Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese

Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese

Author: Victor Junnan Pan

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-06-20

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 3110492385

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The use of resumptive pronouns is quite productive in Mandarin Chinese; however, their distribution has rarely been studied in a systematic way. This book not only gives a thorough description of the general distribution of resumptive pronouns in different contexts but also offers a theoretical account in the framework of the Minimalist Program. Different types of A'-dependencies, mediated by gaps and by resumptive pronouns, are derived by different minimalist mechanisms, such as Agree, Match and Move. These mechanisms only apply at Narrow Syntax and do not uniformly obey locality constraints. Importantly, interpretative properties of an A'-bound element, such as reconstruction effects, is only related to its internal structure irrespective of how the A'-chain concerned is derived. From this perspective, resumptivity is an exclusively syntactic-related phenomenon and is thus not subject to any interface condition. Adopting a comparative approach, this study improves the general understanding of resumptivity crosslinguistically.


Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese

Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese

Author: Victor Junnan Pan

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2016-06-20

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3110489759

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The use of resumptive pronouns is quite productive in Mandarin Chinese; however, their distribution has rarely been studied in a systematic way. This book not only gives a thorough description of the general distribution of resumptive pronouns in different contexts but also offers a theoretical account in the framework of the Minimalist Program. Different types of A'-dependencies, mediated by gaps and by resumptive pronouns, are derived by different minimalist mechanisms, such as Agree, Match and Move. These mechanisms only apply at Narrow Syntax and do not uniformly obey locality constraints. Importantly, interpretative properties of an A'-bound element, such as reconstruction effects, is only related to its internal structure irrespective of how the A'-chain concerned is derived. From this perspective, resumptivity is an exclusively syntactic-related phenomenon and is thus not subject to any interface condition. Adopting a comparative approach, this study improves the general understanding of resumptivity crosslinguistically.


Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese

Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese

Author: Victor Junnan Pan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1351655949

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Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese offers a comprehensive survey on the fine structure of the sentence peripheral domain in Mandarin Chinese from a cartographic perspective. Different functional projections hosting sentence-final particles, implicit operators and other informational components are hierarchically ordered according to the "Subjectivity Scale Constraint" functioning at syntax-discourse interface. Three questions will be essentially addressed: What is the order? How to determine such an order? Why such an order? This research not only gives a thorough examination of the peripheral elements in Chinese but also improves the general understanding of the ordering issue in the left-periphery crosslinguistically. This book is aimed at scholars interested in Chinese syntax or generative syntax.


Reconstruction and Resumption in Indirect A‘-Dependencies

Reconstruction and Resumption in Indirect A‘-Dependencies

Author: Martin Salzmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 1501500821

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This monograph investigates A’-dependencies in Standard German, Alemannic and Dutch where the dislocated constituent is indirectly, i.e. not transformationally, related to the position where it is interpreted. The study focuses on relative clauses and shows that an important part of the relativization system in these languages, long relativization, involves a hitherto ignored construction termed resumptive prolepsis. This construction is characterized by base-generation of the operator in the matrix middle-field and a resumptive pronoun in the position of the variable. It is shown that it involves short A’-movement in the matrix clause, empty operator movement in the complement clause and an ellipsis operation that links the two operators. While the link is directly visible in German and Dutch, Swiss German provides a more abstract version of resumptive prolepsis. Through a detailed examination of reconstruction effects and the properties of resumption in these constructions, the book provides new evidence for the role of ellipsis in A’-movement and for a base-generation analysis of resumption. More generally, it makes an important contribution to the modeling of long-distance dependencies and the study of A'-syntax.


Language Use and Linguistic Structure

Language Use and Linguistic Structure

Author: Joseph Emonds

Publisher: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci

Published:

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 8024455242

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The twenty-three articles in this volume are based on papers and posters presented at the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium (OLINCO) at Palacký University in the Czech Republic in June 7-9, 2018. This conference welcomed papers that combined analyses of language structure with generalizations about language use. The thematic sections are as follows: Part I. Micro-syntax: The Structure and Interpretation of Verb Phrases; Part II. Micro-syntax: Word-Internal Morphosyntax in Nominal Projections; Part III. Macro-syntax: Structure and Interpretation of Discourse Markers and Projections; Part IV: Empirical Approaches to Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies. Články v tomto sborníku vycházejí z příspěvků prezentovaných na konferenci Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium (OLINCO), pořádané Univerzitou Palackého v Olomouci ve dnech 7. 6. - 9. 6. 2018. Jako téma byl zvolen "Jazyk jako prostředek a lingvistická struktura", což mělo umožnit prezentaci referátů ze všech současných lingvistických disciplín, pokud se zabývají vědeckým (empirickým, formálním) popisem jazykového systému. Články jsou rozděleny do následujících tematických sekcí: Part I. Micro-syntax: The Structure and Interpretation of Verb Phrases; Part II. Micro-syntax: Word-Internal Morphosyntax in Nominal Projections; Part III. Macro-syntax: Structure and Interpretation of Discourse Markers and Projections; Part IV: Empirical Approaches to Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies.


