A Generative Approach To Chinese Null Subjects

The concept of empty category is put forward by Chomsky in the1980s, and it is an important approach to exploring the process of the generation and interpretation of language in human minds, so it is a significant part in the model of principles and parameters.There are four kinds of empty categories, and null subject is one of them. Null subject refers to those subjects that have a semantic function but no phonetic representation. Generative grammar divides null subjects into PRO and pro. PRO always occurs in the subject position of a non-finite clause, because only this position is ungoverned. Control theory is responsible for the interpretation of PRO. There are different kinds of control, such as subject control, partial control and arbitrary control. Differently, pro is observed in the subject position of a finite clause, and the interpretation of it is determined by the agreement relationship between verbal predicates and their arguments. A language which allows the existence of pro is a pro-drop language which always has a rich system of inflection.The classic theories related to null subjects are based on observations on Indo-European languages, such as English and Italian. Since the concept of null subjects was proposed, many linguists have studied the phenomenon of null subjects with their native languages. For this reason, this thesis is also conducted to do a tentative analysis of the classification, distribution and reference of Chinese null subjects from the perspective of generative grammar. Qualitative analysis runs through the whole thesis. Meanwhile, a lot of typical examples in classic generative works and daily life are used to make this thesis persuasive and rigorous.Similarly, Chinese does distinct finiteness from non-finiteness, and null subjects include PRO and pro. If a time adverbial can be added into a sentence and does not cause this resulting sentence ungrammatical, this sentence is finite; if not, it is non-finite. PRO always appears in the subject position of typical non-finite structures—the pivotal structure, the verbal complement structure and the verbal subject structure and the serial verb subject—and can not be lexicalized. Each specific PRO may have more than one type of reference, and different ways of interpretation depend on different pragmatic factors. As for pro, it always occurs in the subject position of finite clauses and can be lexicalized. And the reference of pro highly relies on pragmatic factors.