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Workshop on Chinese Lexical Semantics

CLSW 2012: Chinese Lexical Semantics pp 593–602Cite as

Verbal Empty Categories and Their Types in Mandarin

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7717))

Abstract

Empty categories are base-generated in the deep structure and do not have any overt expression in the surface structure. In this paper, we claim that Mandarin has verbal empty categories besides nominal empty categories, and further investigate their types. According to their semantic contributions, we argue that verbal empty categories in Mandarin mainly include two types: (a) the covert copular shi ‘be’ and other linking verbs such as chengwei ‘become’; and (b) notional verbs. In the case that the empty verb is a notional verb, what the covert notional verb is, highly depends on the context.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Study of Language and Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Aiping Tu

  2. Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Lei Zhang

Authors
  1. Aiping Tu
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  2. Lei Zhang
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer School, Wuhan University, 430072, Wuhan, China

    Donghong Ji

  2. College of Chinese Language and Literature, Wuhan University, 430072, Wuhan, China

    Guozheng Xiao

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Tu, A., Zhang, L. (2013). Verbal Empty Categories and Their Types in Mandarin. In: Ji, D., Xiao, G. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7717. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36337-5_60

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36337-5_60

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36336-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36337-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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