Sluicing In Chinese

This dissertation discusses the syntactic properties of elliptical constructions in Mandarin Chinese, with Sluicing as the focus.It first reviews the literature on Sluicing in Chinese and some other wh-in-situ languages. Studies on Sluicing are carried out mostly within the framework of PF deletion theory and turn out to be inadequate in one way or another.The dissertation then looks into the syntactic properties of Sluicing in Chinese, among them, the selectional requirements of verbs that allow Sluicing constructions, the optional appearance of "Shi" and island effects. It is found that the verbs in Sluicing sentences select CP other than DP as its complement. This proves that Sluicing in Chinese is a full CP, and its sentential type is a full interrogative clause. It is also found that Sluicing in Chinese is not affected by sentential subject island, appositive island, coordinate structure constraint, prepositional stranding constraint, and adjunct CP island, but affected by complex-NP island and wh-island. The relationship between wh-phrase in Chinese Sluicing and its correlate observes the Subjacency Principle. The above findings support our conclusion that Chinese Sluicing is not derived from a null subject/ pro and a predicate, since pro does not necessarily observe Subjacency Principle.It is argued that Sluicing in Chinese can be accounted for by LF copy approach mainly for the following reasons: (a) PF deletion approach which involves wh-movement is hard to account for the derivation of sluicing in Chinese, as Chinese is a wh-in-situ language and (b) According to LF copy approach, the existence of Sluicing follows simply from the ability to license s-structures containing an empty IP. Therefore, the wh-phrase in Sluicing does not have to move on the level of overt syntax. (c) Handling elliptical constructions in LF component will simplify the operations in the overt syntax and make the deletion operation in PF component unnecessary.To reconstruct the LF for the empty IP in Sluicing, it employs IP recycling operation proposed by Chung, Ladusaw& McCloskey (1995). Based on their IP recycling theory, this dissertation devides the sluicing in Chinese into two subtypes, in one of which the wh-phrase is an adjunct or an implicit argument corresponding to nothing in the surrounding linguistic structure; in the other type, the wh-phrase corresponds to an overt adjunct or argument. To account for these two subtypes of sluicing. the operations of sprouting and merger on LF are employed.The dissertation finally claims that the two subtypes of sluicing in Chinese are...