A Syntactic Research Of “Zenme” And “Zenmeyang” In DP Structures

“Zenme” and “zenmeyang” are two common interrogative pronouns in modern Chinese,but there are some different viewpoints of their categories.They are taken as predicative pronouns,adverbial pronouns,nounal pronouns and so on.With the DP theory and the method of relativized analysis in the system of generative grammar,we have not only discussed the categories and projections of “zenme” and“zenmeyang”,but also the deep structures when they are in the DP structures which are headed by “de”.In this research,after comparing and analyzing “zenme” and “zenmeyang”with the demonstrative pronouns of “zhe,na” in plenty of language materials at first,we have found that “zenme” and “zenmeyang” are not similar with the personal pronouns,but they have the paralleled distributions with the demonstrative pronouns of “zhe,na” in syntax and can not occur together with “zhe,na”,so according to the analysis of the pronouns in the generative grammar,we take“zenme” and “zenmeyang” as the determiners.When “zenme” and “zenmeyang”project as the the determiners,they can directly expand the NumP and ClP,but unlikely expand the bare NP.In general we don't think they can expand the bare NP,but there exists this construction in the language materials.The DP structures headed by “zenme” and “zenmeyang” can freely appear in the interrogative sentences,but if appear in the non-interrogative sentences,they must be licensed.“Zenme” and “zenmeyang” are often taken as predicative pronouns traditionally because they are always the predicates,complements and adverbials in the sentences and they have the strong [+V] characteristics when they are the subjects and objects and also characterize the predicate when they make up with other components,so we take them as the predicative determiners at last.The DP structures headed by “de” which contains “zenme” and “zenmeyang”are made by the way of relativilization.“Zenme” and “zenmeyang” can appear inthe position of the head words of predicates or the position of complements,but as the former one need to be licensed by the modal words,so asymmetries are existed when they are relativized in these two positions.When they are the adverbials which are lower than TP,expressing the manner,the relative clause which they are in can be relativized;when they are the adverbials which are higher than TP,expressing the reason,they can not be relativized.