Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese: A Minimalist Account

TitreResumptivity in Mandarin Chinese: A Minimalist Account
Publication TypeOuvrage
Année de publication2016
AuthorsPan, Victor Junnan
Series TitleTrends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]
Series Volume298
Number of Pages310
PublisherDE GRUYTER MOUTON
CityBerlin
ISBN Number978-3-11-048759-6
ISBN978-3-11-048759-6
Mots-clésResumptive Pronoun; Minimalist Program; Mandarin Chinese
Abstract

The use of resumptive pronouns is quite productive in Mandarin Chinese; however, their distribution has rarely been studied in a systematic way. This book not only gives a thorough description of the general distribution of resumptive pronouns in different contexts but also offers a theoretical account in the framework of the Minimalist Program. Different types of A'-dependencies, mediated by gaps and by resumptive pronouns, are derived by different minimalist mechanisms, such as Agree, Match and Move. These mechanisms only apply at Narrow Syntax and do not uniformly obey locality constraints. Importantly, interpretative properties of an A'-bound element, such as reconstruction effects, is only related to its internal structure irrespective of how the A'-chain concerned is derived. From this perspective, resumptivity is an exclusively syntactic-related phenomenon and is thus not subject to any interface condition. Adopting a comparative approach, this study improves the general understanding of resumptivity crosslinguistically.

Refereed DesignationRefereed