Subordinate Gaps in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

本文認為漢語從屬空缺句之存在，對原本以對等空缺句為基礎之分析，構成相當大的挑戰。我們觀察出，決定漢語從屬空缺句之合法度的因素有二：一為極小對比焦點之概念，二為從屬句之類型；我們提出以語意為基礎的刪除分析，來解釋此一漢語特有的空缺現象；此分析主要依賴兩條可違反的限制條件，即「避開焦點限制」及「空缺句的焦點限制」（Schwarzchild 1999, Merchant 2001），以其來檢驗漢語空缺句之合法度。

The existence of subordinate gaps in Mandarin Chinese casts doubt on analyses built on canonical coordinate gapping. We observe that the minimality of contrastive focus and the type of subordinate clause determine the acceptability of a missing gap in subordinate structure. Along this vein, we propose that a semantic-based deletion account can be used to interpret gapping in Mandarin. Such account relies on two violable constraints, AvoidF and Focus condition on gapping (Schwarzchild 1999, Merchant 2001) to compute the acceptability of a gap.