Hidden possessive head in Mandarin “Wangmian sentences”

Abstract Mandarin Chinese exhibits a puzzling phenomenon, whereby an unaccusative verb can head a transitive structure. Such constructions are traditionally referred to as Wangmian sentences and have long posed a challenge in the study of Chinese linguistics. This article proposes that puzzles like this can be accounted for by an implicit possessive head in the verbal domain. The existence of this head is supported by two main pieces of evidence: entailment failure and VP ellipsis. Entailment failure demonstrates that Wangmian predicates are sensitive to the object relationality, a property unique to possessive predicates. Furthermore, Wangmian sentences allow VP ellipsis of a possessive predicate, suggesting the presence of this hidden possessive head. With this head, the external possessor is offered an argument position and can thus occupy the subject position. In addition, despite being thematically unspecified, the possessive head is capable of assigning theta roles to its argument, specifically an affectee in Wangmian sentences. Now that the verb complex is able to assign a theta role to its subject, it is equally able to assign case to its object, in accordance with Burzio’s (1986) generalization. This way, the hidden possessive head is the key to derivatively transitivize the unaccusative, and lend support to relevant debates.