A Comparative Study Of The Null Subject In English And Chinese

This thesis, based on Chomsky's theory about empty categories and research achievements made by Chinese scholars, attempts to make a comparative study of the null subject in English and Chinese within the framework of the theory of Government and Binding (GB) (Chomsky 1981,1986a, 1986b).Empty categories, which lack phonological form and hence are not visible in the phonetic representation of the sentence, have both syntactic and semantic properties. Null subjects PRO and pro are base-generated empty categories. Chomsky makes a distinction between PRO and pro in terms of the distinction between nonfinite clauses and finite clauses. PRO is restricted to the subject position of nonfinite clauses and pro appears in the subject position of finite clauses in a language with a rich system of agreement inflections. Hence, the finite vs. nonfinite distinction seemingly becomes a main factor in determining the classification of Chinese null subjects. Focusing on the finite vs. nonfinite distinction and the PRO vs. pro distinction, scholars have held a heated debate among them. Huang (1982, 1984, 1987, 1989) and some other scholars argue that overt morphological marking is not the only way to identify finiteness in a language and propose many criteria to support the implicit finite vs. nonfinite distinction in Chinese. Xu (1986,徐烈炯1994) presents substantial evidence to prove that none of them is tenable and concludes that finite vs. nonfinite distinction does not exist in Chinese.In the thesis, the author adopts two kinds of methods: contrastive study and comparative study. Contrastive study is to find the crucial feature of the linguistic material in an exact and rapid way through setting up a minimal pair between a grammatical construction and an ungrammatical construction (phrase or sentence). Comparative study is to make a comparative study between two languages or among more than two languages.After having conducted a detailed and comprehensive investigation into the null subject in English and in Chinese separately, the author argues that although it is hard to find tenable criteria to distinguish finiteness from nonfiniteness, great abundance of contol phenomenon and the presence of PRO in Chinese cannot be neglected. Besides, the author has summed up some similarities and differences between English and Chinese. PRO in Chinese bears some similarities to its counterpart in English in the existential evidence, feature matrix and distribution. As for the interpretation of PRO, in both languages PRO either has arbitrary reading or is controlled by another NP in the sentence.It is argued in this thesis that if one grasps some basic features of PRO: base-generated, a 0-position with no overt external argument and syntactically empty and unlexicalized element, he can make a good judgment about its position in Chinese. In addition, as Chinese is a language with low degree of grammaticality and poor morphology but with high degree of flexibility, the constructions in which PRO occurs in Chinese are complicated and pose great difficulty for us to interpret them in the Chomskian tradition. Subject control occurs in liandong ('serial verb')-constructions, shuangbin ('double object')-constructions, de-constructions and sentences with VP-complement. Object control often appears in Object-Subject Constructions (OSCs). PRO_arb in Chinese occurs in sentences with VP being the subject and in some Chinese proverbs. Furthermore there is a special control in Chinese which is referred to as 'Double Control' in this thesis.As for pro, it is argued that both Chinese and Modern Standard English (MSE) have no pro and are non-pro-drop languages. English is different from Chinese in that Early Modern English (EME) with a rich system of agreement inflections is a pro-drop language. Besides, as it is hard to tell PRO from ellipsis in the empty subject position, ways are proposed to differentiate them.Through the comparative study, the thesis tries to promote a deeper understanding of Chinese study and lend support to the theory of UG...