Download Pro-drop Structure in Chinese:

A Final Paper for the Course of Syntax
Pro-drop Structure in Chinese:
Based on Generalized Control Rule
Student: Chin-pin, Lu
Student Number: 69012203
Professor: Cindy, Hsin
Date: June, 25, 2003
The structure of pro-drop has been one of the interesting and debated
issues in syntax.
Chinese, as my mother tongue language, apparently has
permitted this structure in subject or object positions in many sentences, as (1)
and (2) illustrate.
1. ni renshi nage laoshi
you know that teacher
Do you know that teacher?
2. (wo) renshi (ta).
I know him
ma?
Q
( I ) know (him).
Example (1) is a question, and (2) is the answer, demonstrating a
common pro-drop sentence, where both the subject and object are omitted.
This arises the important question: how does the pro-drop structure recover its
reference in Chinese? Intending to probe into this issue, I am motivated to
investigate the context of pro-drop structure in Chinese.
First of all, this paper
aims to establish the claim that Chinese is a pro-drop language. In addition, it
discusses the distributional and referential properties of pro-drop in Chinese.
To have a thorough and clear understanding of pro-drop structures in
Chinese, related literature has to begin with the introduction of null categories.
Null (=covert=empty) categories, as Radford (1997) indicates, are categories
which have no overt phonetic form, and hence which are inaudible or silent.
Chomsky (1982) claimed that null categories could be classified into four
natural classes by the anaphor-pronominal distinction, namely, NP-trace,
variable, PRO, pro.
According to Radford, an anaphor is an expression (like
himself) which must take its reference from an antecedent; a pronoun is a word
in place of a noun expression, but it differs from a noun in that it does not have
intrinsic descriptive content.
Each of the category has the feature [+a, -p], [-a,
-p], [+a, +p], and [-a, +p] respectively.
On the discussion of pro-drop structure,
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the latter two are the focus of this paper.
The null category pro as well as its brother PRO are similar and need to be
distinguished. As Radford defines, PRO designates a covert null-case
pronoun which presents the understood subject of an infinitive complement
of a control predicate, e.g. in a structure such as John decided to PRO leave.
By contrast, pro is a covert nominative-case pronoun which represents the
understood subject of a finite clause.
As the definitions refer, the similarity of
pro and PRO lies on the property of a covert pronominal subject. The salient
difference between pro and PRO is the linguistic context in which they occur,
marked as bold faced. Generally, pro and PRO are in a complementary
distribution, and this point will be investigated further later in this paper.
The addressing to the occurrence of pro and PRO centers the focus of this
paper.
PRO occurs across languages, while pro is not universal.
Chomsky
(1981, 1982) refers that the distribution of pro follows the principle of
recoverability, the idea of which is that a pronoun may drop from a sentence
only if certain essential aspects of its reference can be recovered from other
aspects of the sentence.
Thus, a null category is allowed in the subject
position of the finite clause if the verbal agreement (henceforth Agr) is rich
enough to recover the dropped content. This assumption is used as a basic
method to differentiate pro-drop languages (e.g. Spanish) and non-pro-drop
languages (e.g. English). Therefore, Spanish allows a null subject in finite
clause because it has rich verbal inflections to reach the Agr.
By contrast,
English does not allow the same situation, because the Agr system is not
sufficient.
Since Agr is the distinguished feature between pro-drop and non-pro-drop
languages, it arises the question that whether Chinese is a pro-drop language,
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the first issue in this paper.
As indicated earlier, a pro-drop structure appears
in the linguistic context where the subject-verb Agr is rich enough to recover
the dropped content. However, the claim that pro is excluded where Agr is
not rich enough is challenged by Huang (1984, 1989). Holding the standpoint
that Chinese is a pro-drop language, Huang argued that in Chinese, where Agr
is absent, the occurrence of pro in the subject position of finite clause is still
possible. As Huang claims, if government theory is assumed to account that
the subject of a clause is assigned Case only if it is governed by an element in
INFL, such as aspect marker or modal, then the null pronominal governed and
has Case is a pro, while the one ungoverned and does not have Case is PRO.
