In our research, we investigated the usages of optional complements in Mandarin Chinese. There are two parts to work of this kind: the first to collect the data; the second is to formulate a formal grammatical account. Unlike English, where complementation has been well studied and the patterns well documented in comprehensive English grammars, complementation in Mandarin Chinese is in its infancy. Indeed, the only fairly comprehensive study of verb complementation is that of He (1991), but his work does not look at optional complementation. In light of the vastness of the topic, we confined our attention to verbs in Mandarin Chinese with two complements neither of which are clauses and one of which is optional. As a result, we collected data from native Mandarin Chinese speakers and from corpora.
Optional complements, when omitted, give rise to reflexive, reciprocal, indefinite and contextual construals. Illustrated below are pairs of words, the first whose complement is optional, indicated by the parentheses, the second whose complement is required, indicated by the asterisk placed before the left parentheses.
(1.1) Peter dressed (himself).
(1.2) Peter clothed *(himself).
(2.1) Bill and Carol meet (each other).
(2.2) Bill and Carol encountered *(each other).
(3.1) Ethan ate (something).
(3.2) Ethan devoured *(something).
(4.1) Doris flew to Shanghai. She arrived (there) an hour ago.
(4.2) Doris flew to Shanghai. She reached *(there) an hour ago.
The verbs we examined give rise either to indefinite or to contextual construals. As it happens, tests used for other languages work well to distinguish the two construals for such verbs in Chinese. A sentence with an omitted optional complement which is contextual is equivalent to the same sentence with a suitably chosen pronoun as the complement. (See the sentences in (4) above.) This is not so, if the omitted complement is indefinite. (There are other tests which we do not set out here, for reasons of space.)
For example, the last clause in the example below does not mention Zhang San, yet he is understood as the person who received no gifts from Li Si.
(5) 張三過生日，李四送給了他一個禮物。王五沒有送禮物。
Zha?ngSa?n guo? she?ngri?, Li?Si? so?ng ge?ileta? yi?ge li?wu?, Wa?ngWu? me?iyo?u so?ng li?wu?.
Zha?ngSa?n enjoy birthday, Li?Si? give GEI-ASP-him one-CL gift, Wa?ngWu? not give gift
Literally: It’s Zhang San’s birthday. Li Si gave him a gift. Wang Wu didn’t give gifts.
During our gathering of data, it became evident that we had to pay attention to the placement of complements with respect to the verb. And so the data pertaining to optional complements were tracked along with data pertaining to alternative word order.
Meanwhile, we did encounter challenges. When we started, we had no idea of how to test the relevant construal when a complement is omitted. We firstly came up with sentences with and without the relevant complements in isolation and test whether they have the same meaning. However, whether they are equivalent was hard to determine as the meaning is often obscure when they are isolated. Then, we figured out that we could add a context that is enough to determine the context-sensitivity of the sentence. As mentioned above, this test went well, and we further developed a negative test and an interrogative test.
I am interested in this ARIA project because I am interested in the field of semantics and have been working with Professor Gillon on the complement structure of Mandarin Chinese for a year already. This project is an example of what we have done in the past year, and it incorporates the knowledge I have studied on semantics and my native speaker knowledge of Mandarin Chinese. What we have discovered can add to the academic literature of how meaning is composed in Mandarin Chinese, which can also benefit natural language processing and language teaching.
After graduation, I plan to pursue a PhD degree in linguistics and enter academia. This summer research programme acquainted me to actual hands-on research in linguistics. What’s more, it encouraged me to read more about the frontiers of this field. With this knowledge read, I am closer to an actual linguist with academic knowledge and skills, and I am more prepared to enter my academic career. Also, after this experience of research, I am more committed than ever to the academic career.
