Chinese Ellipsis Constructions:at The Syntax-Pragmatics Interface

As a pervasive phenomenon in human languages,ellipsis is often regarded as the manifestation of language users' observation of the Principle of Economy in verbal communication.Because of the mismatch of sound-meaning and the strong dependency of context,ellipsis construction has always been a hot issue and a challenge for formal linguistics.Within the framework of Dynamic Syntax,which defines both representations of content and context dynamically and structurally,this dissertation attempts to provide a formal characterization of several typical types of elliptical constructions,from an incremental left-to-right dynamic parsing perspective.Through dynamic parsing,it is found that the parsing process of ellipsis constructions is a process of pragmatic enrichment.Moreover,ellipsis constructions emerge as a result of the interaction between semantic,structural and pragmatic information,and can be adequately accounted for only by exploring the semantics-pragmatics interface.This dissertation consists of eight chapters:Chapter one is a brief introduction to some foregoing issues about the research,such as the studying background,research object,research values,theoretical framework,research methodologies,the structure of this dissertation and so on.Chapter two first introduces the identity condition and parsing approaches of ellipsis constructions from a macro-perspective,then reviews the previous studying of several typical types of ellipsis constructions in Chinese,namely,subject ellipsis constructions,null object constructions,vP ellipsis construction,gapping constructions and fragments.Especially,we point out the advantages and disadvantages of the studying under generative grammar,which will lay a foundation for the dynamic parsing in the following chapters.Chapter three introduces the theoretical framework we employ in this dissertation:Dynamic Syntax.We first present the basic theoretical model and instruments of DS,including the vocabulary of tree growth decorations and three types of actions,namely,computational rules,lexical actions and pragmatic actions,all of which are expressed in the same terms of tree growth and hence freely allowed interaction between them in the parsing process.Then we introduce the main characteristics of DS,such as the parallel deduction of syntax and semantics,dynamic incrementality,and context-dependency.Furthermore,we construct the dynamic model suitable for Modern Chinese,consisting of Chinese lexical actions,pragmatics actions and so on.Moreover,based on Chinese language data,we extend the content of context which is defined dynamically and structurally in DS,which pave the way for the following dynamic parsing of Chinese ellipsis constructions.Chapter four to seven present the dynamic parsing of Chinese ellipsis constructions and their relevant issues based on the model we build above.Chapter four discusses argument ellipsis constructions,Chapter five deals with vP ellipsis constructions,Chapter six targets gapping constructions and Chapter seven extends the discussion to fragments between dialogue.Chapter eight provides a summary of this dissertation.