A Phase-based Account Of The Subject-object Asymmetry Of Np Extraction From Relative Clauses In Mandarin Chinese

Although the past 2 decades have seen quantities of research concerned with subject-object asymmetry,scholars at home and abroad didn't reach an agreement on how to explain this asymmetry exhibited in Mandarin syntactic component extractions.In Chinese,there exist cases where the Subjacency Condition is violated,which is different from English.When a complex NP is located at the subject position,it is usually permissible to extract an NP and relativize it.However,when a complex NP is located at the object position,a deep extraction will induce the derived sentence ungrammatical.On the basis of a review of previous studies,the thesis finds that most of them have been conducted by adopting either movement analysis or non-movement analysis.Yet,neither of the two analyses can cover all data,for the former GB framework is insufficient to give a satisfactory explanation.In consequence,the thesis adopts Chomsky's most recent Minimalist Program to deal with this phenomenon.Three main research questions of this thesis are: i.Does subject-object asymmetry really exist in Mandarin Chinese? If yes,what evidence can we find? ii.How to give a unified account for this asymmetry exhibited in NP extractions from relative clauses under the guidance of Chomsky's Phase Theory? iii.Except for syntactic factors,are there any other factors that also play a role in this operation?The existence of subject-object asymmetry in Chinese can be proved by evidence from the lexical,referential and syntactic aspects.In Chinese,this asymmetry is exhibited in the formation of compound and detachable words and the violations of Strong Crossover Effect,Left Branch Constraint and Complex NP Constraint.After confirming the existence,the author makes a combination of Chomsky's Phase Theory and insights from Bo?kovi?'s,the combination being the theoretical foundation of this thesis.Through the research about our brain,the thesis finds that due to the constraint of processing capacity,only easily-activated elements can enter syntactic operations and these elements are usually located at the subject or focus position in Chinese.As a result,the thesis claims that while its maximal projection DP doesn't form a phase when a complex NP is located at the subject position,it is actually a phase when the extraction happens from the object position.Hence,the later extraction violates either the Phase Impenetrability Constraint or the Antilocality Condition.Along with processing factors,semantic factors also play a part.The thesis supposes that when there is no theta-marking relation between an extracted NP and the higher NP is crosses,the higher NP functions as a phase.Therefore,cases where NP extractions from the subject position are banned are accounted for.In order to settle the dispute over NP extractions from relative clauses in Chinese,the thesis puts forward a tentative constraint and is of certain value.One major implication of this thesis is that the subject-object asymmetry exhibited in NP extractions in Chinese can be explained under the guidance of Phase Theory but we cannot neglect processing and semantic factors.