A study of the extractive modifier in modern Chinese = 現代漢語提取型定中短語研究

Abstract

This thesis investigates extractive modifiers in Modern Chinese. The language mainly uses the pre-modifier, i.e. a modifier preceding the head, for NP modification, and a functional ‘de’的 may sit between the modifier and the head. If the head is an NP and the modifer a VP, the “VP(+de)+NP” is likely, but not necessarily, to be an “extractive modifier”. There is the semantic requirement: the group of entities refered to by the NP participate the event refered to by the VP, so that we say the form “VP(+de)+NP” “extracts” the group of entities from the event, and we call the form an extractive “modifer-head” structure and the “VP(+de)” an extractive modifier.

The syntactic nature of the type remains controversial and its formal restricitions are little discussed. The current investigation focuses on both. The modifier has been regarded by some an appositive, since its constituent function is identical to the head, while the challengers claim that the form “VP(+de)” takes a different syntactic role when changing from a pre-modifer to a nominal sentence constituent. Chapter 3 moderates the controversy by pointing out a way of seeing both sides to be reasonable in its final part. Such work requires a full description from the formal semantics of the extractive modifier and a comprehensive investigation of the formal restrictions of the form “VP(+de)+NP”; they are provided in Chapter 2 and the early parts of Chapter 3 respectively.

Chapter 4 deals with two subjects, namely how an extractive modifier perform in the serial ordering of multiple modifiers and what the restrictions, either formal or semantic, are for an extractive modifer to help construct a cleft sentence. Both touch significant, yet little concerned, topics regarding the external function of the extractive modifier.

Chapter 1 provides the background with a critical literature review and Chapter 5 concludes.