The Interface between Syntax and Morphology : Taiwanese Verbal Complexes

Taiwanese abounds with verbal complexes. Among them, phasal complexes, resultative complexes, and directional complexes are alike in that their second component denotes some sort of result. Moreover, they behave similarly in that they can occur in V-ho-V, V-e/be-V, and V-bo-V forms. Despite the similarities, they still differ from one another in several aspects, such as whether objects are allowed inside or after the verbal complex, whether infixing changes their basic meaning, etc. This paper examines their individual properties carefully and proposes that these three types of complexes are all different from one another in their formation and thus the difference in their syntactic behavior. Directional complexes are syntactic phrases, resultative complexes are compounds derived in syntax, and while some phasal complexes are also syntactically derived compounds, others are compounds formed in the lexicon. This paper aims to argue that words (or compounds in this case) can be formed in syntax as well as in the lexicon.