Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese: Cartography and Minimalism

242 Pages·2019·8.779 MB·English

by  Victor Junnan Pan

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Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese

Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese offers a comprehensive survey on the
fine structure of the sentence peripheral domain in Mandarin Chinese from
a cartographic perspective. Different functional projections hosting sentence-
final particles, implicit operators and other informational components are
hierarchically ordered according to the “Subjectivity Scale Constraint”
functioning at syntax- discourse interface. Three questions will be essentially
addressed: What is the order? How to determine such an order? Why such an
order? This research not only gives a thorough examination of the periph-
eral elements in Chinese but also improves the general understanding of the
ordering issue in the left-p eriphery crosslinguistically. This book is aimed at
scholars interested in Chinese syntax or generative syntax.
Victor Junnan Pan is a professor of theoretical linguistics in the Department
of Linguistics and Modern Languages in The Chinese University of Hong
Kong. He worked previously as an associate professor with Habilitation in
the University Paris Diderot-P aris 7. He has also been a junior member of
the Institut Universitaire de France since 2017. He has published five research
monographs in both English and French. Specializing in generative syntax, his
research covers Chinese syntax, French syntax, syntax- semantics- discourse
interface and others, and the topics he has investigated include interrogatives,
quantification in formal linguistics, information structure, left- periphery,
cartography, resumptivity, A′- dependency, locality and the Minimalist
Program.
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Routledge Studies in Chinese Linguistics

Series editor: Hongming Zhang
Dimensions of Variation in Written Chinese
Zheng- Sheng Zhang
The Semantics of Chinese Classifiers and Linguistic Relativity
Song Jiang
Mandarin Chinese Words and Parts of Speech
A Corpus- Based Study
Chu- Ren Huang, Shu- Kai Hsieh and Keh- Jiann Chen
A Study of Sino- Korean Phonology
Its Origin, Adaptation and Layers
Youyong Qian
Partition and Quantity
Numerical Classifiers, Measurement and Partitive Constructions in
Mandarin Chinese
Jing Jin
Mandarin Loanwords
Tae Eun Kim
Intensification and Modal Necessity in Mandarin Chinese
Jiun- Shiung Wu
Architecture of the Periphery in Chinese
Cartography and Minimalism
Victor Pan
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
languages/ series/ RSICL
ii i
Architecture of the Periphery

in Chinese
Cartography and Minimalism
Victor Junnan Pan
iv
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Victor Junnan Pan
The right of Victor Junnan Pan to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-i n- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 06818- 6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 15822- 8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
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For my dearest Mum, with love.
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vi i
Contents

Acknowledgments x

List of abbreviations xiv

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Cartography 1
1.2 Previous studies on the Chinese left-p eriphery 3
1.3 Organization of the argumentation 4
2 Core projections 9

2.1 Introduction 9
2.2 Sentential aspects: S.AspP 12
2.2.1 TP- internal aspectual marking 12
2.2.2 TP- external sentential aspectual marking 16
2.2.2.1 Le 16
2.2.2.2 Laizhe1 18
2.2.2.3 Ne 18
2.2.3 Spoken Mandarin and regional variations 21
2.2.3.1 Guo 21
2.2.3.2 Zai 23
2.2.4 Summary 23
2.2.5 Low scope of S.AspP particles? 24
2.3 Sentential exclusive focus: OnlyP 32
2.3.1 Eryi ‘only’ 32
2.3.2 S.AspP < OnlyP 33
2.3.3 Low scope of OnlyP particles? 35
2.4 Illocutionary force: iForceP 39
2.4.1 Ma 40
2.4.2 Ba1 40
2.4.3 Meiyou ‘not.have’ 40
2.4.4 Ba2 43
2.4.5 Null Op- operator for wh- questions 43
2.4.6 Co- occurrence with other projections 49
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viii Contents
2.5 Special questions: SQP 53
2.5.1 Rhetorical questions: RheQP 55
2.5.1.1 RheQP > iForceP 55
2.5.1.2 RheQP > iForceP > OnlyP 58
2.5.1.3 RheQP > iForceP > S.AspP 59
2.5.1.4 RheQP > iForceP > OnlyP > S.AspP 60
2.5.2 Negative wh-q uestions: NegQP 61
2.5.3 Comparison 65
2.6 AttP (speaker’s attitude) 67
2.6.1 Particles 67
2.6.2 Hierarchy 70
2.6.3 About ne < ba 76
2.6.4 About zhe < ne 78
2.7 Conclusion 83
3 Embeddability and subjectivity 89

3.1 Introduction 89
3.2 S.AspP 92
3.3 OnlyP 95
3.4 iForceP 96
3.5 SQP 102
3.6 AttP 107
3.7 Conclusion 110
4 Optional projections 115

4.1 Introduction 115
4.2 TopicP 116
4.2.1 Topic in Chinese 119
4.2.2 Labeling issue 126
4.2.3 Sentence-fi nal particles and topic markers 129
4.2.4 An SFP- based analysis 135
4.2.5 Embeddability of SFPs 142
4.3 Ex- situ cleft FocusP 144
4.3.1 Existing views on ex- situ cleft-f ocus structures 146
4.3.2 Pan’s analysis 150
4.3.3 Evidence for a non- movement approach 150
4.3.4 A pro- based analysis of ex- situ cleft- focus structures 156
4.3.5 Advantages of the pro-b ased analysis 157
4.3.6 Differences between cleft- focus structures and topic structures 169
4.3.7 Deriving the exhaustivity 171
4.4 A possible extension to lian ‘even’…dou ‘all’ structure 174
4.5 Syntactic hierarchy 179
4.6 Embeddability 188
4.7 Conclusion 193
ix
Contents ix
5 Concluding remarks 199

5.1 WHAT and HOW? 199
5.2 WHY? 200
5.3 Derive the cartography in the framework of the Minimalist
Program 202
5.3.1 Disjunction- based analyses 205
5.3.2 Comp- to- Spec raising analyses 207
5.3.3 Advantage of the raising analysis over con(/ dis) junction- based
analyses 209
Bibliography 214

Index 224