In this respect, it is reasonable to claim that the null subject in Chinese can be
a pro; in other words, Chinese is a pro-drop language. The following
examples are used to illustrate this point:
3.
Zhangsan
shuo
[(ta) du wan shu
le].
Zhangsan
say he read finish book ASP
Zhangsan said that (he) finished reading.
4.
Zhangsan xiangxin [(ta) hui qu].
Zhangsan believe
he will go
Zhangsan believes that (he) will go there.
In both examples, the subjects of the embedded clauses are assigned Case
because it is governed by an element in INFL, namely, an ASP in (3), and a
modal in (4). As indicated earlier, being governed, the embedded subjects
are a pro.
Moreover, when pro is dropped, both sentences are still allowed.
Thus, both (3) and (4) provide evidences for the claim that Chinese is a
pro-drop language.
Huang supports his own idea by pointing out that the relevant factor
allowing lexical subject is finiteness, and different languages may encode
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finiteness with different elements of AUX.
Chinese distinguishes finite and
non-finite clauses by elements of AUX. When a clause is embedded under a
say or believe type verb, it may take an overt or covert aspect or modal.
Sentence (5) is an example for this view.
Though the elements of AUX are
not overtly shown in (5), a lexical subject is permitted in a either pro or overt
NP form.
5.
Zhangsan shuo
Zhangsan say
[(ta) meitian
lai]
he every-day come
Zhangsan said that (he) comes/came everyday. (Huang, 1989: 189)
However, when a clause is embedded under “control verb,” it cannot take any
elements of Aux.
Consequently, a lexical subject is not permitted, and thus
the empty category is not pro, rather, PRO. This point is demonstrated as (6):
6. Lisi
Lisi
Lisi
sheafa [e lai].
try
come
tried to come. (Huang, 1989: 189)
According to the above analyses, a relationship between lexical subjects and
AUX is suggested by Huang: if the subject of a clause is obligatorily null, then
the clause cannot contain an element of AUX.
In other words, if the clause
subject is embedded under a control verb, it cannot contain any elements of
AUX, and thus there is no overt lexical subject.
By contrast, if the clause is
embedded under a say or believe type verb, it may contain elements of AUX,
and thus there is a lexical subject in overt or covert form.
However, since (5) and (6) explain the embedded null subjects, one might
argue that how matrix pro-drop in Chinese is accounted by the theory outlined
above.
Following Huang’s argumentation, example (7) is used to illustrate
the matrix pro-drop.
7. [pro] xiwan ni hui xihuan zhege liwu.
hope you would like
this
gift
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I/you/he/she/they hope(s) that you would like this gift.
Sentence (7) shows a null subject in a matrix sentence. Since matrix
sentences are [+tense, -finite], the matrix subject is a pro governed by an
element in INFL.
Besides, when the pro is dropped, this sentence is still valid.
In view of this, the matrix pro-drop is licensed syntactically.
According to the above data and analyses, a brief conclusion can be drawn
that the distribution of lexical subjects in Chinese, is based on government; the
null subject in a finite clause in Chinese is a governed pro, and that in a
non-finite clause is an ungoverned PRO. After establishing the claim that
Chinese is a pro-drop language, this paper moves on to discuss the other
important topic, the distributional and referential properties of pro-drop in
Chinese.
The syntactical theory that gives account to most pro-drop sentences in
Chinese is Huang’s Generalized Control Rule (GCR).
8. Generalized Control Rule
An empty pronominal is controlled in its control domain (if it has one).
The notion of a controlled domain is stated as:
9. α is the control domain for β iff it is the minimal category that satisfies both a
and b:
a. α is the lowest S or NP that contains (i) β, or (ii) the minimal
maximal category containing β (MMC (β)).
b. α contains a SUBJECT accessible to β.
As Huang further explains, GCR specifies that both pro and PRO must
have a local, unique, non-arbitrary antecedent.
