Trois conf=?utf-8?Q?=C3=A9rences_?=du Prof. Haihua Pan (City University of Hong Kong)

Tue May 27 06:21:32 UTC 2014

 Chers collègues (et mes excuses pour les doublons), 

J’ai le plaisir de vous annoncer 

Trois conférences du Prof. Haihua Pan (City University of Hong Kong), professeur invité de l’UFR Linguistique, LLF-UMR 7110 CNRS & Université Paris Diderot- Paris 7

Séance 1: A Unified Analysis of Chinese Passives Including Retained Objects
Jeudi 5 juin 2014, 15h-17h, Bâtiment Halle aux Farines, 506B (Hall B)

Abstract
This study proposes a topic-comment solution to Chinese passives, including those with retained objects. We argue that the preverbal and pre-bei NP is a base-generated topic in the specifier position of CP. The subject position is originally empty and serves as a landing site for the caseless theme DP which moves there to receive the nominative case. For those passives with retained objects, such as Zhangsan bei tufei sha-le fuqin and Zhangsan bei daduan-le yizhi gebo, we argue that the so called retained object, such as fuqin ‘father’ or gebo ‘arm’, is in fact an inverted subject after getting the nominative case, as it is the result of a rightward movement due to some pragmatic reasons and this movement is assumed to create an end-focus position. Under this proposal, a variety of related constructions can be analyzed in the same vein, including sentences like Zhe guo fan chi shi ge ren ‘This pot of rice eats ten people’. Compared
 with their English counterparts, we argue that Chinese passives, especially bei passives including long and short passives, comply with the familiar passivization operations, i.e., case absorption, theme promotion and agent demotion, though Chinese differs from English in allowing the passive operation to apply to complex predicates.

Séance 2: On the semantics of dou and other universal quantifiers in Chinese
Jeudi 12 juin 2014, 15h-17h, Bâtiment Halle aux Farines, 506B (Hall B)

Abstract
This talk explores the semantics of Mandarin dou, arguing that its different uses can be unified under the notion of universal quantification. Also, the behaviors of other universal quantificational expressions in Mandarin are discussed based on the analysis of dou. There is abundant research on the semantics of dou in the literature, where it is treated as a sum operator over events, a marker of anti-expectation, a maximality operator, a distributive operator or a marker of high degrees/large amounts. We argue that the aforementioned analyses uncover either a facet or a variant of universal quantification. The broad notion of universal quantification can inter-connect these analyses and explain the diverse uses of dou in a more unified way. We will show that the analysis of dou as a sum operator over events is by nature not at odds with the treatment of dou as a universal quantifier. Due to its universal force, dou can relate the VP
 denotation to each member of a plurality and hence brings forth distributivity. Although both universal quantification and a maximization operation operate on each member of a plurality, the maximality approach to dou is inadequate since maximization over the nominal domain cannot endow the relevant sentences with a distributive interpretation and fails to account for the focus sensitivity of dou. Furthermore, a dou-sentence can convey unexpectedness and exhaustivity. In such cases, the contribution of dou is still the universal force and the different effects are attributed to the variance in the quantificational mapping of dou .

Séance 3: Separable Words and Cognate Objects in Mandarin Chinese
Jeudi 19 juin 2014, 15h-17h, Bâtiment Halle aux Farines, 506B (Hall B)

Abstract:
The talk argues that the so-called Separable Words in Mandarin Chinese are not words that are structurally separated, but cognate object constructions that are formed with disyllabic intransitive verbs. Their generation involves four main steps：using the copy of the verb in the Numeration to form a cognate object, nominalization of the copy, generating the dependents of the copy using NP syntax, and applying complementary deletion to the verb and its copy at PF. The paper argues that the strategy of using cognate objects is to accommodate the dependents that are beyond the capacity of (intransitive) verbs in question. Our analysis helps answer the questions why the so-called Separable Words have to be separated and how they can be separated. As a result, the phenomenon of Separable words is attested as a new manifestation of linguistic universals.

Les trois conférences seront données en anglais.
Accès : métro 14/bus 62 : Bibliothèque F.M.
            ou Tramway 3 : Avenue de France

            Université Paris Diderot- paris 7,
            Bâtiment Halle aux Farines,
            2 rue Marguerite Duras 75013 Paris

 Venez nombreux!

Victor Pan

=============================

Victor PAN 

Maître de conférences

L'adresse du courrier : 
Université Paris Diderot- Paris 7 UFR Langues et Civilisations d’Asie Orientale (LCAO) Grands Moulins,Bâtiment C- 4e Etage- Case 7009 16 rue Marguerite Duras 75205 Paris Cedex 13 

Bureaux : Grands moulins- Bâtiment C- 4e étage- salle 484 
                Olympe de Gouge- 5e étage- salle 521 

Page personnelle/Personal website: http://www.llf.cnrs.fr/Gens/Pan/index-fr.php
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