Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese

Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese
C. The two compared items can be followed by particles such as a and ya,
which indicates that the compared items can be topics.
(22) Zhangsan a, bi Lisi congming
Zhangsan PART 6 COM Lisi smart
‘Zhangsan is smarter than Lisi.’
D. Since topic is super-clausal, the two compared constituents may extend their
domain to more than one clause.
(23) Zhangsan bi Lisi congming, ken hua shijian (Tsao 1989)
Zhangsan COM Lisi smart willing spend time
‘Zhangsan is more clever and more willing to spend time (doing it) than Lisi.’
Furthermore, Tsao proposes four principle of Comparative Deletion.
Principle A: Compared Constituents Deletion
Forward deletion applies to compared topics of the same rank; that is, the identical
level of topic can be deleted. In (24), compared items all have tertiary topics sharing
one identical topic, and the identical topics are deleted.
(24) a. [ta]i zuotian zai xuexiao bi [ ]i jintian zai jiali gaoxing
s/he yesterday at school COM today at home happy
‘S/He was happier at school yesterday than s/he is at home today.’
6 PART is the abbreviation for Particle.
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中正大學 e-Thesys (94 學年度)