The Linear Order Of Adverbs And Core Functional Heads In Chinese

Cinque's (1999) specifier approach assumes that the order of adverbs is determined by the functional heads because adverbs are treated as an integral part of the clausal structure by locating them as the specifiers of the functional heads. This thesis basically adopts Cinque's idea that the rigid order between adverbs is predictable from their syntactic nature. Meanwhile, the linear order between adverbs is in consistent with their hierarchical status. Adverbs which are higher in the structure should precede the lower ones. Although Cinque provides a cartographic description for the location of adverbs, this paper will not take his huge IP split into full consideration. Only the Core Functional Categories- C, T, v proposed by Chomsky (1998) take the responsibility of accounting for the broad domains of the distribution of adverbs and the rigid order between them. The selectional properties of the Core Functional Categories determine that adverbs base-generated above C0 are higher than those of T0; adverbs base-generated above T0 are higher than those of v.The present thesis will employ two mechanisms to test the syntactic positions of adverbs. The first mechanism is the utilization of relativization: Chomsky's (1998) definition of the selectional properties of the Core Functional heads requires that C selects T as its complement; Ning's (1993) analysis of De in Chinese relative clause as a C also holds that it takes an IP-clausal complement on the left; Yang (2006) distinguishes adverbs of subjective modality from the objective modality by relativization. The above theoretical foundations and testing mechanism lead to the conclusion that relativization can also be employed as an effective syntactic means to distinguish adverbs of CP space from those of the IP/TP space. Adverbs which cannot appear in the relative clause are the ones of CP space, and those who can are the adverbs of IP/TP space. Yang has already provided us with several CP adverbs which cannot appear in the relative clause. This paper will test all the modal adverbs listed in Shi (2003) to provide an exhaustive data.The second test mechanism comes from Hsieh's argumentation of treating hui in Chinese as the instantiation of Tense in Chinese. Based on the observation of the similarities of hui and its English counterpart will, he concludes that hui can be considered the relative tense marker in Chinese. Assuming with this position, we examined almost all the"restrictive"adverbs listed in Zhang (2003) with their relative position with hui, and we find those"restrictive"adverbs can be classified into 3 main categories: adverbs which must precede hui and those must follow it and the ones which can precede it and follow it. We hold that adverbs of the first type are the ones base generated above T0 and the second type are adverbs above v. As for the third type, we find that the two distinct positions which are available to them are...