Honorable Mention for the LST Ph.D. Dissertation of the Year Award
Congratulations to Dr. Wei-cherng Sam Jheng, one of our recent Ph.D.'s, who received Honorable Mention for the 2018 Ph.D. Dissertation of the Year Award from the Linguistic Society of Taiwan! His advisors are Prof. Wei-tien Dylan Tsai and Hsiao-hung Iris Wu (National Taiwan Normal University)
The Syntax-Discourse Interface in Mandarin
The goal of this dissertation is to investigate whether discourse notions are active in the syntactic computation or outside the domain of it. I document two phenomena in Mandarin, Aboutness Topic (AT) and Nonsententials (NS), whose interpretative import is acutely sensitive to the discourse context and needs to be syntactically substantiated in the articulated peripheral structure of CP/vP. In particular, I propose that there are two means to activate the syntax-discourse interface permitted by the computation system.
Mandarin AT has been discussed at great length in the previous scholarship, and its designated position and information structural properties receive a variety of analyses. Nonetheless, I offer novel observations showing that AT in Mandarin can be analyzed on a par with XP-split constructions, according to a battery of diagnostics and its information structural makeup. Following Fanselow and Cavár’s (2002) analysis, I propose that AT results from successive feature-checking processes in which a XP, whose sub-parts are merged with two disparate features (topic and focus) in the numeration, permits its subparts to undergo feature checking in corresponding functional projections and to be spelt out differently in the left periphery of CP/vP. The case of AT concludes that topic and focus are accessible in the numeration and corresponding functional projections are merged for feature-checking purposes in order for the derivation to converge.
NSs, whose syntactic structure is considerably reduced, are able to encode clause typing information, illocutionary force and the involvement of SPEAKER and HEARER/ADDRESSEE. Following the line of reasoning in Sigurðsson & Maling (2009) and Tsai (2016), I propose that NSs have a fully-fledged peripheral structure of CP, according to the effects exerted upon their interpretation. Different from the feature-checking mechanism activated for AT, I argue that no discourse properties are accessible in the numeration and drive the derivation. Rather, a speech act layer, a supra-sentential layer, merges to and dominates ForceP, and is responsible for the encoding of the relevant discourse properties.
The two phenomena of inquiry suggest two means to activate the syntax-discourse interface. On the one hand, the syntax-discourse interface can be activated by merging lexical items with strong informational structural features that have to be checked by corresponding function projections in the periphery of CP/vP, along the lines of Aboh’s (2010) view that the interface starts with the numeration. On the other hand, a cluster of discourse properties, such as SPEAKER and HEARER/ADDRESSEE, cannot be treated as formal features driving the derivation and, however, can be concretized by another supra-sentential layer, the speech act layer. The two means are made available due to the analyticity of Mandarin syntax. The major consequence of this work is to show that the theory of discourse is closely tied to the architecture of grammar in general.
The Syntax-Discourse Interface in Mandarin
The goal of this dissertation is to investigate whether discourse notions are active in the syntactic computation or outside the domain of it. I document two phenomena in Mandarin, Aboutness Topic (AT) and Nonsententials (NS), whose interpretative import is acutely sensitive to the discourse context and needs to be syntactically substantiated in the articulated peripheral structure of CP/vP. In particular, I propose that there are two means to activate the syntax-discourse interface permitted by the computation system.
Mandarin AT has been discussed at great length in the previous scholarship, and its designated position and information structural properties receive a variety of analyses. Nonetheless, I offer novel observations showing that AT in Mandarin can be analyzed on a par with XP-split constructions, according to a battery of diagnostics and its information structural makeup. Following Fanselow and Cavár’s (2002) analysis, I propose that AT results from successive feature-checking processes in which a XP, whose sub-parts are merged with two disparate features (topic and focus) in the numeration, permits its subparts to undergo feature checking in corresponding functional projections and to be spelt out differently in the left periphery of CP/vP. The case of AT concludes that topic and focus are accessible in the numeration and corresponding functional projections are merged for feature-checking purposes in order for the derivation to converge.
NSs, whose syntactic structure is considerably reduced, are able to encode clause typing information, illocutionary force and the involvement of SPEAKER and HEARER/ADDRESSEE. Following the line of reasoning in Sigurðsson & Maling (2009) and Tsai (2016), I propose that NSs have a fully-fledged peripheral structure of CP, according to the effects exerted upon their interpretation. Different from the feature-checking mechanism activated for AT, I argue that no discourse properties are accessible in the numeration and drive the derivation. Rather, a speech act layer, a supra-sentential layer, merges to and dominates ForceP, and is responsible for the encoding of the relevant discourse properties.
The two phenomena of inquiry suggest two means to activate the syntax-discourse interface. On the one hand, the syntax-discourse interface can be activated by merging lexical items with strong informational structural features that have to be checked by corresponding function projections in the periphery of CP/vP, along the lines of Aboh’s (2010) view that the interface starts with the numeration. On the other hand, a cluster of discourse properties, such as SPEAKER and HEARER/ADDRESSEE, cannot be treated as formal features driving the derivation and, however, can be concretized by another supra-sentential layer, the speech act layer. The two means are made available due to the analyticity of Mandarin syntax. The major consequence of this work is to show that the theory of discourse is closely tied to the architecture of grammar in general.