Verb Phrase Ellipsis And ACD In Chinese

This thesis focuses on verb phrase ellipsis construction (VP ellipsis) in coordinate sentences and the relevant antecedent-contained deletion structure (ACD) in relative clauses in Chinese. Strict and sloppy interpretations ambiguity as well as locality effect and the eliminative puzzles are typical properties of VP ellipsis in English, while these properties can be observed in null object constructions (NOC) and some similar elliptical constructions in Chinese. This raises four major questions in our study: (i) whether Chinese has verb phrase ellipsis construction analogous to VP ellipsis in English; (ii) how is verb phrase ellipsis in Chinese derived; (iii) whether Chinese has ACD in a relative clause and whether ACD is a special case of verb phrase ellipsis if it does exist; (iv) how ACD in Chinese is derived.There are controversial views on the question: whether NOC in Chinese can be treated parallel to VP ellipsis in English. We argue that NOC in Chinese can be treated similar to English VP ellipsis. Then we further assume that Chinese has two forms of verb phrase ellipsis in coordinate sentences: one is VP ellipsis involving NOC, and the other is vP ellipsis which is supported by the linking verb shi 'be' or a modal verb. Our assumption is based mainly on the observation of the three mentioned properties above shown in the two forms which can be accounted for under the Parallelism Constraint, and this further provides evidence to support our above assumption. Moreover, both VP ellipsis and vP ellipsis in Chinese can be derived syntactically via the same operation of V-to-v raising.We further argue ACD is a special case of VP ellipsis in English on the basis of typical properties of the latter displayed in the former; and there exists ACD in relative clauses in Chinese based on four properties of English ACD exhibited in it. Then we argue ACD is a special case of verb phrase ellipsis in Chinese since they share the three typical properties above. If our analysis is adopted, we can derive Chinese ACD in relative clauses via V-to-v under the QR approach without infinite regress.