A Syntactic Study Of Chinese A-not-A Questions

Chinese A-not-A questions are special forms of interrogative sentences.Scholars have not reached a consensus on the study of its syntactic properties and derivation.This thesis starts with syntactic properties to solve some controversial issues,such as the attribution of A-not-A questions.And then based on the idea of post-syntactic movement and Pred P analysis,it conducts a further study on the syntactic derivation of Chinese A-not-A questions.This thesis describes many different categories that can become A-not-A forms and explains syntactic constraints of Chinese A-not-A questions.Almost all verbs can become A-not-A questions;non-quantitative adjectives can form A-not-A questions,but quantitative adjectives cannot;only a few prepositions can form A-not-A questions,and they can be considered as light verbs;aspect markers zai,you and guo can become A-not-A questions,while aspect markers zhe,le₁ and le₂ cannot;the real shi-bu-shi questions are not A-not-A questions.The author divides Chinese adjuncts into Pr’-adjuncts,I’-adjuncts and C’-adjuncts.Most common adjuncts,such as reason and manner adjuncts,belong to Pr’-adjuncts that cannot occur in A-not-A questions.I’-adjuncts cannot appear in A-not-A questions.C’-adjuncts can be compatible with A-not-A questions,which include domain,evaluation,time and place adjuncts.The author also draws a conclusion that Chinese A-not-A questions exclude the existence of negative categories.The negative element,as a head of Neg P,prevents A-not-A operator from lowering.This thesis also explores how to derive Chinese A-not-A questions.A unified syntactic derivation process is proposed:the A-not-A operator,its base generated in the head of CP,lowers to the head of the maximal projection with a phonetic form through successive cyclic head-lowering,triggering the operation of phonetic reduplication and yielding A-not-AB forms by reverse reduplication or AB-not-A forms by sequential reduplication in PF.It is expected that this thesis can deepen readers’understanding of this special language phenomenon,better explore the laws of language,enrich relevant studies on Chinese A-not-A questions and provide references for further research.