'He cut-break the rope': Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events 
in Mandarin

Chen, Jidong

doi:10.1515/COG.2007.015

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'He cut-break the rope': Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in Mandarin

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Chen, Jidong
Language Acquisition Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Categories across Language and Cognition, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Chen, J. (2007). 'He cut-break the rope': Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in Mandarin. Cognitive Linguistics, 18(2), 273-285. doi:10.1515/COG.2007.015.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0013-1ABC-9

Abstract

Abstract Mandarin categorizes cutting and breaking events on the basis of fine semantic distinctions in the causal action and the caused result. I demonstrate the semantics of Mandarin C&B verbs from the perspective of event encoding and categorization as well as argument structure alternations. Three 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. The first verb of an RVC is basically dyadic, whereas the second is monadic. RVCs as a whole are also basically dyadic, and do not undergo detransitivization.