Syntactic dependencies in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

This thesis investigates two kinds of syntactic dependencies in Mandarin Chinese: uninterpretable feature checking of clause-level functional heads and dou quantificational binding. Three issues are discussed with respect to checking: object shift, yes/no questions, and the aspect particle le raising. Chinese object shift is argued to be triggered by a focus marker which adjoins to an object. This study also presents a unified treatment of various types of yes/no questions in Chinese. The uninterpretable [Q] of yes/no question C is checked either by the merged particle ma, by overt movement of bu/mei(you)-V from Neg to C, or by covert movement of [Q] of shi-bu-shi and A-not-A words. In both object shift and questions the optionality between overt and covert checking occurs. The thesis argues that the strong value of the feature strength of a functional head can be triggered by a certain feature in its complement domain. Thus the choice of overt vs. covert checking can be determined in the computation. The thesis also explains the interactions between yes/no questions and negation by Relativized Minimality and feature compatibility. Furthermore, the thesis argues that sentence final le is base-generated in I and moves to C. As for dou quantification, it is shown that a licenser of dou can be an element which is capable

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