This article aims to explore the de-related potential,resultative and descrip-tive constructions in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of manner adverbial modifica-tion.It is observed that these three constructions share the manner adverbial modification restriction.It is therefore proposed from a morphosyntactic perspective that de in these con-structions can be analyzed as a functional head,denoting POTENTIAL,BE,BEC,or CAUSE;de and the verb V(R)are merged via(External)Morphological Merger to satisfy the affixal properties of de;the Vs in resultative de-sentences and descriptive de-sentences are verbal roots and they are not introduced into the derivation until at the PF.This morpho-syntactic view helps to explain the manner adverbial modification restriction in de-construc-tions in Mandarin Chinese.
万方数据