On Raising Of The Theme Object:a Minimalist Perspective

This dissertation presents a contrastive study of constructions containing a raised Theme object between modern English and mandarin Chinese from the minimalist perspective. These constructions include passive, ergative and middle constructions that are derived from their relevant transitive constructions and convey the passive meaning.In Generative Grammar, minimalism advocates that an essential theory of language and language study be justified by the principles of explanatoriness, simplicity, naturalness, elegance and learnability. As an instance of displacement, the Theme object raising in this dissertation is referred to a seeming imperfection of language where a NP with a Theme θ-role ends up in the sentence-initial position, while its canonical or logical position is postverbal. To account for this superficial imperfection of language, displacement is regarded as an optimal solution to the disparity between language and language use given SMT:language possesses uninterpretable features as mechanisms to trigger syntactic operations and delete these features at the interfaces to satisfy requirements imposed by the performance systems. Uninterpretable features influence language from two aspects:to trigger syntactic operations to satisfy the interface conditions, and to produce cross-linguistic variants resulted from different selections of these features of CFCs. Uninterpretable features include structural Case-, EPP-, V-and ф-features:ф-features of CFCs play the decisive role in computation; Case feature is unique to the NP goal undifferentiatedly reflecting agreement of ф-features between the probe and goal and deleted by the ф-complete probe via Agree; EPP feature is unique to CFCs, mainly providing an 'escape hatch' for further movement and producing an effect on output;ф-features of phase heads are inherited by non-phase heads for economy considerations and the verbal affixal properties of the phase heads. Uninterpretable features of the phase heads trigger displacement directly in order to satisfy the interface conditions imposed by language use. In passive derivation, computations start with passivization, the base-generated transitive verb merges with the passive morpheme contained in Tr, which absorbs the Agent θ-role and produces v with a negative transitivity feature. As follows, either the Theme object is preposed to the grammatical subject position to value uninterpretable features of CFCs, or it keeps in-situ and values number feature on vdef and T via Agree, person feature on T is valued by an expletive via Merge or Move in English while it is valued by the preposed dative or possessor object in mandarin Chinese via Move. By contrast, English passives are marked by be and composed of short, long and object in-situ passives. Mandarin passives, however, are marked by the copula bei, which is a graphemic variant of bei heading a PP adjunct and introducing the Agent and deleted via haplology; they are more complicated in structure and divided into five subtypes, characterizing in indirect and object-retained passives.Ergative formation starts with decausativization where the unaccusative morpheme contained in v suppresses [+Tr] and [+ext arg] features of v when the basic causative verb merges with Tr to be inflected first, producing a vdef and thus detransitivizing the verb. Since the ergative construction has a strong eventive feature, the Theme object has to prepose to the grammatical subject position to value the strong EPP and (ф-features on T. Semantically, the causative-ergative alteration is constrained by the semantic features of the causative verbs in three aspects:(ⅰ) they have the [+cause] feature,(ⅱ) they are dynamic verbs of change-of-state,(ⅲ) an external causer is represented syntactically by a PP-adjunct or pragmatically as an implicit Argument. Although ergative constructions in both English and mandarin Chinese are derived in a similar syntactic manner, mandarin ergative constructions are more complex in structure, and the resultative diagnosis is not applicable in mandarin since all verbs, including unergative ones, can be used in resultative constructions. Syntactically, besides the causative-ergative alteration, mandarin ergative constructions are determined by compositions of LAs as well:mandarin ergative constructions are realized as three varied sentential patterns, with the retained object construction being Chinese-specific. Middle formation involves two syntactic operations. Stativization detransitivizes an underlying transitive verb by suppressing its Agent θ-role when the transitive verb merges with the middle morpheme contained in Tr, and produces an intransitive v. Given the PRO theorem, any other Agent role rather than PRO may be realized syntactically as a demoted argument in a PP-adjunct although it is suppressed and cannot be realized overtly in its logical position. Topicalization preposes the Theme object to the sentence-initial position as topic for discourse-related purposes, and valuing Structural Case feature is not obligatory since number feature of a defective v may be valued by the Theme object via Agree while the theme object still keeps in situ. Different from passive and ergative constructions, Tense and aspect features on T in middle constructions are weak due to the failure of INFL-V coindexation, together with the generic, modal and noneventive properties of the middle construction; T can neither act as a derived probe of C nor establish an agreement relation with the Theme object. Therefore, no structural Case feature is said about the Theme object. It must be the EPP-feature of v, T that activates the Theme object to move to Specs of related CFCs to implement topicalization required by the interface conditions. In this process, EPP-feature of CFCs plays the decisive role, which guarantees lower CFCs to use their Specs to provide the'escape hatch'for further movement of NPs to value uninterpretable features of the higher CFCs. v and T have the EPP feature to activate the Theme object to move from its logical position until to the [Spec, TopP] position to become the topic and value [+topic] and ф-features of Top. In topicalization, rather than T, C selects Top that probes. Semantically, to be qualified as middle verbs, the transitive variants are accomplishment verbs and have a complex event structure. Pragmatically, genericity is represented in the grammatical subject position as a discourse-oriented topic, since given SMT, displacement is implemented to demonstrate that language has its own mechanisms to provide instructions that are available to the performance systems related to language use. The prototypical middle construction in mandarin Chinese is 'NP+V-qilai+AP' pattern where NP is the preposed Theme argument acting as topic, AP expresses inherent properties of the Theme argument generally,-qilai is an inflectional morpheme contained in T expressing tense and aspect features given the generic, modal and noneventive properties of the mandarin middle construction.