Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese

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Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese (66) a. John is taller than Mary (was tall). b. John walks faster than Mary (walks). Besides, there are another two approaches to the structure of the CCs in English. (67) a. The lexical head hypothesis b. The functional head hypothesis AP DegP 3 3 DegP A Deg’ than-clause 2 2 Deg than-clause Deg AP (-er/ more) (-er/ more) In the lexical head hypothesis in (67a), it is ignored that morphologically, degree expression together with the gradable predicate forms a constituent. Besides, as Bhatt and Pancheva (2004) have pointed out, the obligatory movement of the degree than-clause is not motivated by anything apart from the need to derive the correct surface word order. The functional head hypothesis in (67b) avoids the extraposition problem in (67), and the constituency of the degree expression -er and the matrix predicate conform to the morphological rule. Besides, there is a close relationship among these elements, which makes them stay in the same phrase. There is s-selectional restriction between the degree morpheme -er and the degree clauses that justifies their co-occurrences. The degree expression s-selects the predicate to be gradable. Based on the locality concern, the functional head hypothesis provides a better architecture with a closer syntactical relationship among the core elements of CC. 2.3.1 Bresnan (1973) Bresnan (1973) proposes that than in English CC is a complementizer 42 中正大學 e-Thesys (94 學年度)
Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese introducing a comparative clause S’, which together with the comparative determiner –er form a discontinuous dependency element in the deep structure to modify the main predicate XP (either AP, advP, or NP). The comparative than clause is extraposed and adjoined to XP as (68). (68) a. b. XP’ XP’ 3 3 QP’ XP XP’ S’ 3 g 3 5 Det Q X QP’ XP than S 3 g 2 g -er S’ much -er much X 5 than S 2.3.2 Late Merge of Degree Clauses (Bhatt and Pancheva 2004) The study by Bhatt and Pancheva (2004) on the syntactic structure of CC in English is in the framework MP. They focus the interactions among the degree head, the degree clause, and the matrix gradable XP. In their analysis (69), they take the functional hypothesis and propose that Degree head –er and the degree than-clause form a degree quantifier argument, which must have a higher scope over the matrix gradable XP. And, the degree clause is merged after the DegP is moved from the specifier position of AP. This analysis explains the issues of the scope of the degree head –er and the word order. 43 中正大學 e-Thesys (94 學年度)
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Syntax of the Bi Comparative Construction in Mandarin Chinese

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