Abstract:
On the basis of the framework of the event semantics and the analysis mechanism of the Davidson event argument suppression, Chinese and English peculiar passives have been studied from the comparative perspective. Chinese and English peculiar passives have some syntactic and semantic similarities. Neither obey the usual syntactic conditions that hold for ordinary passives. And they depict the subject's characteristic property or long-lasting state. The reading of property depends on an abstract operation mechanism: the suppression of event arguments. The Ev'suppression results in the transformation from stage-level event to individual-level state. As for the formation mechanism of property description, English and Chinese peculiar passives have both similarities and differences.