从 “他的老师当得好” 看句法中重新分析的必要性

This paper examines the Chinese construction “Ta de laoshi dangdehao” (他的老师当得好) in which the logical subject Ta (他) ‘he’ appears as the possessor of the surface subject (logical object) laoshi (老师) ‘teacher’, labeled as a type of “fake” possessive construction in the literature. It has been argued in the literature that a reanalysis approach to this construction is not desirable, as it lacks theoretical support. However, after careful examination of all the possible accounts to this construction, we come to realize that all of them make some use of a process similar to reanalysis. Two new plausible accounts are discussed in this paper, and they seem to be more convincing and concise than the previous accounts, though both with a reanalysis process involved. The new accounts not only solve the remaining problems in the previous analyses, but also serve as a convincing argument for the necessity of reanalysis in syntax. Besides, the reanalysis approach can help account for most “fake possessive” phenomena in Mandarin and may shed light on our understanding of various Chinese “de(的)-constructions”.