“他的老師當得好”的生成路徑探析

Sentences like “Ta de laoshi dang-de hao”(他的老師當得好) may be considered as containing a non-typical possessive construction in Modern Chinese. The mechanism of generating such sentences be- comes a hot topic in recent years. This paper reexamines the existing analyses with a focus on Huang’s (2008) lexical decomposition analysis. It argues that an analysis on the basis of Larson’s (1988) “VP- shell Analysis” may provide a more adequate account of the syntactic mechanism concerning the non- typical possessive construction in question. It is shown that the VP-shell analysis not only helps account for the correct derivation of the non-typical possessive construction, but also confirms that this construc- tion shares the same base structure with other related constructions, thus achieving a unified account of them. The discussion also testifies the necessity of reanalysis in syntax.