially be infinitely widened; gān ‘dry’ in (12b) has a multi-

point closed scale because an entity takes time to become dry and it cannot become any

drier if there is no humidity left in it; sǐ ‘dead’ in (12c) lexicalizes a two-point closed

scale because an entity can only be either alive or dead. Thus, kuān ‘wide’ is comparable

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to the motion verb shēng ‘ascend’, gān ‘dry’ to the motion verb huí ‘return’, and sǐ ‘dead’

to the motion verb jìn ‘enter’.

Therefore, the scale structure approach is potentially extensible to RVCs and could

provide a more fine-grained analysis of the relationships between their constituents.

Furthermore, the approach may also illuminate the distribution of change of state verbs as

well as deadjectival verbs in Chinese, especially their distribution with respect to telicity,

such as compatibility with comparison and in/for adverbials (cf. Hay et al. 1999,

Kennedy and Levin 2008, Tham 2010, Grano and Kennedy ms., among others).

6.3 Summary

This dissertation investigated Chinese motion morphemes and their relative order when

they occur together in expressions of directed motion events within the context of the

scale structure approach. Future work remains to be done as to the diachronic

development of Chinese motion morphemes and constructions, as well as whether the

approach of this study can be extended to other languages and domains.

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