Abstract
A systematic evaluation of syntactic behavior of nouns that take as their possessor the topic of the possessive topic constructions in Mandarin Chinese calls for an understanding of the syntactic and semantic nature of relational nouns (RNs) and non-RNs. This evaluation leads to four empirical generalizations that divide NP possessees into four subtypes, some important differences between which are understudied in the literature. These generalizations are then explained with differences in the lexical syntactic and semantic properties of the four NP subtypes, namely, non-RNs, kinship type nouns, body-part type nouns, and whole-part nouns: whether the nouns bear a local or long-distance syntactic reflexive argument, or a pronominal argument, or no argument at all, is the determining factor of their distinctive syntactic behavior in the possessive topic construction. This study sheds light on long-standing problems concerning the nature of empty categories in connection with the topic in possessive topic constructions. Critical aspects of the nouns’ syntactic behavior are arguably orthogonal to a movement or base-generation approach to topicalization in Mandarin Chinese. Instead, this article proposes that the semantic or syntactic arguments of the nominal possessees relate to the topic via some general mechanisms other than movement or base-generation: reflexive and pronominal reference resolution. This study thus offers us a novel viewpoint on the syntax and semantics of nouns as well as their typology in the context of possession and inalienability.
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Notes
The acceptability judgment of the examples presented in this article is based on the author and 3 other native speakers’ acceptability judgment using the 5-point likert scale: 1: completely unacceptable, 2: unacceptable, 3: neither acceptable nor unacceptable, 4: acceptable, 5: completely acceptable. These numeral data are then translated to acceptability markings in this article as follows: 5 = no marking, 4 = “?,” 3 = “??,” 2 = “?*,” 1 = “*.”
“Closest" is defined by closest c-command (cf. Chomsky 1980).
These two sentences are revised from Zhang (2009a) examples in (66a, b), adjusted with judgment marking methodology adopted in this article (see Footnote 1).
-ne in (6b, c, d), and -a in other examples, is a pause particle marking the topic in these and similar constructions.
Lu and Pan (2014) classify both whole-part nouns and KNs as RNs.
Although my consultants disagree on the level of acceptability of these two sentences, they all agree there is a contrast between (8a) and (8b): KNs in the embedded subject position is much worse than BPNs in the same syntactic position.
One can argue that if [+c-command] is a retrieval cue for the retrieval of the topic associated with the NP possessee, the non-c-commanding intervener will induce only a minor or much less significant interference effect for the retrieval of the topic. But the real question is: why [+c-command] is relevant in the first place? As will be made clear, this is exactly the question that this article addresses.
This observation is basically consistent with Wen and Tian’s (2011) phase-based account. However, the analysis here is not based on the theory of phases. Although the current analysis generates less clear-cut predictions, it is consistent with the semantic-pragmatic properties of topic constructions as discussed in many studies (e.g., Pan and Hu 2008). In fact, I will show below that a subject of a transitive verb can relate to the topic in many cases, constituting counterexamples to the phase-based analysis, as is also pointed out by Lu and Pan (2014).
Additional semantic and pragmatic factors may introduce more complications to the picture, as shown by the improvement of acceptability of (i). The involvement of these factors is expected once the reflexive nature of the null possessive argument of BPNs is identified.
BPNs are sometimes considered a subtype of WPNs (usually called part-whole nouns in the literature), e.g., Vikner and Jensen (2002); but cf. Heine (1997), ch. 1 for a different viewpoint. However, as previously mentioned, since the syntactic behavior of BPNs, which typically take an animate possessor but can also take an inanimate possessor, is different from that of WPNs, which can only take an inanimate possessor, I restrict the term WPNs to the latter.
The [+c-command] retrieval cue is required only when the NP possessees are assumed to require a c-commanding possessor. This article suggests that when an NP possessee has a reflexive argument (e.g., KNs and BPNs), [+c-command] will be a relevant retrieval cue; if otherwise an NP possessee (e.g., WPNs) has a pronominal argument, then [+c-command] is irrelevant.
See Cheng and Ritter (1987), Chappell (1996), Zhang (2008), Huang et al. (2009), among others, for general arguments that RNs bear a possessive argument in Chinese; and see Chappell and McGregory (1996), Coene and D’hulst (2003), Partee and Borschev (2003) and citations therein for similar general arguments for various other languages.
In Sect. 2 it was shown that whether the predicate is self-directed or other-directed affects whether or not a body-part RN in an object position can be related to the topic outside of its local domain. Critically, the same effect is also observed for complex reflexives which are usually considered to be strictly locally bound: the complex reflexives are more likely to take as antecedent an NP outside of their local domain when the predicate is other-directed, compared to when the predicate is self-directed (see recent experimental results from e.g., Liu (2020), Lyu and Kaiser (2021)). This confirms Ke and Pires’s (2022) analysis of RNs, as they map the null arguments of body-part RNs to “locally bound" reflexives in Chinese, and the interpretation of the “locally bound” reflexives in Chinese is subject to considerable influence from predicate types.
This indicates that when the topic and the subject are both potential possessors, where serious similarity-based interference is expected by the processing account, the sentence is in fact not necessarily unacceptable.
For some unknown reason, KNs seem to be very resistant to this argument saturation process if they occur in the object positions.
What could have happened in the so-called argument saturation process is that the projection of a null reflexive argument of social RNs and BPNs is suppressed, and a syntactically projected pronominal argument or simply a semantic pronominal variable is postulated instead. This pronominal argument, referring to a prominent antecedent in the sentence or in the context, is not subject to syntactic restrictions such as c-command or closeness conditions.
It is important to note that I do not deny that there are pragmatic or world-knowledge related differences between animate and inanimate human-owned non-RNs in their relation to the topic. Instead, what concerns us here is the application of a possessive variable to inanimate human-owned non-RNs but not to animate non-RNs, as a way to account for their differences. To the extent the semantic-level representation is relevant, such an analytical difference in variable projection for these non-RNs may not be adequate. That is, a different explanation is still required for the contrast in (53).
According to Chao (1968/2011), S-P refers to the subject-predicate compound in the double-subject construction. Such an S-P compound serves as a predicate to the higher, main subject.
I leave it an open question whether the derivation is via movement or base-generation.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Acrisio Pires, Sze-Wing Tang, Quan Wan and Yanmin Zhang for stimulating discussion and helpful comments. Many thanks to other native speaker consultants for their generous help.
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Ke, A.H. Syntax and semantics of NPs in Chinese possessive topic constructions. J East Asian Linguist 32, 133–167 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09254-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09254-w