Internal location in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract This paper illustrates the crucial role of “internal locatives” (Maienborn, C. 2001. On the position and interpretation of locative modifiers. Natural Language Semantics 9(2). 191–240.) in the clause-internal distribution and interpretation of locative expressions headed by the stative locative morpheme zài ‘be at’ in Mandarin Chinese. Internal locatives describe spatial properties that are part of an event described by a verb, contrasting with event locative modifiers in the Davidsonian sense. I show that zài locatives occur in up to four positions in the clause: two pre-verbal and two post-verbal. Internal location is encoded in (i) a lower pre-verbal modifier position and (ii) a compounding structure I label “V- zài ”, where zài immediately follows the verb. Although both express internal location, the pre-verbal internal locative is a modifier, while V- zài forms a complex predicate with the preceding verb, implemented as set intersection and event summation respectively (Rothstein 2004. Structuring events: A study in the semantics of lexical aspect . Oxford: Blackwell). This distinction accounts for an asymmetry long-noted in the Chinese linguistics literature: with a manner of motion verb, pre-verbal zài only has a static location interpretation while V- zài allows both static and goal interpretations. Elsewhere, the outermost pre-verbal position hosts a Davidsonian event modifier, while the post-verbal complement position (following verb and object nominal) hosts locative arguments, available only with certain verb classes, e.g., verbs of putting. This work presents a finer-grained view of how locative components integrate into the clause, bringing together research on locative modification and research on the encoding of locative result, which hitherto have tended to be explored independently of each other. Finally, it highlights the crosslinguistic relevance of internal locatives, originally described in German.