A Study of Valence & Argument Integration in Chinese Verb-Resultative Complement

Verb resultative complement (VC) is a common structure of Chinese language with abundant forms of collocation. It makes much sense for VC research to analyze the general rules of argument integration in light of diversities of predicate & complement and the complexity of argument integration in the forming of VC with predicate & complement. This article has analyzed and summarized the existing research outcome of VC, and then gives further analyses thereby on argument integration process and multi-valence phenomena. 1 What’s a Verb Resultative Complement? Concept of “Verb-Resultative Complement (VC)” was initially brought out by Lv Shuxiang in 1980, who has defined it as a phrase verb consisting of “a main verb plus a resultative adjective or verb”. Zhu Dexi has initiated later in 1982 that VC includes in a broader sense the structure of a predicate verb followed immediately by complements, i.e. either resultative complements as in “ (xué huì, study and grasp) (ch o x ng, make noise and awake)” or tendential complements as in “ (z u l i, come up) (piāo jìn, float in)”. Therefore VC is in brief a structure of a fore predicate (mostly a verb or an adjective) to indicate an action, plus a rear complement to indicate the result of such action. 2 Existing Studies of VC Valence Verb valence is a hot theme in study of contemporary Chinese with popular academic concentrations, as VC is provided with not only distinct characteristics of verbs but also features of phrases, which has thus added more complexity in valence than normal verbs. Wherein, Huan Jinzhang in an early study (in 1993) has examined the collocations of “mono valence predicate + mono valence complement” and “bi valence predicate + mono valence complement”. Despite the restrained scope of study, his article has initiated multi feasible dimensions to the study of VC valence, for example, looking into with co referral relations the valence alterations in predicate & supplement combination, or with argument’s sequence of entering into a perspective field the argument integration & disappearance during VC integration: these are well inspiring for the studies later on. Then, Guo Rui (1995) and Wang Hongqi (1995) have each brought out an analyzing scheme of VC valence in the book of Study of Valence Grammar in Contemporary Chinese, wherein Guo’s introduction of location argument is well worthy of concentration. According to Guo, certain predicates and complements in VC can be added with a location argument, e.g. bi valence verbs like “ (l i, come)/ (qù, go) (z u, walk)/ (p o, run)” and tri valence verbs like “ (guà, hand) (fàng, lay)” can be all added with an argument of location or destination of the action. Introduction of the location argument is perfect for the actual valence demand of predicate and complement, but however is skipped in most studies. According to Wang Hongqi (in 1995) who has brought out multi new concepts of VC, the 407 PACLIC 30 Proceedings 30th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 30) Seoul, Republic of Korea, October 28-30, 2016 complements’ argument is virtual rather than ostensive for a VC with complement of a verb like “ (h o) (jiàn) (zhù) (dòng) (dào)”; and furthermore, the complement argument is just the predicate itself rather than a specific item or location for a VC with complement of verbs like “ (z o, early)/ (w n, late) (kuài, fast)/ (màn, slow)”, ---this is a persuasive viewpoint with compliance of actual language usages. However, Wang’s article is imperfect for its over reliance on complement during classification, and its negligence in predicate’s impact on valence of entire VC, and in alteration of valence form for one complement’s collocating with various