A Syntactic Study On The Bi-constituent Construction In Modern Chinese: A Minimalist Approach

The bi-constituent construction is a special but important sentence structure in modern Chinese, patterning "NP1+VP1+NP2+VP2". In this construction, NP2 seems to be both the object of VP1 and the subject of VP2. So far, not a satisfied analysis on the double function of NP2 has been achieved. The traditional Chinese grammarians mainly analyze the bi-constituent construction at the descriptive level, and even today not a unified definition and a definite scope of the construction have been achieved.In the first chapter of this thesis the author first combines the definitions of this construction by Yuan Fang (2008) and Wu Ruifeng (2009) and thus confines the bi-constituent construction to those whose matrix verbs VP1 have the feature of [+cause]. In addition to the scope of the bi-constituent construction, Chapter One also gives research questions, significance of this study, and the organization of this thesis. In Chapter Two the author reviews the previous studies on the bi-constituent construction and gives comments on their analyses. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework adopted in this thesis. For not all the sentences with the pattern of "NP1+VP1+NP2+VP2" can be regarded as the bi-constituent construction, in Chapter Four the author distinguishes the bi-constituent construction from other sentence structures, including serial verb construction, double object construction, the subject-predicate object construction, and simultaneous verb sentence. Chapter Five is the syntactic analysis of the bi-constituent construction. In this chapter the author first derives the construction and then gives the motivation of such derivation. The last chapter is major findings of this research and also the limitations and the implications of this research.Compared with the previous researches, this thesis adopts the latest theories within the Minimalist Program, including the Copy Theory of Movement, the Predicate-Internal Subject Hypothesis, and split VP analysis. Based on these theories the author analyzes the derivation of the bi-constituent construction and the motivation of such derivation. In this research the author finds that in Chinese there are also instances of the realization of the lower copy in the bi-constituent construction. The lower copy of NP2 in a bi-constituent sentence can be phonetically realized if there is heavy adverbial phrase between the highest copy of NP2 and its lower copy. Following the Copy Theory of Movement, the author also finds that NP2 just functions as the object of VP1 in a bi-constituent sentence and its deleted lower copy functions as the subject of VP2.