Ellipsis Phenomena Of Copula Verbs In Mandarin Chinese

We often encounter sentences such as‘今天星期三’,‘他上海人’in our daily lives.Chinese grammarian referred to these sentences as‘nominal predicate sentence(名词谓语句)’or‘substantive predicate sentence(体词谓语句)’.The‘nominal predicate sentence’,like its designation,means that its noun plays a role of predicate,and these nouns includes compound noun,some pronouns,numeral,quantifier and noun phrase,the general form of sentence is‘NP1+NP2’.Although there are various definitions and classifications of many scholars,the common opinion is that in the nominal predicate sentence,the form of“是”sentence,“NP1+是+NP2”can be made by inserting the“是”before predicative noun.The first issue of this thesis came from here and try to answer these fundamental questions;are these two structures are same or different structure?and what is the character and function of“是”in this structure?Scholars’opinions on this issue are largely divided into two groups.One is to view these two structures as different structures,the other one is to consider the nominal predicate sentence as an omitted sentence which“是”is omitted.This paper is assuming the“NP1+NP2”structutre as an omitted sentence and explains its reasoning.To support main argument of this paper, this paper used following five theories among Chomsky Generative Grammar theory as theoretical basis. First, the thesis supports the definition about sentence of Chomsky, argues that all sentences are composed of subject and predicate, and noun phrase(NP) are not be considered to serve as predicate. Second, this thesis takes the Universal Grammar of Chomsky which assumes that human language follows universal principle. Third, this thesis takes the recursiveness of language theory which assumes that the expansion of grammar ingredients does not affect sentence structure. Forth, this thesis takes the Economy Principle of Minimalism which assumes that inference of language puts priority to the smallest and simplest one. As stated above, this thesis takes the Iconicity Principles theory as a theoretical basis of this particular research.Ellipsis is one of the language usage phenomena. The phenomenon which explains the asymmetry between sound and meaning since the omitted components can be inferred from back and forth sentences and environment of articulation. Through the research, this thesis found that ellipsis is the phenomenon of receiving the strict environmental constraint. Ellipsis requires the conditions below. First, it must have an antecedent. Second, restoration should be feasible(recoverability). Third, there is no accent. Forth, there is syntactic and semantic environmental constraint. This thesis takes the principles above as the theoretical basis.This paper mainly explains the issues below. First, introduce the ellipsis theories and studies of generative grammar linguists. Based on this, it proves the verb ellipsis phenomena of Mandarin Chinese. Second, this thesis found that the copula “Be” in English and “是” in Mandarin Chinese are very similar, further analyzes the relations between two based on the theories and studies about copula “be” and copula sentence of syntax scholars. Based on this, this thesis seek to find the syntactic and semantic characters of “是” and “是 copula sentence” and relations between that and verb ellipsis. As a result, this thesis found that the reference of noun phrase has different levels of grades, and this differentiation closely related to its predicate. Thus this thesis takes predicative DP perspective and finds the relations between reference and predicate of Chinese noun phrase, analyzes the relations between that and verb ellipsis. Forth, this paper re-analyzes the syntactic and semantic character of Chinese existential sentence from the angle of construction grammar, and finds the syntactic and semantic character and its relation with the verb ellipsis. Fifth, this thesis analyzes the predicative function of numeral quantifier, finds its relations with verb ellipsis. Finally, this thesis inductively derives constraint conditions that have significant effects on Chinese verb ellipsis.