Prosodically Constrained Postverbal PPs in Mandarin

This paper discusses postverbal PPs in Mandarin Chinese and proposes that the constraints on postverbal PPs are not syntactic per se, but prosodic in character. It is shown that the NSR (Nuclear Stress Rule), formulated in terms of government, is responsible for the grammaticality of postverbal PPs in Mandarin Chinese. Introduction Postverbal PPs in Mandarin have been investigated by Chao (1968), Li and Thompson (1981), J. Huang (1982), Li (1990), Mulder and Sybesma (1992), and many others. Some important facts have been discovered in previous studies, and among them, two are directly relevant to the present study. First, the postverbal PPs are actually predicative complements that have a resultative meaning (Mulder and Sybesma 1992, see example (2) and (3) below). Second, when such a PP is adjacent to a preceding V, the P and V automatically form a complex verb (through reanalysis (A. Li 1990), P-incorporation (Feng 2000), or morphological Merger (Z. Li 2001), see example (4)). While significant results on the syntactic behaviors of the postverbal PPs have been brought into light in previous investigations, there are still important facts that have not been recognized in the literature. First, as observed in this paper, there exists a metrical asymmetry (heaviness vs. lightness) between each of the following two pairs: [V P+NPlight NP] (5a) [V *P+NPheavy NP] (5c), and [V NPheavy P+NPlight ] (3a-b) [V *NPlight P+NPheavy] (6a-b) Second, as shown in section 4.4, there is also a semantic asymmetry between the [V NP PP] structure (where the locative PP is semantically ambiguous (44a-b)) and the [V PP (NP)] structure (where the PP denotes no semantic ambiguity (44c-d)). Finally, even though the P can generally form a complex verb with a VR (disyllabic verb+resultative compound), it cannot do so if the verb is a VRR (a trisyllabic verb+resultative compound). All these new facts raise further questions as to where the metrical asymmetry comes from, why the P must form a verb-complex with a preceding V (or VR) but cannot do so with a VRR, and finally what the syntactic structures of the postverbal PPs are. In this paper, I propose that the constraints on postverbal PPs are not syntactic