A Comparative Study Of Empty Categories Between English And Chinese

This thesis is a comparative study of the empty categories in both English and Chinese under the framework of the GB theory. Considering the high maturity and strong interpretative function of the GB and the fledging and immature framework of the MP, this thesis chooses the GB theory rather than the current Minimalist Program as our theoretical basis. At the beginning, we have illustrated the significant role the study of empty categories plays in the semantic, syntactic and philosophical fields. Then, we have briefly introduced the aim and influence of the comparative study. To apply theory to practice, we have discussed the impact of this study on the ECs' translation. Following the introductory part, a fairly complete comparison has been made between English and Chinese ECs in terms of their classification and distribution. We have especially focused on those disputable issues and tried to sort out a solution.In order to get a thorough understanding of English and Chinese ECs, we have explored the shared sentence constructions involving ECs in both languages. Based on the analysis on the generation and the implied characteristics of these constructions, we have made a detailed comparison between ECs in both languages in respects of their generation, classification and reference, aiming to give an appropriate interpretation to the difference in the constraints they bear in the various constructions. In addition, on the basis of the outcome of this study, we have made a tentative study of the translation of empty categories.We find that English is a sentence-oriented language while Chinese is discourse-oriented, which leads to a difference in whether they permit empty pronouns or not. As a whole, English shares the same classification with Chinese (provided that pro is put aside). However, distinctive properties have been detected of the ECs in those specific sentence constructions. ECs in English are mostly generated through movement, thus being constrained by all the conditions on the movement. On the contrary, Chinese ECs are not necessarily movement-generated; therefore, it shows a greater freedom as the constraints are concerned. Also, the subject-object asymmetry that only occurs in the Chinese sentence constructions can be interpreted by the theories we referred to in this study.This thesis aims at probing into both the syntactic and semantic representations as well as the generative rules of empty categories in English and Chinese so as to further understand their similarities and dissimilarities and help to provide some effective translation methods.