Gei and the double object construction in Mandarin Chinese

This paper proposes that in Mandarin double object construction (DOC), gei is an overt realization of Harley's (2002) possessive PHAVEhead:[vP Agent [v’ cause/ø [PP Goal [P’ PHAVE (gei) [DP Theme]]]It raises to join the predicate to form the verb, no matter whether the predicate is null or not. This proposal gives a unified account of why gei sometimes acts as a verb and sometimes as a preposition. It also accounts for subtle semantic differences between the DOC and the dative construction when they have the same Goal and Theme arguments.