A Phase-based Approach To The Derivation Of Relative Constructions In Mandarin Chinese

There have been great controversies over the general properties, classification and syntactic derivational mechanism of Chinese relative constructions (RCs). Within the framework of Phase Theory (Chomsky2000,2001,2005,2007,2008), this dissertation presents a detailed discussion on the properties and classification of Chinese RCs, and puts forth an alternative proposal on the basis of the critical review of the previous analyses.This dissertation begins with a brief outline of the theoretical framework of Phase Theory, introducing its historical development, language mechanism model and syntactic computational system. What follows is an explicit generalization of the properties and classification of Chinese RCs. It is assumed that Chinese RCs are characterized by the following basic properties:no relative pronoun, omissible noun heads, possible retention of resumptive pronouns, independent use of relative clauses, recursive and linear multiple embedding and free ordering of relative clauses. The syntactic classification of Chinese RCs is based on three criteria:presence or absence of a gap, a nominal head and the marker de. Semantically, Chinese RCs fall into three types:restrictive, nonrestrictive and maximalizing (including free, correlative and degree). In the literature review of the analyses on the derivation of Chinese RCs and marker de, this dissertation points out that the movement analysis not only leaves some linguistic facts, namely, Chinese gapless and coordinated RCs unexplained, but also poses serious challenges to the principles and theories of Universal Grammar, such as Economy Principle, Empty Category Principle, island constraints and Subjacency Condition. The major problem of the non-movement analysis lies in the treatment of empty categories in Chinese relative clauses. The null subject cannot be an empty pronominal that must observe Generalized Control Rule and the null object cannot be a variable which may change its status of identity in the process of syntactic derivation. Although the element de in Chinese has been thoroughly discussed in the literature, little consensus has been reached on its syntactic categorial status. The existing analyses such as C, D and De approaches are still problematic.Based on the previous research, the dissertation gives a reanalysis of the syntactic derivation of Chinese RCs and the marker de. We regard the gap in the relative clause as a special kind of empty category, which is generated to satisfy the argument requirement of the predicate in the clause and does not belong to any kind of the four types of empty categories specified by Chomsky (1981,1982). The existence of the special empty category can be proved on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Its properties may include:it only exists in the argument gapped RCs; it has category and φ features and can be assigned theta-role and Case; its reference may be identified in the sentence or in the context. Given the discussion on the grammaticalization process of the element de, it is proposed that de is a grammaticalized modifier-marker, which only exists in Chinese and can be marked as De. The marker de acts as a head to select the preceding relative clause as its complement, forming the phrase DeP. Due to the modifier status of DeP, we argue that it left adjoins to the relative nominal head. The adjunct DeP merely plays the role of a semantic restriction and does not participate in any computational operation of the matrix clause. The argument gap in the relative clause may agree with the relative nominal head in (p features. There are no movements of null operators and nominal heads in Chinese relativization. So far, our new syntactic mechanism proposed for Chinese RCs has been sketched. This mechanism mainly employs the economical merge operation and its derivational power may be restricted by the semantic licensing conditions we specified for Chinese RCs. The ungrammaticality of those examples in previous analyses can also be accounted for under the conditions. In order to testify our new proposal, we adopt it to analyze the syntactic derivation of different types of Chinese RCs under Phase Theory, including restrictive, nonrestrictive, free, multiple-embedded, coordinated RCs and those complicated RCs involved bei-, ba-and double-object constructions. With the purpose to further verify our new proposal and get a better understanding of Chinese RCs, the dissertation finally explores the topicalization, focalization and extraposition phenomena in Chinese RCs. Given the independent use property and complete internal argument structure of the Chinese relative clause, we postulate that a relative clause can have the same syntactic status as a normal sentence with topic and focus positions. The internal topicalization and focalization can be firstly allowed in the relative clause, and then the whole topicalized and focalized relative clause modifies the relative nominal head. There is little discussion on extraposition phenomena in Chinese RCs. However, we maintain that Chinese RCs indeed have extraposition constructions, which can be given a good account under our proposal and Vries’s (2002) specifying coordination plus ellipsis analysis.On the basis of a critical analysis of previous accounts, the dissertation puts forward an alternative account of the derivation of Chinese RCs. It can be shown that the proposed analysis has both theoretical and empirical merits. From a theoretical point of view, the analysis enables us to arrive at a more unitary theory of Phase building. In the dissertation we adopt the Merge operation approach rather than the movement analysis, which may not violate the universal principles in Generative Grammar such as island constraint and Subjacency Condition. Moreover, our analysis is more accordant with Chomsky’s (1995a) Economy Principle of Merge over Move. The finding of a special kind of empty category in Chinese argument gapped RCs gives insight into the theoretical research of Chinese empty categories. From an empirical point of view, the new analysis proposed in the dissertation not only can give a reasonable account for the distinctive syntactic properties of Chinese RCs, for instance, the independent use and free ordering properties of relative clauses, but also can provide a unified derivational account for different kinds of Chinese RCs, remedying the defect in previous research which confines the discussion to headed restrictive RCs. Our exploration on the topicalization, focalization and extraposition phenomena in Chinese RCs not only can give a feasible account for those grammatical topicalized and focalized constructions which seem to violate movement constraints, but also can provide some reference for the further research of these constructions. In analyzing relevant Chinese data under the recent framework of Phase Theory, we can test the validity and explanationatory power of Phase Theory, and at the same time, we can better understand the Chinese data and contribute to the development of generative research on Chinese grammar.