Split Affectivity Revisited from a Cross-linguistic Perspective

This paper investigates a split of affectivity in Chinese dialects from a cross-linguistic perspective: give-affectives sports permissive, passive and dative construals, whereas with-affectives garner comitative-oriented usages such as benefactive, goal, and disposal throughout the historical development. We propose to relate the former to the notion of “terminal coincidence”, and the latter to that of “central coincidence” in Hale & Keyser’s (2002) sense. Our study shows that, despite the apparent unified construals of gei ‘give’ in Mandarin, the main difference between the two types of affectives lies in their distinct routes of grammaticalization owing to the terminal-central dichotomy, as well as the interpretive mechanism of applicative syntax under the Cartographic Approach.

Professor Tsai is a Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and the Chair of the Institute of Linguistics at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He is a highly regarded syntactician specializing in syntax theory, syntax—semantics interface, Chinese syntax, and Austronesian syntax. His research on quantification, reflexivity, wh-constructions, and affectivity has made significant contributions to Chinese linguistics and advanced our understanding of syntax theory, particularly with the two main frameworks of the Minimalist Program and Cartography.