A Dynamic Approach To The Presence And Absence Of Pronouns In Mandarin Chinese

Whether a pronoun must occur in a certain structure is a difficult issue that concerns syntax, semantics and pragmatics. A structure like a topicalization construction or a relative clause involves the displacement of a constituent. The gap left by the displacement may or may not be filled by a pronoun. In other words, the presence or absence of a pronoun is either obligatory or optional. The present dissertation attempts to develop a dynamic parsing model for the relevant Chinese constructions within the framework of Dynamic Syntax.The dissertation is composed of seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the subject matters and the methodology of the present study, and the symbols and terms used in this dissertation. The chapter begins with linguistic data concerning the presence and absence of pronouns in the comment part of topicalization structures. It then delimits the subject matters of the study, concentrating on the issues of syntactic well-formedness and semantic interpretation. It also discusses the methods adopted in the study and the principles guiding the choice of linguistic data and the judgment of well-formedness of a sentence. It ends up with an illustration of the symbols and terms used in this dissertation.Chapter two reviews literature on pronouns and empty pronouns. Different approaches to the treatment of pronouns and empty pronouns are evaluated. The dissertation argues that any attempt to explain the behavior of pronouns and empty pronouns from a single perspective of syntax, semantics or pragmatics can not tell the whole story about them, for the solution of pronouns and empty pronouns depends on the combination of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The Binding Principles as are proposed in the GB theory, which try to explain pronouns and empty pronouns by solely resorting to syntax, have too many ad hoc stipulations and thus can't be rated as the best solution. A pronoun is interpreted as an ambiguous item in semantics, which may refer to an individual in the actual world, function as a bound variable or play the role of a definite noun phrase. More specifically, previous studies on Chinese pronouns and empty pronouns are introduced and it is pointed out that the existing researches have not given a systematic and unified explanation for Chinese pronouns and empty pronouns.Chapter three outlines dynamic syntax(DS), the theoretical framework of the dissertation, including, among others, the basic notions, the formal model for the parsing of the language, the mechanism for handling pronouns and empty pronouns, and an evaluation of the strengths of this approach.Chapter Four, which is the core of the dissertation, is devoted to the construction of the dynamic parsing model for Mandarin Chinese. Lexical actions, computational rules and pragmatic actions appropriate for the parsing of Chinese sentences are specified. The constraints on the Chinese rules of adjunction, merge and link are proposed and tested. The lexical actions of one-place, two-place and three-place verbs, as well as nouns are characterized and tested. Unlike the others, we treat prepositions, such as "BA", "BEI" and "GEI", as markers for the position of a noun phrase in the semantic tree being constructed. Such a treatment satisfactorily accounts for thesyntactic constraints on noun phrases introduced by these prepositions and provides a proof for the validity of the specifications of the actions performed by verbs.Chapter five is concerned with an application and a test of the dynamic parsing model constructed in chapter four. On the basis of the model, the presence or absence of resumptive pronouns in constructions with a left dislocated argument is explained, and the grammaticality or ungrammaticality arising from the presence or absence of pronouns now finds a rigorous proof. The process of proving depends to a large extent on such rules as link, adjunction and merge, as well as the constraints imposed on them. In addition, lexical actions of one-place, two-place and three-place verbs also contribute to the presence and a...