A Generative Analysis Of Resumptive Pronouns In Chinese Topic Constructions

The topic construction in Chinese has been one hotly discussed focus in linguisticresearch since1960s. Many investigations have been carried out from different perspectives;however, few studies have been done to explore the distribution of resumptive pronouns (RP)in the construction. This thesis aims to provide a reasonable account of the distributionproblem based on a new analysis of the Chinese topic construction.After a systematic comparison is made of researches on movement and base-generationof the construction, a relativization test is applied, leading to the conclusion that topicconstructions that can be relativized, i.e., topicalization, left-dislocation and some of the“Chinese-style” topic constructions, are derived via syntactic movement, while the other“Chinese-style” topic constructions, which can not be relativized, are derived viabase-generation. As for the nature of RPs, the author holds that resumptive pronouns notwithin syntactic islands are genuine RPs while those inside islands are intrusive pronouns,which are spell-out of traces in nature. All this having done, the author discusses thedistribution of the RP within the topic construction, concluding that apart from syntacticconstraints, it is also constrained by such factors as language parsing, semantic and pragmaticrules, and prosodic as well as other phonologic rules.