A Corpus-Based Analysis of Syntactic-Semantic Relations between Adjectival Objects and Nouns in Mandarin Chinese

In this study, we discuss the syntactic and semantic relations between adjectival objects of VA verb-object constructions and specific nouns in Mandarin Chinese. Firstly, it shows that VA verb-object constructions can function as predicates and modifiers in sentences. It also demonstrates that as adjectives represent attributes of nouns, the adjectival objects of VA verb-object constructions have attribute-entity semantic relations with specific nouns. According to the syntactic functions and attribute-entity semantic relations, we point out that there are two main kinds of syntactic relations which are subject-predicate and modifier-head relations between adjectival objects and specific nouns. Moreover, we take adjectival objects as metonymic expressions. At last, we argue that adjectives which function as objects have nominal meanings in semantics, while they are not nominalized in syntax.