Author: Her, One-Soon Date: Dec 23, 1998 Title: Interaction of Thematic Structure and Syntactic Structures: On Mandarin Dative Alternations Email: osh@nccu.edu.tw Format: Microsoft Word 97 Remark: Chinese Languages and Linguistics V: Interaction of Form and Function, Taipei: Academia Sinica Abstract: This paper gives an account of Chinese dative alternations: (a) [V NP1 gei NP2] and (b) [V(gei) NP2 NP1] and compares them with their English counterparts. I establish the compound status of Vgei in (b), identify in Vgei compounding a subclass of V with clearly definable lexical semantics, and demonstrate that post-object gei in (a) can be either a goal-marking preposition or a verb heading a VP adjunct. I then render a formalized account within the simplified lexical mapping theory given in Her (1997ms). The dative operation assigns [+o] to goal in Chinese and English alike, while the difference with passivized goal in the two languages is accounted for with an optionality parameter of the syntactic assignment of [+r] to goal in passive operations.