The Phasehood Analysis of Chinese Nominal Phrases and NP Ellipsis

Abstract

Bošković, in his paper Now I'm a phase, now I'm not a phase: On the variability of phases with extraction and ellipsis, puts forward two hypotheses about phasehood and ellipsis from a contextual perspective: a. Only phases and complements of phase heads can undergo ellipsis. b. The highest projection in a TNP (Traditional Noun Phrase) is a phase. This paper tentatively tests whether these two hypotheses can be used in the analysis of structures and ellipsis of Chinese NPs. After analysis, the paper discovers that Bošković's hypotheses can explain the structure and ellipsis of Chinese simple NPs but they cannot account for Chinese complex NPs well. Based on this, the paper modifiers Bošković's hypotheses slightly: a. Only phases and complements of phase heads can undergo ellipsis. b. Each functional projection over a NP in Chinese is a phase.