A DG Account of the Descriptive and Resultative de-Constructions in Chinese

This contribution examines the descriptive and resultative de-constructions in Mandarin Chinese, e.g. Wǒ pǎo-de hěn kuài ‘I run very fast’. There is a longstanding debate about this construction. The primary point of dispute concerns the main predicate: Is the first predicate the root of the sentence, i.e. pǎo-de ‘run’, or is the second predicate the root, i.e. kuài ‘fast’? We demonstrate here that from a dependency grammar (DG) perspective, the second predicate should be taken as the root. A number of diagnostics support this conclusion: 1) yes/no-questions with ma, 2) position of the negation bù, 3) omission, 4) placement of the adverb yě ‘also’, 5) ne-questions, and 6) modal insertion. The conclusion is important for the development of DG as applied to the syntax of Mandarin, since many basic questions about Mandarin sentence structure have not yet been examined from a DG perspective.