A Comparative Study Of Preposition Stranding In Chinese And English

Preposition stranding is a topic of highly theoretical value, which is inextricably linked with various linguistic phenomena. Studies on preposition stranding(PS) originate in the west, where PS is analyzed in its entirety and PS in English is rarely analyzed exclusively. Studies on PS in Chinese begin rather late and many things remain untouched, let alone the comparative study of PS in Chinese and English. However, English is a typical PS language and Chinese is a language of high typology value. It is significant to do the comparative study of PS in Chinese and English, in order to discover the related facts and verify the related theories. After the comparative study, it is found that PS in both Chinese and English is closely associated with three syntactic operations, namely movement, deletion and reduplication, which include wh-movement, NP-movement, coordinate deletion, anaphoric deletion, A-not-A reduplication and A-A reduplication.To begin with, there is wh-movement-caused PS in both Chinese and English. In the sentence pattern, both can appear in direct wh-question, indirect wh-question, relative clause and sluicing, but PS in Chinese sluicing is not typical. Besides, the former can appear in exclamation, while the latter cannot. The landing site of the former is [spec,vP], while the latter is [spec,CP]. The motivation of both languages is for the expression of the focus. The syntactic position of the stranded PP in both of them is complement. As to those P-in-the-end phrases, it is the highly solidified degree of the phrase that causes PS in English, while it is PS that causes the solidification of such phrase in Chinese. As to those P-not-in-the-end ones, the higher the solidification degree of the phrase, the rarer PS appears in both of them. In the distribution of the indirect wh-question, the former is wider. As to whether the wh-element appears or not, the former can either appear or not, while the latter cannot.Secondly, there is NP-movement-caused PS in both languages. Both can appear in focused structures and topicalized structures. The former can also appear in passives, while the latter cannot. In the focused mechanism, modern Chinese adopts "marking", ancient Chinese adopts "preposing", and English both "preposing" and "marking". In the topicalized mechanism, both adopt "preposing" and "marking". The landing site of English passive is [spe,IP], that of English focused structure is before the subject, that of Chinese focused structure is [spec,vP], and that of the topicalization in both of them is [spec,IP]. The motivations of both are focusing and topicalizing.Thirdly, there is deletion-caused PS in both languages. They both have PS caused by coordinate deletion. Chinese also has PS caused by anaphoric deletion, while English has not. The coordinate deletion in both of them is to avoid repetition. The stranded PP in both of them can appear in various syntactic positions except that such PPs in English can appear in predicative, while those in Chinese cannot. The subjects of the coordinates in English can either be the same or not, while those in Chinese must be the same. Deletions in English can appear with other stranding mechanisms, while those in Chinese cannot.Lastly, all kinds of prepositions in Chinese can be stranded by A-not-A reduplication, and certain prepositions in some Chinese dialects can also be stranded by A-A reduplication. On the contrary, preposition in English cannot be stranded by reduplication.Although there are lots of differences, the dominant characteristics between Chinese PS and English PS are mainly the same. The similarities are parts of universal grammar, and the differences are due to the different assignments of parameters, which include different choices of focused mechanism, topicalized mechanism, passivization, exclamation, and A-not-A reduplication.On the basis of the comparative study, some related theoretical issues are analyzed, including motivations of banning PS, means of avoiding PS; and causes of forming PS. PS is prohibited in general. The characteristic of preposition demands that preposition must introduce some element and assign Case to it. Therefore preposition is the compulsory case assigner. According to the "Generalized Case Filter", if the introduced element does not appear, the case assignment potential of the preposition cannot be released so the sentence is ill-formed. In order to avoid PS, some alternative manners are employed, including pied-piping, epanalepsis, and preposition deletion. Nevertheless, PS does exist in both Chinese and English. The syntactic contexts in which PS in both Chinese and English appear have something in common:although it does not appear, the introduced element of the preposition can be tracked. As for movement structure, we can find its landing site along the chain. As for deletion structure, we can find its anaphor forward. As for reduplication structure, we can find its anaphor afterward. Therefore the preposition in PS is not stranded absolutely, and this is exactly the reason why these PSs can appear.