A formal treatment of the causative constructions in Chinese

Abstract

There are at least five kinds of causative constructions in Chinese, the constructions of the collocation of verbs and prepositional phrases, verb-copying constructions, “ba” constructions with an object ahead, verb-copying constructions with their complements, and pivotal constructions with commands. But the current type-logical grammar has no tools representing the meanings of causative constructions. It would be neither intuitive nor simple to describe these constructions by means of the current type-logical grammar. So we intend to improve the type-logical grammar by adding CAUSE as a logical constant, complementing the structure rules about the movement and addition or deletion of some components of causative constructions, assigning categories to Chinese nouns and prepositions; then we give an intuitive as well as simple analysis on these causative constructions. Based on this work we shall extend the multimodal system of type-logical grammar, increase structure postulates, make constraints on frame semantics, and then prove the soundness and completeness of that system.

摘要

汉语致使句式至少表现为五种形式: 动词和介词短语搭配的句子; 动词多次出现的重动句; 宾语前置的 “把” 字句; 重动动补句和使令类兼语句。 而通常的类 型—逻辑语义学则没有表现致使涵义的工具; 采用高阶逻辑手段表现汉语致使句式显得不够直观简洁, 并且不便分析汉语的重动致使句。 对类型—逻辑语法的工具进行改进: 增添逻辑常项 CAUSE; 补充关于致使句组成成分移动增减的结构规则; 给出汉语名词和介词的范畴指派; 可获得关于汉语致使句式的直观简洁的类型—逻辑语法分析。 据此对类型-逻辑语法的多模态系统进行扩展, 增加结构公设和框架语义限制, 确立系统的完全性。