Verb gapping in Chinese

Abstract

This research investigates the syntactic properties of the Verb Gapping Construction in Mandarin Chinese. Four claims are made. First, object raising occurs in the Verb Gapping Construction. Second, as in English (Johnson 1996), there is an Across-the-Board head movement of the Verb, rather than a PF deletion of the Verb, in the Verb Gapping Construction. Third, the optionality of Verb Gapping reflects the variations between coordinate conjunctions at vP-level and a higher level. Fourth, the differences in specificity with respect to object raising between Chinese and German are the result of the different interaction patterns between two kinds of economy principles, governing the syntactically motivated movement, which is to check uninterpretable features, and the semantically motivated movement, which ensures a proper LF representation (Diesing 1997).