MORE ON THE LICENSING CONDITIONS OF NP-ELLIPSIS AND THE STRUCTURE OF NOUN PHRASES IN MANDARIN

Abstract

It has been agreed in previous studies that an ellipsis site has to be licensed by a governing head, thus manifesting formal licensing in the sense of the Empty Category Principle (Chomsky 1981, 1986). In addition to lending weight to Tsai`s(2011) view that formal licensing can be recast as a built-in operation of Merge in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), the goal of this paper is to add refinement to the licensing condition of NP-ellipsis in Mandarin. It is argued that the licensing condition of NP-ellipsis is decomposed into two parts: NP-ellipsis is licensed by a governing head whose phrase is able to denote a numerical reading (both the cardinal and the ordinal reading). The two conditions are not independent, and instead, the numerical reading condition arises from a complex nominal structure involving NumP and ClP, while formal licensing reflects a head-complement relation. This line of thinking is supported by instances of NP-ellipsis licensed by de, whose licensing configuration does not contain NumP and ClP, and hence, the numerical reading is not available. Several complications surrounding NP-ellipsis are discussed.

過去文獻一致認為刪略處或名詞組刪略後所留下的軌跡必須由管轄中心語來進行形式認可，此形式認可反映出空範疇原則（the Empty Category Principle）的中心語管轄條件。除了提供證據支持Tsai（2011）的觀點，其主張形式認可在最簡方案的框架下可脫胎換骨為合併（merge）語法運作機制，本文更進一步指出漢語的名詞刪略還受限於另一個認可條件－讀數語意條件。換言之，本文主張漢語名詞組刪略必須於由管轄中心語來進行結構上的形式認可，此中心語詞組必須蘊含讀數語意（基數與序數）。形式認可反映出句法結構性（中心語－補語關係），而讀數語意認可來自於數量詞組和分類詞組的語意組合性（前者指明數量，後者則是具有劃分功能）。此兩者條件並非獨立的，而是相互依存。本文認為讀數語意是由於名詞組刪略所發生的名詞內部結構，是由數量詞組和分類詞組所組成。另一方面，名詞組刪略如果發生在「的」字名詞組內，讀數語意認可條件則失去作用。這是由於因為「的」字詞組內無數量詞組和分類詞。本文也討論以「的」為管轄中心語來進行形式核可的相關議題。最後也討論漢各類名詞組內的名詞刪略的認可條件，提出原則性的解釋。