Adjunct clauses and Topic-prominence in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence for the existence of Topicmarker as a functional category in Chinese. Adjunct clauses are shown to be base-generated in the specifier position of TopicP. The rigid order in Chinese “adjunct clause — main clause” thus follows directly from the topic prominence of Chinese. Furthermore, a functional category Conjunction (heading conditional and causal adjunct clauses) is proposed in order to explain extraction phenomena with respect to adjunct clauses. We will argue that topicalisation of a verbal argument XP is movement out of IP into the specifier position of a functional category. Last, but not least, we will substantiate our claim that functional categories serve as raising categories for moved arguments and that adjuncts can be base-generated in their specifier positions.

This paper was written for the workshop “Was determiniert Wortstellung?” at the “15. Jahrestagung der DGFS” in Jena, March 1993. Unfortunately, we were not able to Present it on that occasion. Our thanks go to Brigitta Haftka for nevertheless including our paper in the proceedings.