On Right Dislocation in Mandarin Chinese

• Main Authors: Chiang, Yu-Chuan, 姜玉娟
• Other Authors: Wu, Hsiao-hung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/08483208403997660629

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 103 === The aim of this thesis is to investigate the right dislocation construction in Mandarin Chinese. Right dislocation is widely observed in languages such as German, Spanish, French, Japanese, and Korean. However, there has not been enough attention paid to this construction in Mandarin Chinese and, accordingly, a systematic syntactic analysis is left desired. Thus, the present study aims to fill this gap. In the thesis, I first distinguish right dislocation from the other two superficially similar constructions, i.e. afterthought and vocative phrases. I compare the mainstream analytic options proposed for right dislocation in the literature, namely, movement analysis, base generation analysis, and ellipsis analysis; I further show that the three analyses all have their advantages and disadvantages in light of the Mandarin data. Nevertheless, I argue that among the three, the movement analysis can better capture the phenomenon observed in right dislocation of Mandarin Chinese. The movement analysis proposed in the present study consists of two operations, i.e. topicalization of the dislocated phrase followed by a remnant movement to the Spec, FocP position. This analysis not only generates the correct surface word order but also can differentiate the discourse function of the right dislocated phrases. This study wishes to provide the empirical and theoretical basis for the future study on the right dislocation in Mandarin Chinese.