The Derivation Of Retained Object Construction In Modern Chinese

The retained object construction,which is a kind of typical sentence pattern is modern Chinese,has long been a research focus.Many scholars have put forward various proposals to the syntactic derivation of this construction,but still fail to provide a satisfactory explanation.Previous studies on this construction are unsystematic and some of them violate the essence of Unaccusative Hypothesis by arguing there exist two-argument unaccusatives or the internal argument can receive partitive case from the unaccusative verb.Based on the Phase Theory,this thesis aims to conduct a unified and thorough study on the generative syntax of Chinese retained object construction.In terms of the types of the unaccusative verbs and the relative position between the verbs and NPs,Chinese retained object construction can be classified into unaccusative construction with retained object and passive construction with retained object.More specifically,the former can be further divided into three sub-types and the latter two sub-types.Considering the whole analysis,the study draws the following conclusion: firstly,the syntactic structure of this construction is derived by phase,which can simplify the generative computation to its minimum.When the passive sentences with retained object take agents,their syntactic derivations involve the deletion of the latter passive marker“bei”,which is different from that in their corresponding short ones.Besides,due to the unaccusativity of the verb,the v*P projection cannot form a phase and then the retained object NP can be assigned the nominative case by realizing an agreement with the finite Probe-T.Moreover,in Chinese retained object construction with one NP,when the internal argument is a semantically closed unit,it must overtly move to sentence-initial position to become a topic;when the internal argument NP is a semantically open unit,it can license a covert topic at the beginning of the sentence.In Chinese retained object construction with two NPs,the sentence-initial non-argument NP is a base-generated dangling topic,which is licensed by a semantic variable in the comment and bears a generally possessive relationship with the post-verbal NP.Finally,when the internal argument retains in its normal complement position,it deserves regarding as an informational focus.This study cannot only enrich the syntactic studies of the syntax of Chinese retained object construction by effectively explaining some controversial issues,but also provide more cross-linguistic evidence to testify the validity of Unaccusative Hypothesis and Minimalist Program.