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Relative Clauses in Mandarin Chinese Relative Clauses in Mandarin Chinese Huiying Wen Queen Mary, University of London July 2020 Abstract This thesis is an investigation of the nature and theoretical analyses of the syntax of relative constructions in Mandarin Chinese, with a focus on adjunct relative con- structions and \gapless" relative constructions. In contrast to the traditional views, I propose that deriving these relative constructions requires a head raising strategy and show that this can give a better explanation of their properties and their interaction with comparatives deletion. I argue against the idea that adjunct relative constructions involve null opera- tor movement and defend a novel head raising approach using data from PP-in-situ adjunct relatives. With this in hand, I examine the syntactic analysis of gapless relatives, arguing that gapless relatives are true relatives as opposed to noun com- plements, and show that gapless relatives can be classified into two types: adjunct gapless relatives and resultative gapless relatives, depending on the semantic status of their head nouns. The former involves a manner-kind head noun which is the complement of a PP adjunct. The latter involves a result-kind head noun which is the complement of a null VP. Further, I extend this alternative approach to analyse comparative deletion in relative constructions. Queen Mary's OPAL #46 Occasional Papers Advancing Linguistics 1 Acknowledgements First, I would like to say a big thank you to my supervisor, Prof. David Adger. His immense knowledge and great passion for linguistics have inspired and encouraged me in all the time of syntactic research I spend at QMUL. Without the enormous support and encouragement that I grained from David, I would not have been possible to start and finish my PhD study and this thesis. He has the ability to mentor you to look at what you considered from different angles. I cannot imagine a supervisor better than David. I would like to thank my second supervisor Dr. Hazel Pearson for her support and feedbacks on my study, and for her exciting semantics courses. Also, I am grateful to Dr. Coppe van Urk for the inspiring discussions that I had with him. Additionally, I would also like to thank Prof. Daniel Harbour, Dr. Alex Drummond, Dr. David Hall, Dr. Sam Steddy and the rest of the staff of our department for the support and training that they have given me. Many thanks to Yan Zhang, Chen Wang, Margaret Wang, Pietro Baggio and other LingLab members for their valuable comments and help on my study, and many discussions they have with me. Apart from QMUL, I am also thankful to my friends Boya Zhang and Yao Zheng for their help on data collection and language judgements. Additionally, I would like to thank ACTL 2016 autumn school, and ACTL 2017 and 2018 summer school for the great linguistics classes that they have offered. Finally, a big thank goes to my family. Thank you all for being supportive and encouraging when I am away from home. 2 Contents Acknowledgements 2 1 Introduction 7 2 Overview of Relative Construction 10 2.1 Introduction . 10 2.2 Relative Constructions in General . 11 2.2.1 Restrictive and Non-restrictive RCs . 12 2.2.2 Pied Piping . 13 2.2.3 Reconstruction . 15 2.3 Cross-linguistic Typology of RCs . 17 2.3.1 Postnominal relatives vs Prenominal relatives . 17 2.3.2 Externally vs Internally headed relatives . 18 2.3.3 Gap vs Resumptive pronoun . 19 2.3.4 Relative pronoun vs Relative complementizer . 21 2.3.5 Recursion vs Iteration . 21 2.3.6 The position of RC in NP/DP . 23 2.4 Analyses of Relative Clauses . 24 2.4.1 Chomsky's (1977) Standard Analysis . 25 2.4.2 The Head Raising Analysis . 26 2.4.2.1 Evidence for the HRA . 29 2.4.2.2 Borsley's (1997) objections to Kayne's (1994) HRA . 32 2.4.2.3 Bianchi's (2000) response to Borsley (1997) . 36 2.4.3 The Matching Analysis . 39 2.4.4 The Mixed Analysis . 44 2.5 Chapter Summary . 47 3 The Relative Construction in Mandarin Chinese 49 3.1 Introduction . 49 3.2 The Structure of the Relative Construction in MC . 50 3.3 The Properties of Mandarin Relative Construction . 51 3 3.3.1 No relative pronoun . 51 3.3.2 Presence of resumptive pronoun . 52 3.3.3 The position of RC inside a DP . 54 3.3.4 Recursive and iterative structures in Mandarin RCs . 58 3.3.5 The order of relative clause in MC . 