Against the Low Periphery as Phrase Markers: Two Types of Contrastive Dislocations in Mandarin Chinese

We argue that the contrastive dislocation to the low peripheral position in Mandarin Chinese does not target phrase markers, like TopicP or FocusP, contra recent proposals that attempt to extend the cartographic theory to the low IP‐area. We argue that such dislocations are best analyzed as PF movem...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inStudia linguistica Vol. 75; no. 1; pp. 97 - 127
Main Authors Wang, Yuyun Iris, Liao, Wei‐wen Roger
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.04.2021
Subjects
Chinese languages
Licensing
Mandarin
Phonetic form
Phrases
Syntax
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ISSN0039-3193
1467-9582
DOI10.1111/stul.12151

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Summary:We argue that the contrastive dislocation to the low peripheral position in Mandarin Chinese does not target phrase markers, like TopicP or FocusP, contra recent proposals that attempt to extend the cartographic theory to the low IP‐area. We argue that such dislocations are best analyzed as PF movements, which display the total reconstruction effect and do not affect the LF interface. We show that the contrastive dislocation to the low periphery in Mandarin Chinese is subject to the same PF licensing condition found in the Object Shift construction in Scandinavian. Our analysis thus claims that the low periphery is not a part of the narrow syntax (unlike the left periphery). The templatic nature of the low periphery explains why it is more restricted across languages and is prone to linguistic variation.
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ISSN:0039-3193
1467-9582
DOI:10.1111/stul.12151