On Chinese appositive relative clauses

Abstract

There is currently no consensus in the literature with the respect to the semantic status of relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese. Some authors (Zhang 2001 ; Del Gobbo 2003 , 2004 , 2005 ) claim that relative clauses in Mandarin Chinese can only be interpreted as restrictives; others (see Lin 2003 ) instead maintain that relative clauses in this language can be both restrictive and appositive. In this paper, I claim that Chinese relative clauses modifying proper names and pronouns can indeed be appositive, but they are still crucially different from appositive relative clauses in English. Following Cinque’s ( 2006a , 2008a ) distinction between “integrated appositive relative clauses” and “non-integrated” ones, I claim that Chinese appositive relatives belong to the class of the “integrated” ones. I furthermore propose that the typological difference between the “integrated” appositives and the “non-integrated” ones is due to the absence versus presence of the relative pronoun. Adopting Cinque’s ( 2006a , 2008a ) theory of relativization, I propose a structure for Chinese relative clauses whereby c-command of the internal head of the relative is disallowed. This explains why the internal head of the Chinese relative clause can never be generated as a relative pronoun and, more generally, why overt relative pronouns are unavailable in prenominal relative clauses cross-linguistically. Last, the theory here outlined makes the strong empirical prediction that no prenominal relative clause can be appositive in the canonical sense.

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