The Grammaticalization Of The Demonstratives Zhei/nei And The Complex [Dem-Numeral-CL] In Chinese Relative Construction

This paper tries to answer the question why the demonstratives zhei/nei or the complex [Dem-Numeral-CL] in Chinese can play the role of the canonical relativizer de.We based our research on the Raising Analysis for the derivation of the relative constructions and the theory of grammaticalization which helps us to explain the co-occurrence of the canonical relativizer de and the demonstratives zhei/nei or the complex [Dem-Numeral-CL].The position for the canonical relativizer de is D_ext, which possesses a [D] feature. This feature is also inherent in both the demonstratives zhei/nei and the complex [Dem-Numeral-CL]. Thus we propose that when de is not selected from the lexicon, the demonstratives zhei/nei or the complex [Dem-Numeral-CL] can move to D_ext.We suggest that Simpson (2002) is problematic in claiming that the co-occurrence of the canonical relativizer de and the demonstratives zhei/nei is a reflection of definiteness agreement in Chinese. We have shown that the co-occurrence phenomenon in a base-generated shell structure is in fact the result of structural adjacency derived by moving the demonstratives zhei/nei or the complex [Dem-Numeral-CL] with the head noun to the spec-CP as can be seen in the derivational processes proposed by Kayne (1994) and Vries (2002).