A Syntactic And Semantic Study On The Definite And Indefinite Nominal Phrases Of Mandarin Chinese Subjects

Most Chinese linguists agree that only definite nominal phrases could appear in the subject position in Mandarin Chinese. Indefinite nominal phrases are ruled out from subject position syntactically. However, counterexamples are easily found. Obviously, this concept is quite vague and needs further exploration. On one other hand, the distinction of definite and indefinite nominal phrases in Mandarin Chinese is not clear. On the other hand, how to explain the existence of the indefinite nominal phrases is controversial.This thesis examines the study on the categorization and approaches of definite and indefinite nominal phrases by Stockwell, Tang, Diesing, Milsark, Lee, Tsai, Li, Shen, He and Gu, the author presents various distributions of definite and indefinite nominal phrases. That is (a) Bare NPs; (b) Num-CL-N; (c) Determiner + (classifier) + NP; (d) Demonstrative + (classifier) + NP; (e) Pronouns; (f) Proper nouns.Semantically, four types of interpretations to the above six forms of definite and indefinite nominal subjects in Mandarin Chinese are classified: definite interpretation, generic interpretation, specific interpretation, and nonspecific interpretation.Syntactically, two approaches to explain the (in)definite Mandarin subjects are proposed. Within the GB framework, with some modifications and improvement of Diesing's Mapping Hypothesis (MH), it is argued that definite, generic, and specific nominal phrases go through NP-raising and form the restrictive clause, whereas nonspecific nominal phrases do not undergo NP-raising but stay in the original place to form a nuclear scope. That is the reason why both definite and indefinite nominal phrases are acceptable in Mandarin Chinese. From the minimalist perspective of movement, the author...