Nominal Possession in Mandarin Chinese
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The present thesis investigates possessive constructions in Mandarin Chinese (MC),
with a focus on the peculiarities of the syntactic realisations of kinship, bodypart
and property-denoting relationships. These can be expressed grammatically without
the appearance of the possessive marker de, in contrast to other types of
possession. In opposition to the traditional view that these phenomena are derived
by deleting the possessive marker de, I argue that they have a distinct syntax
and semantics.
I defend the idea that a DP is projected in the nominal domain in MC and
propose that the noun phrase in MC has the following hierarchy: [DP [DemP
[NumP [ClP NP]]]]. I argue that the morpheme men is a plural marker bearing a
dependency to D, and it follows that instances where a nominal or pronominal is
suffixed by men are phrasal. On this basis, I examine the syntax and semantics
of juxtaposed possessive (JP) expressions where a personal pronoun is juxtaposed
with a kinship noun, arguing that the kinship term is a head taking a pro complement,
projecting a KinP projection. This KinP is then combined with a D head (a
personal pronoun), which agrees in phi-specification with pro. This predicts the
absence of proper names and plural pronouns in this construction, and provides
the correct semantics without the possessive marker de being involved.
I then develop a new analysis of double nominal constructions (DNCs) where
the second nominal represents a property of the first. I argue that the second
nominal is interpreted as a dimension along which the main predication is made
to the subject DP. Also, I re-analyse the obligatory presence of hen and other
elements in adjectival predication, tying these elements to the focus semantics of
the predication. I further extend the dimension analysis and the focus analysis to
the BI comparative constructions in MC.
Authors
Niu, FangfangCollections
- Theses [3321]