Finiteness of Clauses and Raising of Arguments in Mandarin Chinese

Lin, Tzong-Hong Jonah

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9612.2010.00145.x

Cited by 75 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…However, in Sybesma's proposal, it is unclear what exactly the feature of the tense node is if it is not a temporal one. Additionally, T. H. Lin (2011Lin ( , 2015 demonstrates that there is indeed a Finite/Non-finite contrast in the clausal complements of modals in Chinese, which makes object fronting possible only if it is from a finite clause (as in 4a), but impossible if it is from a non-finite clause (as in 4b):…”

Section: Tense and Tenselessnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contradictory (forward) lifetime effects and the non-future tense in Mandarin Chinese

Chen

Husband

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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Lifetime effects refer to the inferences about the life/death of the individual in sentences with individual-level predicates like ‘Mary is/was blue-eyed’. In English, contradictory lifetime inferences arise when the subject denotes one living and one dead individual (e.g. Saussuredead and Chomskyliving #are/??were both linguists.), but no such inferences arises in Mandarin Chinese, a language that has been considered “tenseless” due to the lack of past tense morphemes. This paper investigates the online processing of contradictory lifetime effects and presents additional empirical observations about “forward lifetime effects”, which suggest that both covert past tense and tenseless accounts of Chinese are inadequate for capturing temporal interpretations in this language; instead, finite clauses in Chinese display a Future/Non-Future distinction and are likely to possess a tense node. We discuss our findings in relation to the typology of tense as well as implications for other superficially tenseless languages.

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Section: Tense and Tenselessnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contradictory (forward) lifetime effects and the non-future tense in Mandarin Chinese

Chen

Husband

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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“…between Chinese raising and CR because subject-to-subject raising out of a finite complement is permitted in Chinese. As argued in Lin (2011), keneng 'likely' is a raising predicate that takes a finite complement: the complement in Example ( 6) is finite given its compatibility with the sentence-final aspect le, which needs a reference time to anchor the event time it denotes. Crucially, keneng permits raising of the embedded subject out of a finite clause (see Lin 2011 on why a finite clause is not an island to A-movement in Chinese).…”

Section: Some General Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chinese copy raising and its implications for predication

2024

J. Ling.

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This study examines the copy raising constructions in Chinese and proposes an integrated analysis built on the insights of the prominent proposals from recent years. It argues that the matrix subject in Chinese copy raising is base-generated and requires a coindexed copy in the complement. Though concurring with Landau’s (2011) predication theory that recognizes theta assignment and predication as two ways of semantically licensing an argument, this squib differs from him in assuming that languages like Chinese can be parametrized in not treating the perceptual source as thematic. It is further argued that in Chinese, the perceptual source construal of the subject does not come from theta assignment but rather as an implicature which interprets the matrix subject to be involved in the topic event denoted by the perception verb.

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“…( 5). Instead, these two modal distributions are claimed to be derived by optional subject-raising in a biclausal structure, such as a vacuous structural alteration resulting from optional subject-to-subject raising in TP (Lin & Tang 1995;Lin 2011Tsai 2010Tsai , 2015; optional topic A-movement in TP (Chou 2013); or optional topicalization of a subject from the matrix-subject position (Specifier of TP) to the domain of the CP (Tsai 2010(Tsai , 2015. Each of these three proposals has some theoretical merit.…”

Section: External or Internal Merge?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Modal raising and focus marking in Chinese

Hsu

2023

J. Ling.

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This paper presents several new empirical observations regarding some interpretive effects and structural restrictions of modals that occur in sentence-initial positions in Chinese. It provides a new analysis of sentence-initial modal sentences in terms of the overt head-movement of a modal to the sentence periphery to value strong focus features and to focus-mark either the proposition or the subject of a sentence. This new proposal helps explain the markedness exhibited by such sentences, correctly predicts the structural and semantic restrictions of modal sentences, and directly explains the scopal interactions observed between modals and various types of focus constructions. It also shows that changes in word order in Chinese are not ascribable simply to an optional or free derivation in syntax but are related to an understudied mechanism in that language, i.e. T-to-C movement, and that the roles of information structure are represented as formal features in syntax. The results shed new light on how Chinese – though profoundly different from Germanic and Romance languages typologically – exemplifies a similarly fine structure in the sentence-internal domain, parallel associations of scope-bearing units with sentences’ left peripheries, and a neat interaction of syntax with discourse configurations.

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Finiteness of Clauses and Raising of Arguments in Mandarin Chinese

Cited by 75 publications

References 22 publications

Contradictory (forward) lifetime effects and the non-future tense in Mandarin Chinese

Contradictory (forward) lifetime effects and the non-future tense in Mandarin Chinese

Chinese copy raising and its implications for predication

Modal raising and focus marking in Chinese

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