A Parallel Merge Approach To RNR Construction In Mandarin Chinese

Right node raising construction（RNR）is a cross-linguistic phenomenon.For instance,in English RNR sentence‘John bought,and Sam read,the book with red cover’,‘the book with red cover’is taken as the RNR target.The debate lies in whether the RNR target also occurs in the first coordinated clause and whether movement is involved.There are mainly six analyses for the derivation of RNR constructions:cross-the board（ATB）-movement,PF-deletion,and multi-dominance（MD）approach,eclectic analysis,pro-form analysis,and sparse analysis,indicating that there is still a niche for research.Therefore,this thesis will take Chinese RNR as its research object and attempt to answer three related research questions:1.What are the properties of Chinese right node raising construction?2.How to derive Chinese RNR construction?3.Can the difficulties challenging previous accounts be satisfactorily solved by our new approach?A parallel merge approach is adopted in this thesis to solve the generation problem of the Chinese RNR construction.Derived from internal and external merge operations in the minimalist program,a parallel merge operation is defined as the combination of a lexical item（or root）with a part of a root structure.There is no restriction on the component of parallel merge,and open issues like feature checking and linearization have been solved.This thesis argues that a parallel merge approach to the derivation of Chinese RNR can compensate for the limitations of previous analyses.This paper will first give a comprehensive overview of the linguistic facts of Chinese RNR constructions.And then a comparison between the parallel merge approach and other generative approaches will be made to support our claim.It has been discovered that Chinese RNR constructions exhibit the following properties:coordinate structure constraint（CSC）,right edge restriction（RER）,constituent blindness,scope ambiguity,island insensitivity,strict/sloppy readings,licensing of relational modifiers,asymmetric preposition stranding,asymmetric licensing of negative polarity items（NPI）and no cumulative agreement.Although Chinese RNR constructions appear symmetric on the surface,there is a kind of asymmetric relation between two conjuncts during the derivation process.Take Zhangsan mei guo,dan Lisi guo-le kaoshi‘Zhangsan failed,but Lisi passed the exam’as an example.The construction can be simplified into[[_specifierZhangsan mei guo][_headbut][_complement Lisi guo-le kaoshi]].The whole sentence is a CP headed by the conjunction dan’but’,with the first conjunct Zhangsan mei guo’Zhangsan didn’t pass’being the specifier of CP,and the second conjunct Lisi guo-le kaoshi’Lisi passed the exam’being the complement.RNR target kaoshi‘exam’is simultaneously dominated by the two conjuncts but is only spelled out in the second conjunct.One limitation of the previous MD approach is that it lacks explanatory power for asymmetric features of the RNR construction.We advocate that a parallel merge approach can handle them.Take the sentence Zhangsan xiang chi,dan Lisi buxiangchi renhe dongxi‘Zhangsan wants to eat,but Lisi doesn’t want to eat anything’which involves asymmetric licensing of a negative polarity item as an example.The previous MD approach took the entire NPI renhe dongxi‘anything’as the RNR target,predicting that the sentence is ungrammatical since the RNR target is dominated by the first conjunct where there is no negative licensor.But the truth is,the whole sentence is well-accepted,against the prediction.Since parallel merge theory has no constitutent constraints on the shared material,we advocate that instead of taking the whole NPI renhe dongxi’anything’as the pivot,its sub-part dongxi’thing’is more appropriate.In general,the parallel merge approach can comprehensively account for the linguistic facts of Chinese RNR constructions,addressing issues that the previous PF-deletion,ATB-movement,and MD analyses could not explain.This thesis not only provides a comprehensive introduction to the Chinese RNR construction,but it also offers a new perspective on the derivation of Chinese RNR constructions.Furthermore,it validates the potential of parallel-merge theory to be widely applied in the analysis of other Chinese constructions.