scholarly journals Feature Inheritance and Object Raising in Epistemic Modal Constructions in Mandarin Chinese

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Chao-Ting Chou
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Structural Requirement ◽  
Epistemic Modal ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Apparent Violation ◽  
Feature Inheritance ◽  
Minimal Link Condition ◽  
Phase Impenetrability Condition ◽  
Activity Condition

We present evidence to argue that the object raising in epistemic modal constructions in Chinese is A-movement. The consequence of this claim is the apparent violation of Minimal Link Condition. Following Chomsky’s (2007 & 2008) feature inheritance hypothesis, we argue that the T of the TP complement of epistemic verbs does not contain any unvalued phi-features due to the absence of the CP-layer, and contains only the inherent EPP structural requirement, which, in itself, does not impose minimality restriction on the search of the goal. The implication of this analysis is three-fold: (i) the checking-based approach to A-movement does not hold in Chinese, (ii) Chinese employs the delayed version of Phase Impenetrability Condition, and (iii) activity condition in Chinese is subject to factor(s) other than Case.

On embedded contrastive focus in Mandarin Chinese

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-118
Author(s):  
Chih-hsiang Shu
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Site Analysis ◽  
Association With Focus ◽  
Empirical Coverage ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Multiple Agree ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Feature Inheritance

Abstract This article investigates the previously undocumented focus-sensitiveness of certain scope-bearing expressions in Mandarin, and argues that the syntactic effects of this property should be accommodated by a structure that involves multiple dependencies and inherited dependencies. At the empirical side, it is shown that in Mandarin, certain quantificational expressions as well as typical focusing adverbs have to occur at positions where they (i) c‑command and (ii) be as close as possible to the contrastive foci that they associate with. The similarity to the typical association-with-focus configurations is captured under a unified Agree analysis that incorporated previous variable-adjunction-site analysis for focusing particles in German, while the additional dependencies in these structures are accounted for by multiple Agree and feature inheritance. This analysis is compared with some alternative approaches, which do not have equal empirical coverage or require more complex theoretical assumptions.

Bidirectionality between modal and conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese

Diachronica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yueh Hsin Kuo
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Indirect Speech Acts ◽  
Apparent Violation

Abstract This paper proposes that modal constructions can develop into conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese and vice versa. Therefore, bidirectionality exists between these kinds of constructions diachronically. While bidirectionality is an apparent violation of unidirectionality, both directions of change are shown to be regular cases of procedural constructionalization, enabled by the fact that modal and conditional constructions can perform identical indirect speech acts (i.e., they are performatively equivalent) and instances of one may be morphosyntactically categorized as the other in Chinese (i.e., they are morphosyntactically vague). A crosslinguistically generalizable prediction is then proposed: bidirectionality is possible if instances of two constructions are performatively equivalent and morphosyntactically vague with respect to each other in certain contexts.

Sentence-final aspect particles as finite markers in Mandarin Chinese

Linguistics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 967-1023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niina Ning Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Epistemic Modal ◽  
Case Marker ◽  
Embedded Clauses ◽  
Nonfinite Clauses

Abstract In Mandarin Chinese, sentence-final aspect particles ne, le, and laizhe may occur in some types of embedded clauses, but not in other types, such as the complement of a control verb, a raising verb, lai ‘come’ and qu ‘go’, a non-epistemic modal, and the prepositional complementizer dui ‘to’. These latter types of clauses systematically show properties of nonfinite clauses in other languages. They are intrinsically embedded, ban pro-drop, their clause boundaries may be invisible for binding, and they disallow a speaker-oriented adverb and an epistemic modal. The restrictions on the distribution of the particles indicate that they are used in finite clauses only, although the language has no tense or case marker. The paper argues that finite clauses show speaker-oriented properties whereas nonfinite ones do not; instead, nonfinite clauses exhibit higher-clause-oriented properties. Identifying the role of speaker in the finiteness distinction reveals the capacity of finite clauses, whether or not the capacity is marked overtly.

scholarly journals Non-canonical word order and subject-object asymmetry in Korean case ellipsis

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanjung Lee ◽  
Nayoun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Probabilistic Constraints ◽  
Structural Requirement ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Syntactic Information ◽  
Acceptability Rating ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Case Ellipsis

The dispreference for subject case ellipsis in OSV sentences has been analyzed as resulting from a violation of a structural requirement on the position of bare subject NPs (Ahn and Cho 2006a, 2006b, 2007). In this study, we present evidence from an acceptability rating experiment demonstrating that OSV sentences containing a case-ellipsed subject exhibit acceptability patterns different from ungrammatical sentences violating a core syntactic principle on case assignment and that these sentences are judged acceptable when the subject refers to expected, predictable information in context. This evidence supports the conclusion that the dispreference for subject case ellipsis in OSV sentences is due to violations of probabilistic constraints that favor case marking for rare types of subjects and such violations can be remedied by non-syntactic information.

scholarly journals Listeners rapidly use unexpected information to update their predictions: Evidence from eye-movements.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wing Yee Chow ◽  
Di Chen
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Classifier System ◽  
The Rich

Comprehenders can incorporate rich contextual information to predict upcoming input on the fly and they can detect cues that conflict with their predictions very quickly. However, to date little is known about whether and how listeners use unexpected information to revise their existing predictions. Here we took advantage of the rich classifier system in Mandarin Chinese to examine whether and how comprehenders update their noun prediction upon encountering an unexpected classifier. We present evidence from a visual world eye-tracking experiment which suggests that listeners can quickly use prediction-mismatching classifiers to revise their predictions.

A Quick Visual Mind Can be a Slow Auditory Mind

2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Martens ◽  
Addie Johnson ◽  
Martje Bolle ◽  
Jelmer Borst
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Blink ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Visual Modality ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Conscious Level ◽  
Visual Targets ◽  
Concurrent Information

The human mind is severely limited in processing concurrent information at a conscious level of awareness. These temporal restrictions are clearly reflected in the attentional blink (AB), a deficit in reporting the second of two targets when it occurs 200–500 ms after the first. However, we recently reported that some individuals do not show a visual AB, and presented psychophysiological evidence that target processing differs between “blinkers” and “nonblinkers”. Here, we present evidence that visual nonblinkers do show an auditory AB, which suggests that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB is likely to be modality-specific. In Experiment 3, we show that when the difficulty in identifying visual targets is increased, nonblinkers continue to show little or no visual AB, suggesting that the presence of an AB in the auditory but not in the visual modality is not due to a difference in task difficulty.

Phonological Syllables Control Segmental Encoding in Mandarin Chinese

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Jenn-Yeu ◽  
Padraig G. O'seaghdha ◽  
Kuan-Hung Liu
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese
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