A Generative Approach To The Finiteness Of Complement Clauses In English And Mandarin Chinese

Finiteness is a much-debated topic in syntax,and no consensus has been reached so far on the cross-linguistic definition in academia.The theory of Generative Syntax regards finiteness as an abstract property of the clause found across languages.Due to its overt inflectional morphology,the finite/non-finite distinction is easier to identify in English.However,it is a long-standing dispute whether the finiteness distinction exists due to the lack of overt inflectional morphology in Mandarin Chinese.Recent generative typological studies have demonstrated that cross-linguistically there exist three semantic classes of complement clauses: the Proposition class,the Situation class,and the Event class syntactically realized as CPs,TPs,and v Ps respectively.The current thesis investigates the finiteness of complement clauses in English and Chinese,the classification of complement clauses,and the issue of whether finiteness is reducible to clause sizes within the framework of Generative Syntax.Given that main clause phenomena are restricted to root clauses,this thesis also discusses whether main clause phenomena can occur in complement clauses with embedded topicalization as the empirical focus.English and Chinese have the three types of complement clauses above with different properties diagnosed by the syntactic tests in the literature.The present thesis proposes a more refined classification of complement clauses,correlating factivity with finiteness.Proposition complements are divided into two sub-classes: the Presupposition class and the Assertion class,which follow factive verbs and non-factive verbs respectively.The current thesis argues that four types of complement clauses exist in English and Mandarin Chinese: the Assertion class,the Presupposition class,the Situation class,and the Event class.The former two classes are characterized as finite clauses,whereas the latter two classes are characterized as non-finite clauses.The four types of complement clauses form a hierarchy of finiteness,and the degree of finiteness decreases gradually: The Assertion class is more finite than the Presupposition class which is more finite than the Situation class which is more finite or less non-finite than the Event class.Even though the lexicalist account has always been the standard analysis of finiteness,it has inadequacies.Therefore,the thesis utilizes Pesetsky’s(2021)derivationalist theory of Exfoliation to account for the syntactic derivation of finite and non-finite complement clauses in English and Chinese.In addition,English Presupposition complements disallow embedded topicalization,while Assertion complements allow.Nevertheless,Chinese Assertion and Presupposition complements are both compatible with embedded topicalization.In the case of Situation and Event complements in English and Chinese,embedded topicalization is impermissible.These syntactic behaviors can be explained under the syntactic derivation of English and Chinese complement clauses provided in the thesis.The thesis also extends Sybesma’s(2019)skeleton of finite clauses to complement clauses,claiming that the nonfiniteness of Chinese Situation and Event complement clauses is put down to their incomplete skeleton.As for the question as to whether finiteness can be reducible to clause sizes,the thesis holds that this claim is too strong;however,finiteness is associated with clause sizes.The current thesis holds that the finite/non-finite distinction exists in English and Mandarin Chinese.The main contribution of the thesis is that it applies the Exfoliation theory in Chinese and thus confirms Pesetsky’s(2021)Full CP Hypothesis with Mandarin data.In addition,it also investigates main clause phenomena in Chinese with embedded topicalization as the empirical focus.