Arguments of the Disposal Construction in Hainan Min

摘要

This paper studies the disposal construction in Hainan Min, especially focusing on its argument structure. The due construction in Hainan Min corresponds to the ba construction in Mandarin. Unlike the multiple arguments of ba in Mandarin, the object and subject of 6ue have some semantic restrictions. After examining different thematic roles on the arguments of due, the result shows that the animacy feature of due object affects the grammaticality of 6ue sentences. Furthermore, the thematic role of object of bue is mostly Patient, and the subject of bue is Agent. Following Dowty's (1991) proto-roles of Patient and Agent, this paper shows that the object of due tends to match the properties for proto-role of Patient and the subject of due tends to match the properties for proto-role of Agent. The arguments of the disposal construction in Hainan Min are strongly associated with the s-selection of the word Bue.