A Survey on the Information Structure of Temporal Verb-object Construction “V+T(de)+N”: Theory and Empirical Evidence

This paper, based on information structure theory and the empirical analysis, shows that, on the propositional level, the Chinese temporal verb-object construction "V+T (de)+N" is realized as a predicate-focus structure and constitutes the assertion of the proposition. The assertion, contrasted with the presupposition which is facilitated by the topic of the sentence, establishes a focus relation with the proposition, and achieves the discourse-pragmatic function of topic-comment. A look from the inside of the construction reveals that the denotatum of the T constituent is where the informationally contrastive focus of the assertion lies, which receives accentuation in prosody. In the assumption of the utterer, the psychological status of the hearer toward the denotatum of T is that of unidentifiability at the time of utterance. In contrast, the denotatum of N constituent of the construction, in the utterer's assumption, is active or accessible in the hearer's psychological status, which makes it possible for N constituent to obtain the topic status that can be verified by shifting N to a front position in both the topicalization structure and verb-copying construction. Whereas the particle de in the construction functions as a focus intensifier by putting more prominence on the informational value of T. In light of comparison between "T-type" and "Q-type" verb-object constructions, the paper finds that the "T-type" construction is facilitated with just one type of focus structure, that is, the predicate-focus structure, and with just one type of discourse-pragmatic function, that is, the topic-comment function; whereas the "Q-type" construction is facilitated with both predicate-focus and sentence-focus structures, which implies that the "Q-type" construction can convey either the topic-comment or the event-reporting discourse-pragmatic function.