| Description |
This thesis investigates the predicate cleft (PC) constructions in Mandarin Chinese. Cheng & Vicente conclude that the topicalized verb and the lower verb in bare PC form a long head movement relation, discarding a remnant movement analysis based on vP-external scrambling. However, to be complete, the argument also needs to consider vP-internal scrambling observed by Soh and a selective deletion analysis. I show that vP-internal scrambling cannot serve to derive a plausible remnant movement analysis; nor can a selective deletion analysis be accomplished. Long head movement is necessary to account for Mandarin bare PC. However, although this conclusion converges with cross-linguistic treatment of predicate clefts, I point out the unreliability of idiom interpretation as a diagnostic for long head movement used in several studies. Moreover, I present the puzzling restriction on the types of categories that can undergo pied-piping with the fronted verb. Last, I show that the verb doubling effect, an unresolved issue in Cheng & Vicente, can be accounted for, if the proposal on parallel chains is adopted. The necessity of a long head movement analysis supports bare phrase structure whereby head-to-spec movement is expected. In addition, it constitutes as an empirical argument against eliminating syntactic head movement. The compositionality of idiom interpretation and the restriction on full PC are worth further study. |
