The Sinitic Nominal Phrase Structure: A Minimalist Perspective

Abstract

This dissertation is a comparative study of the morphosyntax of the constituents referred to as noun phrases in traditional grammar. In line with Abney’s (1987) Determiner Phrase (DP) Hypothesis, this study investigates the syntactic structures of Sinitic nominal phrases by means of a thorough study of lexical elements, such as numerals, classifiers, possessives, adjectives, and nouns, and functional elements, such as plural/collective markers, force particles, and modification markers. It is argued that the syntactic structure of the nominal phrase is universal regardless of the presence of lexical items which realise the heads of the functional projections. This study further proposes a unified account of the articulated structure of nominal phrases, as a full-fledged DP, to explain the syntactic phenomena in both classifier and non-classifier languages. More specifically, a Probe-Goal feature-valuing model is proposed to account for parametric variation among Sinitic and other languages within the framework of Chomsky’s (2000, 2001, 2004) Phase-based Minimalist Programme. Furthermore, given the assumption of the Split-DP Hypothesis, this study proposes that the DP in Sinitic languages is also not a unitary projection but an articulated array of functional projections, including DforceP, DfocusP, DtopicP and DdefiniteP. As their counterparts in the clausal domain, these functional projections encode discourse-related properties, such as illocutionary force, topic, and focus. As far as modification structures are concerned, this study argues that the bare modifier is base-generated in the Spec of a functional or lexical projection, whereas the marked modifier is adjoined to the left of the nominal phrase by the operation Adjunction.