59 3.4 Analyses of Mandarin Relative Clauses . 60 3.4.1 Ning's (1993) Operator Movement Analysis . 60 3.4.2 Simpson's (2002) Head Raising Analysis . 63 3.4.3 Xu's (2009) Analysis to Derive Mandarin RCs . 68 3.4.4 Aoun and Li's (2003) Analysis . 73 3.5 Chapter Summary . 78 4 Adjunct Relative Construction 80 4.1 Introduction . 80 4.2 The Syntax of PPs in Mandarin Chinese . 80 4.2.1 Prepositions, Postpositions and Circumpositional constructions 83 4.2.1.1 Are PostpPs true PPs or NPs? . 84 4.2.1.2 Preverbal PPs vs Postverbal PPs . 85 4.2.1.3 Adjuncts vs Complements . 87 4.2.2 Adposition Omission . 90 4.3 Analyses of Adjunct RCs in Mandarin Chinese . 94 4.3.1 Previous Analyses of Adjunct RCs in Mandarin Chinese . 95 4.3.1.1 Ning's (1993) Operator Movement Analysis . 96 4.3.1.2 Aoun and Li (2003) . 102 4.3.2 An Alternative Proposal for Adjunct Relativizations . 106 4.3.2.1 The phenomenon . 106 4.3.2.2 The Analyses . 110 4.3.2.2.1 Single P Adjunct Relativization . 110 4.3.2.2.2 Dual Ps Adjunct Relativization . 112 4.3.2.3 Conclusion and Consequence . 115 4.4 Chapter Summary . 117 5 Gapless Relative Constructions 118 5.1 Introduction . 118 5.2 What Makes Gapless Relatives Similar to/Different from Normal Rel- atives . 119 5.3 Analyses of Gapless Relative Clauses . 123 5.3.1 Ning's (1993) VP Adjunct Analysis . 123 5.3.2 Aoun and Li's (2003) Proposal: Gapless Relatives are Noun Complement Clauses . 131 4 5.3.2.1 Evidence against Aoun and Li's Complementation Pro- posal . 133 5.3.2.1.1 Coordination Constructions . 133 5.3.2.1.2 Comparative Constructions . 134 5.3.2.1.3 Long Distance Dependency . 136 5.3.2.1.4 Summary . 139 5.3.3 Cheng and Sybesma's (2005) proposal . 139 5.3.4 Zhang's (2015) proposal: Gapless Relative Clauses as Reduced Relative Clauses . 142 5.3.4.1 Two Features of Gapless Relative Clauses . 143 5.3.4.2 The Proposal . 145 5.3.5 Summary . 148 5.4 An Alternative View of Gapless Relative Clauses . 149 5.4.1 Gapless Relatives as Adjunct Relatives . 150 5.4.1.1 Similar Behaviour of Gapless Relatives and Adjunct Relatives . 150 5.4.1.2 How to Analyse Gapless Relatives as Adjunct Relatives154 5.4.2 Gapless Relatives as Resultative Relative Clauses . 159 5.4.2.1 Serial Verb Constructions in Mandarin Chinese . 160 5.4.2.2 Gapless Relatives with Reduced Form of SVCs . 163 5.5 Chapter Summary . 169 6 Relative Construction in Comparative 170 6.1 Introduction . 170 6.2 Theories of comparatives . 171 6.2.1 Comparatives in English . 171 6.2.2 Analyses of English Comparatives: Clausal vs Phrasal . 172 6.2.2.1 Clausal Analyses: 2-place -er .............. 172 6.2.2.2 Phrasal Analysis . 174 6.3 Mandarin Chinese BI-comparatives . 177 6.3.1 Previous Analyses of Mandarin BI-comparatives . 180 6.3.1.1 Clausal Analyses: Obligatory Deletion . 180 6.3.1.2 Phrasal Analyses . 182 6.3.1.3 Erlewine's (2018) New Analysis of BI-comparatives . 188 6.3.2 Summary . 194 6.4 Complex Noun Phrases in Bi-Comparatives . 195 6.4.1 Comparative Deletion of Normal RCs . 198 6.4.1.1 Deletion of The Head NPs . 199 6.4.1.2 Deletion of The Body of RCs . 201 6.4.1.3 Deletion of VPs and Head NPs . 205 6.4.2 Comparative Deletion of Noun Complement Clauses . 210 5 6.4.2.1 Theoretical Backgrounds of NCCs . 210 6.4.2.2 The Analysis of NCCs in BI-comparatives . 211 6.4.3 Comparative Deletion of Gapless Relative Clauses . 212 6.4.3.1 Theoretical Backgrounds of Gapless RCs . 212 6.4.3.2 The Analysis of Gapless RCs in BI-comparatives . 214 6.4.4 Summary . 216 6.5 Chapter Summary . 216 7 Conclusion 218 6 Chapter 1 Introduction In this thesis, I will examine the properties of a kind of clause in Mandarin Chinese which looks like a relative clause, but apparently lacks any kind of dependent variable. This kind of clause is called a gapless relative. (1) a. Zh`e sh`ı [ Lisa t´ang g¯angq´ın de z¯ısh`ı ]. this is Lisa play piano de posture `This is the posture that Lisa had when playing piano.' b. Zh`e sh`ı [ John t´ang g¯anq´ın de xi`achˇang ]. this is John play piano de consequence `This is the consequence of John's playing the piano.' The noun phrases above contain clausal modifiers and the particle de, both of which make the gapless relatives look like a true relative. However, there appears to be no gap associated with the head noun within the clausal modifier. In Chapter 5, I will show that this construction in fact involves a gap.
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