The Syntactic And Semantic Analysis Of Chinese Focus Marker Shenzhi

This thesis aims to discuss the syntactic and semantic features of Chinese focusmarker shenzhi. The theories are mainly based on Chomsky’s (1981,1995)Government and Binding and Bare Phrase Theory, Karttunen&Peters’(1979) ScopeTheory and Rooth’s (1985) Lexical Theory. We focus on the following three researchquestions in this thesis:1. What is the syntactic status of shenzhi in shenzhi+VP construction?2. What is the information structure of the shenzhi+VP construction?3. What are the semantic properties of shenzhi in Mandarin Chinese?This thesis analyzes the syntactic status of shenzhi in shenzhi+VP construction.Shenzhi+VP does not involve any movement, the focus is in the scope of shenzhi. Inshenzhi+VP construction, shenzhi takes the head of the Focus Phrase. Shenzhi has tom-command the focus. Meanwhile, it further explains the reasons of the acceptabilityof shenzhi+dou+VP, whereas the unacceptability of lian+dou+VP. Lian, as apronominal focus marker, can not be independently used without any objectmovement. Shenzhi differs from lian in that it can be followed by a wide range ofcategories, including dou. In the structure shenzhi+dou+VP, dou is the head of the FP;shenzhi, as an Adverb Phrase, is an adjunct of the [Spec FP]. The focus markingdevice for shenzhi+VP structure needs intonational stress. The focus can not bemarked directly by syntactic measures. We argue that the focus in this structurebelongs to the information focus. The focus is the most prominent item in the sentence,so it carries the feature [+prominent].The focus marked by shenzhi exerts scalar properties. Shenzhi can appear both inpositive and negative environments. The scalar implicature is related to theenvironment where shenzhi occurs. In positive environment, the focus stays at thebottom of the scale. In negative environment, the focus invariably stays at the top of ascale no matter it is in the embedded clause or the matrix clause. Thus, it is claimedthat the Scope Theory is more suitable for shenzhi.The syntactic structures of shenzhi offer possibility to make comparison andcontrast between shenzhi and Greek akomi ke. These two focus markers take additivemeaning, but there are still many differences in their semantic interpretations.Through the crosslinguistic analysis, the logic representation of shenzhi is achieved.