It has been observed cross-linguistically that a causative accomplishment predicate with an agent subject allows non-culminating readings where the surface object need not undergo a change of state, whereas a non-agentive subject enforces culmination where the surface object must undergo the change described by the predicate, dubbed the Agent Control Hypothesis (ACH). An influential analysis of this contrast is proposed by Martin et al. (2020, 2023), who argue that the source of non-culmination in Mandarin Chinese, in particular, comes from the weak perfectivity marker -le(了)interacting with the different event structures of agentive and causative accomplishment predicates. We examine in this paper the ACH effects in Mandarin Chinese experiencer-object psych verbs. We show that that the ACH effects persist even in the imperfective with this class of verbs, and that the contrast between agents and causers regarding culmination entailments is independent of having the properties of accomplishment predicates since the event structures of these psych verbs are diverse but nonetheless consistently demonstrate the ACH effects. Instead, we argue that non-culminating entailments in EO psych verbs arise precisely because the agentive and causative variants have different structures: the causative variants are underlyingly unaccusative, where the surface object is assigned a true experiencer role, whereas the agentive variant has a run-of-the-mill transitive structure where the surface object is assigned a canonical theme role (Cheung & Larson 2015). The observed effects of the ACH therefore arise as a result of the specific entailments of the different thematic roles assigned to the surface object, formalized in the style of Reinhart (2002), where an experiencer role necessarily entails a change in mental state while a theme can but need not entail such a change.
跨语言研究发现,带施事主语的致使义完结动词(accomplishment)往往可以允准非终结性解读,即,客体宾语无需发生状态变化,而这类动词在以致事为主语时,事件必须终结,客体必须发生谓词所描述的状态变化。这一现象称为“施事控制假设”(Agent Control Hypothesis, ACH)。Martin等(2020,2023)提出,汉语中的非终结性解读来自于弱完整体“了”与施事性和致使性完结动词事件结构的交互。本文考察汉语经验者为宾语的心理义动词中的ACH效应,发现ACH效应即便在非完整体EO心理谓词中也存在,并且与谓词本身是否是完结动词无关。我们将给出一系列证据证明这类心理义动词的词汇体貌不具有一致性,有些是完结动词,有些是状态动词,有些是活动动词,但都表现出ACH效应。进而我们提出这类动词的ACH效应与其主语是施事或致事的题元歧义及其结构差异有关,与完结体的词汇体貌或弱完整体“了”无关,进而我们证明ACH效应的来源是多样的。
朱佳蕾
朱佳蕾,中国社会科学院语言所博士。现任上海外国语大学语言科学研究院副研究员。研究领域包括汉语及汉语方言的论元结构、句法,句法-语义界面理论,和儿童语言获得。曾在Journal of East Asian linguistics, Language and Linguistics, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 《当代语言学》、《中国语文》、《方言》、《语言科学》等国内外核心期刊上发表论文十余篇,并著有专著《上海话动词短语的句法研究》。
俞建戎
俞建戎博士(Dr. Jianrong Yu)在美国亚利桑那大学(The University of Arizona)获得语言学博士学位,专注于形式语义学、词汇语义学,以及句法和形态的接口。他在动词词汇语义学以及跨语言的程度和比较结构方面的研究,已在Natural Language and Linguistic Theory、Glossa、Journal of East Asian Linguistics、Linguistics in the Netherlands等期刊上发表。他曾是比利时鲁汶大学(KU Leuven)的博士后研究员,并在新加坡南洋理工大学(Nanyang Technological University)等多所高校担任过教学职位,目前作为独立研究员工作。
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