Non-Referential Verb Use in Chinese: A Unified Verb Copying Analysis

This paper examines issues related to transitivity in Chinese, looking in particular at verb use in non-referential contexts. Four variants of non-referential verb use involving generic bare nouns and postverbal manner adverbs are analyzed. It is suggested that in these cases of non-referential verb use, the verb is first merged with an adverbial complement, and then copied to yield the verb copying construction. Following verb copying, conditions on linearization are proposed to determine the spellout of verb copies at the PF interface, resulting in the four variants. Cheng’s (2007) analysis of the verb copying construction is adopted in proposing a unified analysis for the four variants of non-referential verb use.