1887
Volume 3, Issue 1
  • ISSN 2213-8706
  • E-ISSN: 2213-8714
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Abstract

This paper develops the empirical and theoretical basis for the necessity in admitting the operation of verb-stranding ellipsis (VVPE) in Chinese. I present new arguments showing that, though two analytic possibilities — null argument analysis and VVPE analysis — are in principle available in the grammar of Chinese, they can be differentiated in specific syntactic environments. In particular, I show that the existing null argument approaches would have difficulty in accounting for the following facts: disjunction of multi-constituent elements under negation, the difference of island effects in the presence of a linguistic antecedent, the verb identity requirement and the possibility of having part of the idiomatic expression as the missing gap. Therefore, it is argued that VVPE must remain a viable syntactic operation in Chinese when a null object analysis is unavailable.

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/content/journals/10.1075/ijchl.3.1.03wu
2016-06-07
2025-02-11
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/content/journals/10.1075/ijchl.3.1.03wu
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Mandarin Chinese; null argument; verb phrase ellipsis; verb-stranding
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