A Non-unified Approach to -men in Mandarin Chinese
| Autor: | Hsin-Hui Minty Chung, 鍾馨慧 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 99 This thesis discusses the syntax and semantics of the bound form -men in Mandarin Chinese. Considering the obligatory definiteness of –men and its relation with person feature and group status, this thesis argues that -men is a spellout of a [definite, group] feature generated in DP head. Following Iljic (2005), this thesis argue that the major function of –men is to introduce a particular point of view into discourse rather than to presuppose number. This thesis further argues that the so-called ‘point of view’ in Iljic’s (2005) sense is related to person feature in syntax and the presence of –men allows the common noun to be specified with three different person interpretations. This thesis provides counterexamples to the two incorrect claims made by many previous studies (Li, 1999, 2003, Yang 2005, Zhang 2008, Huang et al. 2009, Lan 2010, among many others). The first incorrect claim is that –men behaves the same as English –s; both are additive plural markers with number feature. Arguing against this claim, this thesis points out that Chinese –men is quite different from English –s in that the former bears a [+group] feature whereas the latter [-group] feature. Chinese –men functions to locate a subjective grouping relative to a speaker whereas English –s does not. Moreover, this thesis provides the semantic distinctions among the additive plural, the associative, and the collective and show that –men in [pronoun-men] is an associative with [-homogenous, +group] feature while –men in [common noun-men] is a collective with [+homogenous, +group] feature. The second incorrect claim made by previous studies is that -men is incompatible with classifiers. I will provide corpus data as well as experimental evidence to show that –men is in fact only incompatible with non-group classifiers such as ge, and wei, but compatible with group classifiers such as qun, ban, ti, and zu. My non-unified feature-valuing approach can explain the distributional contrast between group and non-group classifiers and can also provide further evidence for their difference in syntactic representations: the former with a left-branching structure whereas the latter with a right-branching structure (Zhang 2011). Adopting Zhang’s (2011) non-unified structure and incorporating Chomsky’s (2000, 2001b) feature valuing approach, this thesis argues that non-group classifiers (i.e., individuating classifiers) are incompatible with –men because they bare inherent individual status with [-group] feature which would intervene the Agree relation between –men in D and the noun in N. Besides, my feature valuing approach can explain the structures of [adjective + N –men], [xuduo+N –men], and [yixie+N –men], which previous studies fail to explain (Li 1999, 2003, Yang 2005, Huang et al. 2009). Extending the insights of Borer (2005) that semantic interpretations are determined by syntactic structures, this thesis argues that the semantic differences between [pronoun-men] and [common noun-men] results from their distinct feature valuing operations as well as different syntactic structure. The former has non-homogeneous interpretation because pronoun has strong inflectional feature and must be valued by the interpretable feature of –men in local domain, whereas the latter has homogeneous interpretation because the inflectional feature on common noun is weak and can be valued via non-local Agree. Key words: numerals, classifiers, plural morphology, associative, collective, additive plural, Chinese, spellout, feature-valuing approach, person feature, Agree |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
| Externí odkaz: |
|