A Generative Study Of Special Comparatives In Zhoushan Dialect

Comparative is one of the most heated topics in modern Chinese grammar studies.In addition to the comparative constructions in Mandarin,the comparatives in various Chinese dialects have also attracted widespread attention in academia.Given that there are some special comparative constructions in the Zhoushan dialect that differ from those in Mandarin,this thesis aims to elaborate on the syntactic properties,structures,and generative processes of these special comparative constructions based on previous research,using generative grammar as its theoretical framework.This thesis mainly focuses on two types of comparative constructions existing in the Zhoushan dialect with adjectives serving as the predicates,namely the z(?)33comparative and the p(?)3 comparative.It is contended that the z(?)33 comparative arises from the interaction between the comparative structure and the topic-focus structure.Compared with other Chinese comparatives,the z(?)33 comparative has a more complex internal structure,mainly manifested by an explicit topic and an explicit focus.Specifically,the comparative standard before z(?)33 and the comparative target after z(?)33is the topic and focus,respectively,while z(?)33 serves as the focus marker.The topic property of the comparative standard licenses it to appear at the beginning of the sentence and has semantic features such as attribute separation,the tendency of definiteness and genericity,while the focus property of the comparative target imposes restrictions on the stress,focus domain,and negation domain of the sentence.The p(?)3 comparative,on the other hand,is the result of the passivization of the comparative category,indicating that the compared standard Y undergoes a change of state in which the comparative subject X has exceeded the quantity or degree of a certain attribute of itself.The verb p(?)3 serves as the passive marker.The passivization of the comparative category imposes some syntax and semantic constraints on the comparative items and the comparative predicate.For the comparative items,it requires the comparative standard to precede the compared target;for the comparative predicates,it requires them to be resultative.From the perspective of syntax derivation,both the z(?)33 and p(?)3 comparatives have a similar basic structure as other Chinese comparatives,namely a TP structure expanded by a Deg P-shell.This structure is the basic source of the comparative meaning for these two types of comparatives.However,the derivation processes of the z(?)33 and p(?)3 comparatives are much more complicated,involving syntactic operations such as sideward movement,focus projection,topic projection,and null operator(NOP)movement,demonstrating the complex syntactic interactions of the comparative structure with the topic-focus structures and the passive structure.This study expands the existing knowledge about comparatives in the Zhoushan dialect,and through the syntactic analysis of special comparatives in the dialect reveals the similarities and differences among different comparative constructions in Chinese,which is of important theoretical significance.