Interfaces in Grammar

Interfaces in Grammar

Author: Jianhua Hu

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 9027262683

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This volume is an important contribution to the theoretical and empirical study of the interactions of grammatical components in Chinese and other languages. With contributions by Edward L. Keenan, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, and scholars in Chinese Linguistics, this volume investigates the common structural properties that may be considered as possible candidates for UG. It addresses syntactic and semantic issues such as anaphora universals over non-isomorphic languages, the role that the forces of attraction and repulsion play in the grammar of natural languages, computational and semantic aspects of resumption, the dichotomy between inner and outer reflexive adverbials, system repairing strategies at interfaces, the v-copy construction in Chinese, the scope of disjunction, interactions between focus, negation and event quantification, null object constructions and VP-Ellipsis, child language acquisition of nominal structure, word order and referentiality as well as second language acquisition of interface properties in Chinese double NP constructions. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of syntax, semantics, theoretical linguistics, and language acquisition, as well as scholars in Chinese linguistics.


Locality in Grammar

Locality in Grammar

Author: Xiaoshi HU

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-05-08

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1040010091

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Locality in Grammar: From Narrow Syntax to Interfaces investigates the operation of locality conditions in syntax and semantics from a cross-linguistic perspective. It is claimed that there are two different types of locality conditions. One is the Generalized Minimality Condition (GMC), and the other is the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC). This book demonstrates that these locality conditions play different roles in different computational components of human language, and, therefore, cannot be unified as one constraint as proposed in the literature. The main idea of the book is that the two different locality conditions are sensitive to the difference between syntactic derivation and semantic interpretation and that of overt and covert syntactic derivations. Further investigation shows a more fine-grained distinction must be made between syntactic computations. It is true that GMC does not constrain overt syntactic derivations and PIC does not play a role in semantic interpretations; however, they both regulate covert syntactic computations. This book will inform postgraduate students and scholars in the field of linguistics.


The Syntax of Relative Clauses

The Syntax of Relative Clauses

Author: Guglielmo Cinque

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-24

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 110884605X

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Relative clauses play a hugely important role in analysing the structure of sentences. This book provides the first evidence that a unified analysis of the different types of relative clauses is possible - a step forward in our understanding. Using careful analyses of a wide range of languages, Cinque argues that the relative clause types can all be derived from a single, double-headed, structure. He also presents evidence that restrictive, maximalizing, ('integrated') non-restrictive, kind-defining, infinitival and participial RCs merge at different heights of the nominal extended projection. This book provides an elegant generalization about the structure of all relatives. Theoretically profound and empirically rich, it promises to radically alter the way we think about this subject for years to come.


Constraints on Reflexivization in Mandarin Chinese

Constraints on Reflexivization in Mandarin Chinese

Author: Haihua Pan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1135655340

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First Published in 1997. Mandarin ziji has challenged many syntacticians to probe for its properties and specifically its relationship to Binding Condition A (BCA), which dictates that an anaphor must be bound by a syntactically prominent (or c-commanding) noun phrase in a very local domain (Governing Category or GC). This book argues for the separation of contrastive and non-contrastive reflexives. This book will also show that ben-ren/shen and their compound forms, being inherently contrastive, differ from ziji and its compound forms in the contexts accessible to them; the latter can access linguistic contexts only, but the former can also access utterance situations and world knowledge.


The Syntax and Processing of Relative Clauses in Mandarin Chinese

The Syntax and Processing of Relative Clauses in Mandarin Chinese

Author: Franny Pai-Fang Hsiao

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13:

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(Cont.) Secondly, it has been noted that in many cases, resource-based theories and canonical/non-canonical word order (frequency) theories are both compatible with data from sentence processing studies. Resource-based theories attribute processing difficulty associated with subject-extracted RCs to higher storage cost in processing subject-extracted RCs whereas frequency-based canonical word order theory such as the one proposed in Mitchell et al. 1995 attributes this to the less frequent occurrences of subject-extracted RCs in corpora. As a result, it is very difficult to tease these two theories apart. However, I conducted a Chinese corpus study in this thesis and I show that there is no correlation between structural frequencies in corpora and behavioral measures such as reading times, as predicted by frequency theories. As a matter of fact, subject-extracted RCs occur more frequently in the Chinese corpus. This undermines the validity of frequency theories in explaining the processing data reported in this thesis. Thirdly, Aoun and Li to appear argue that there is syntactic and semantic evidence in favor of positing two distinct syntactic derivations for RCs with or without resumptive pronouns. RCs containing gaps involve head-raising of the head NP (i.e. no operator movement) as reconstruction of the head NP back to the RC is available. On the other hand, RCs containing resumptive pronouns involve an empty operator in [Spec, CP] and no head-raising of the head NP (since reconstruction is unavailable) ...