Sub-lexical Analysis of the Polysemy of the Directional Verb qǐlái (‘get up’) in Chinese

Abstract

This article provides a sub-lexical analysis of the Chinese directional verb qǐlái (‘get up’), with focus on its diversified uses as an aspectual marker. The theoretical framework of this article consists of two parts: the theory of the Generative Lexicon formulated by Pustejovsky (1991, 1995) and the classification of events proposed by De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla (2000, 2004, 2007). The analysis shows that the two components of the construction Predicate + qǐlái ('get up') could interact with each other at the semantic level and thus determine together the meaning of the new combination. On the one hand, this study proves the existence of a subeventive structure and the relative prominence of the sub-events; and on the other hand it also ratifies the hypothesis of lexical features legitimizing and excluding syntactic combinations.