The Dynamic Syntax Of Topic Constructions In Chinese

First of all,the present thesis delimits three topic notions:syntactic topic(also known as topic1 or Hockett-topic),pragmatic topic(also known as topic2 or Prague-topic)and entity topic(also known as topic3 or Geluykens-topic).The first and the second belong to sentence-level topic,while the third belongs to discourse-level topic.Topic1/comment structure should be distinguished from topic2/focus structure,as far as information packaging is concerned.For instance,the initial NP of an English sentence is a topic1,but not necessarily a topic2 for it is likely to be a focus as well.From a discourse perspective,any entity that is encoded by a string can be seen as a topic3.Considering this,the thesis devises a set of criteria for locating the subject and topic of a Chinese sentence and with these criteria defines three types of Chinese syntactic topic constructions-left-peripheral syntactic topic construction(ST1),right-peripheral syntactic topic construction(ST2)and centrally-positioned syntactic topic construction(ST3).ST1 is the major type,comprising such subcategories as topicalization topic construction(TOP),left dislocation topic construction(LD),Chinese-style topic construction and argument-splitting topic construction.As it moves on,the thesis continues to prove that the so-called island-constraints as proposed in generative analyses(e.g.,J.Huang 1982/1998;Huang et al.2009)do not occur to Chinese TOP constructions,which means that they are not generated through wh-movement.At the same time,it is also demonstrated that no matter whether the comment of a Chinese TOP construction includes an island-shaped constituent or not,the gap there which is capable of holding an intact left-peripheral topic is more apt to be analyzed as a totally empty position that only obtains meaning from context.These arguments also lead to the following four conclusions.Firstly,the licensing and interpretation of STi involves the interaction of syntactic,semantic and pragmatic elements.Secondly,it is more feasible to divide a ST1 into two parts:left-peripheral topic1 and comment.Thirdly,the comment itself must be grammatical(or well-formed),while the left-peripheral topic's reference must be able to melt into the comment's meaning,which means that there must be an explicit or implicit antecedent-pronoun relationship between the left-peripheral topic and the comment.Fourthly,the complete interpretation of a STi consists of two steps.The first step is to interpret the declarative relation between the left-peripheral topic and the comment.The second step is to give the comment a full interpretation that conforms to context.In light of this,the thesis intends to probe the way in which the peripheral topic1 contributes to a complete comprehension of ST1 within the framework of Dynamic Syntax(DS),so as to uncover the relationship between the peripheral syntactic topic and the whole topic construction's syntactic process.Upon a creative application of DS toolkit,this thesis establishes a model of dynamic parsing for Chinese grammar.By means of this newly-formulated model as well as the LINK rule of DS,the thesis develops a consistent formal characterization of the licensing conditions and interpretation process of ST1.For the various types of ST1,the independent grammaticality of comment is represented by the completeness of a Ty(t)tree structure,to which a Ty(e)topic tree(i.e.a LINK tree)is linked.Meanwhile,the melting of a left-peripheral topic's reference into a comment's meaning is characterized as the process how LINK transition's copy requirement that is imposed by the left-peripheral topic gets satisfied.The subtypes of STi are different only in that their comments use different elements to copy left-peripheral topics' semantic value.ST2 is analysed in a similar way,but only when it becomes certain that the right-peripheral element is capable of fulfilling a possible LINK requirement can a LINK transition be constructed.ST3 is essentially a subject-predicate structure that only projects one Ty(t)tree.If a ST1 is embedded in another ST1 or ST2,the partial trees projected by the embedded ST1 needs to be placed at an unfixed position until a complete proposition is built up and merged into a corresponding position within the comment tree of the outer ST1.If a ST1 has more than one syntactic topic at its left periphery,the semantic tree projected by each peripheral syntactic topic except the leftmost one is progressively analyzed as a LINKed structure from left to right.Eventually,the semantic tree of the rightmost topic is used anew as a LINK structure,which hence introduces the construction of another LINKed structure,namely the semantic tree of the rightmost comment.Concerning those ST1s whose left-peripheral syntactic topics are universally quantified,the thesis contends that they are not at all ordinary left-peripheral syntactic topic constructions and should be analyzed as MERGE of unfixed nodes into fixed addresses.This neatly verifies Cann et al.(2005)'s argument that all languages display the two types of strategy for construal at the left-periphery-the building of linked trees and the building of a single unfixed node.On the other hand,the interpretation of such various topic constructions can also be naturally captured by a left-to-right linear process.Overall,the formal characterizations developed in this thesis not only exhibit the diversity of Chinese topic constructions,but also reveal that the grammatical mechanism of left-and right-peripheral syntactic topic constructions is consistent,and that ST3 does constitute a special type of topic construction.Moreover,the discussions imply that the topic-prominence in Chinese grammar is more apt to be construed as prominence of topic1/comment structure.