The Ordering of Mandarin Chinese Light Verbs

Abstract

Two or more light verbs are sometimes found to co-occur in both Taiwan and Mainland Mandarin Chinese, e.g., jiāyǐ and jìnxíng in duì xuéshēng jiāyǐ jìnxíng yǐndǎo ‘to guide students’, and a particular ordering is often preferred, e.g., jiāyǐ jìnxíng over jìnxíng jiāyǐ. This study argues that the order of the light verbs is closely associated to two kinds of information that the verbs specify, i.e. aspectual eventive information and argument information. On one hand, a light verb that denotes aspectual eventive information tends to occur before light verbs without such information. On the other hand, a light verb with less argument information is more likely to occur after other light verbs and closer to the event complement. The two semantic constraints form a general principle for the ordering of light verbs. The findings of this study can also contribute to a finer-grained classification of Chinese light verbs.