Abstract
This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lian…dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lian…dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; therefore, we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lian…dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions. Additionally, we also show that, as in many other languages with comparable constructions, the two instances of the verb are part of a single movement chain, which has the peculiarity of allowing Spell-Out of more than one link.
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Acknowledgments
Different versions of this paper has been previously presented at various venues. For their comments and suggestions, we want to thank the audience at the Symposium of Chinese syntax and semantics in City University of Hong Kong, the Linguistics Colloquium series at the University of California, Santa Cruz, IACL 17, and Summer School in Linguistics at Beijing University for comments and discussions. We would also like to thank Yiya Chen, Chin-hui Lin, Dylan Tsai, Luther Liu, and Jo-Wang Lin for their help with native speaker judgments.
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Cheng, L.LS., Vicente, L. Verb doubling in Mandarin Chinese. J East Asian Linguist 22, 1–37 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-012-9095-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-012-9095-6