Constraints On Chinese Indefinite Subjects: An Event Based Approach

In linguistics study, indefinite NPs have been taken as an essential issue for a longhistory. Great interests are shown in the acceptability of indefinite NP subjects. Previousstudies treats Chinese indefinite subjects problematic for subjects should be definite, untilFan(1985) pointed out that indefinite subjects is not a rare phenomenon. Various scholarshave analyzed the indefinite subject constraints, with seeing it from perspectives of syntacticconstraints (Lee1986, Tsai1994, Li1999), syntax-semantics projection (Diesing1991, Cheng1992, Tsai2001), quantity of information (Xu1997), the absence of tense in Chinese (S-ZHuang2004) and so on.The research is guided by three questions:(1) What is the licensing condition forChinese indefinite subjects?(2) Where are the differences between English and Chineselicensing condition?(3) How to apply Davidsonian hypothesis to explain languagephenomenon?To answer questions above, this paper adopts event semantic theory and the analysis isbased on two levels: theoretical level and empirical level. Theoretically speaking,Davidsonian hypothesis is introduced to explain licensing conditions on Chinese indefinitesubjects. We claim that the indefinite NPs introduce a variable to a sentence, which meets aclash with the predicate that requires a constrainer. Chinese indefinite subjects can beaccepted when the e-argument in a sentence is licensed. Different from English whose tense isobligatory, Chinese requires adverbials indicating time, location and manner to constrain itse-argument. Other language phenomenon can be explained in the way that whether thee-argument is constrained. From empirical aspect, numeral phrases in corpora of Creeping inthe Rain by Yu Hua and It looks beautiful by Wang Shuo are applied for testifying theDavidsonian Hypothesis. The result shows that indefinite subjects do exist and adverbials oftime, location and manner function as constrainers to license the e-argument, in which tenseconstrainer takes the largest portion.