'He cut-break the rope': encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in mandarin

Jidong Chen

"Mandarin categorizes cutting and breaking events on the basis of fine semantic distinctions in the causal action and the caused result."

"3 semantically different types of predicates can be identified: verbs denoting the C&B action subevent, verbs encoding the C&B result subevent, and resultative verb compounds (RVC) that encode both the action and the result subevents."

qie1-duan4
cut.eith.single.blade-be.broken

"The 1st verb (V1) of the RVC, qie1, encodes only the sub-event of the cutting action while the second verb (V@), duan4, encodes the state change of being broken that results from the cutting action."

"I show that Mandarin supports the proposed universal distinction between C&B verbs . . ., but Mandarin C&B verbs differ crucially from the English cut and break in their semantics and argument structure, and the two-way distinction of C&B verbs should be broadened to include a third type of C&B verb, the RVC."

"C&B RVC verbs are semantically compositional. As a whole, they entail a state change, which is indefeasible..."

"...the verb expressing the causal act always precedes the verb expressing the state change . . . no NP can intervene between the constituent verbs..." ungrammatical: qie1 (rope) duan4

"So the state change that is entailed by a monomorphemic verb like cut or break in ENglish is defeasible for Mandarin C&B verbs, as in (5): I qie1 the rope, but rope not duan4 (canceling the action)

"Mandarin C&B verbs encode the causal sub-event and leave lexicalization of the resulting event to an additional verb."

"In contrast, ENglish monomorphemic C&B verbs lexicalize--hence, entail--the resulting event."

"Both English C&B verbs and Mandarin C&B RVCs are telic. But the former are compatible with the progressive aspect, the use of which switches the focus to the process leading up to the state change. In contrast, Mandarin C&B RVCs are incompatible with progressive aspect: they focus only on the endpoint of the event (Tai 1984) and they present the event as a non-decomposable whole (Li and SHirai 2000; Smith 1997)."

"Correspondence analysis revealed 5 distinct clusters of C&B causal events and the Mandarin verns used to describe them:
1. Cutting with scissor(-like) (2-bladed) instrument (e.g. nail clippers, pliers)...thsi distinction is not universal...
2. Cutting with single-blade(-like) instrument...
3. Breaking with hammer(-like) instrument...
4. Pulling on flexible 2-D object (e.g. cloth, paper) with hands or a hand(-like) instrument...'tear, rip'.
5. Bending or pulling on a linear (usually rigid) object (e.g. stick, carrot) with hands or a handlike instrument."

Mandarin C&B action verbs can be distinguished by the instrument and the manner.


"Mandarin does not have an overarching generic verb like cut that can be used across events like slicing, hacking, chopping, trimming, and sawing. Rather, a specific C&B verb must be selected on the basis of the manner or instrumet involved."

'These result verbs can be seen to differentiate C&B events along the following semantic distinctions:
-feature os the affected object (linear objects vs. others).
state or degree of being broken (e.g. sui4 'be in pieces' vs. po4 'be broken')
direction of seperation: cross wise vs. in some other direction (e.g., duan4 'be broken (of long objects broken crosswise').

7b apple qie1 le
The apple cut

"Sentences like 7b resemble the inchoative construction superficially, since the affected object appears in the subject position and the cause is left unexpressed. But such sentences are not real inchoatives."

"Result verbs resemble English breka verbs to some degree: both specify a state or state change but leave the causing subevent open; both can appear in the inchoative construction. But Mandarin result verbs differ crucially from English break verbs in that they cannot be directly used as causatives."