In other words, if pro or PRO
has a control domain, then it is controlled, whereas if pro or PRO has no
control domain, then it does not need to be controlled.
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In the latter case,
pro or PRO may have a long distance or split antecedents, or it may have a
arbitrary reference, or other pragmatic considerations.
Both PRO and pro have controlled constructions.
The linguistic context in
which PRO is licensed comes from the ‘control predicate.’ As indicated
earlier, PRO is the null subject of infinitive complement of a controlled
predicate.
According to Tang (2000), the control predicates in Chinese mainly
include two types: (1) subject-control verb, of which its embedded subject is
controlled by the matrix subject, and (2) object-control verb, of which its
embedded subject is controlled by the matrix object.
The examples of
subject-control verbs are xihuan like, xiangyao want, shefa try, jueding decide,
and so on. The examples of object-control verbs are jiao call, bi force,
tuexuen recommend, pai command, etc.
10.
wo xiangyao [PRO xue hanyu].
I
want
learn Chinese
I want to [PRO learn Chinese].
11.
tamen bi wo [PRO gankuai
huiqu].
they force
I [
quickly go home].
They force me [PRO go home quickly].
Example (10) is a subject control construction.
Due to the fact that the
minimal S is not a control domain for its null subject, GCR predicts that a PRO
(and a Chinese pro) is allowed to have a higher category as its control
domain.
Consequently, in (10), the control domain for PRO is the matrix
clause, and thus the PRO and the matrix subject are co-indexed.
Following
the same argumentation, in (11), since the minimal S is not a control domain
for the null subject, the PRO has the matrix clause as its control domain.
Besides, because the verb in (11) is an object-control verb, the PRO and the
matrix object are co-indexed.
Like PRO, pro in Chinese can be controlled in certain environments.
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12.
Zhangsan
qi
ma
qi
di [pro hen lei].
Zhangsan ride horse ride till
very tired
Zhangsan rode a horse until he got very tired.
13. Zhangsan ku de [pro hen shangxin].
Zhangsan cry till
very sad
Zhangsan cried till he got very sad. (Huang, 1989: 192)
Examples (12) and (13) are so-called resultative sentences.
Resulting from
having a control domain, the null subject in each of the sentences must be a
controlled pro.
category.
Furthermore, the null subject can be filled with a lexical
For example, the null subject in (12) can be Zhangsan or ma, and
that in (13) can be Zhangsan or other people.
Both PRO and pro have uncontrolled constructions. As aforementioned,
GCR contends that if pro or PRO has no control domain, then it does not need
to be controlled. In this case, pro or PRO may have a long distance or split
antecedents, or it may have an arbitrary reference, or other pragmatic
considerations. Examples (14) and (15) individually illustrate the uncontrolled
situations containing PRO and pro.
14.
[PRO xiyan]
you
hai.
Smoke
have harm
Smoking is harmful.
15. Zhangsan wen [pro yao-bu-yao
lai].
Zhangsan ask
should-not-should come
Zhangsan asked whether he/she/you/one….should come or not.
In (14), the null subject is a PRO, because it cannot be filled with a lexical
category. While the null subject in (15) is a pro, since it is embedded in wen,
belonging to say-type verbs, and can be filled with a lexical category.
In both examples, the minimal S dominating PRO/pro does not have an
accessible SUBJECT, so PRO/pro does not have a control domain.
Therefore, PRO/pro is uncontrolled, and the reference may be arbitrary
reference, or subject to pragmatic considerations.
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In this respect, Rizzi’s
(1986) proposal is worthwhile to be mentioned here.
licensing and the identification of pro.
He distinguishes the
Licensing of pro is syntactic, while
identification of pro is semantic; in other words, pro recovers from previous
discourse.
However, since some examples in which the pro-drop can
recovers its referential properties by the syntactical rule as GCR have been
reviewed empirically, Rizzi’s claim may be suggested that it should need some
modification.
The adjusted view can be that the licensing and also the
identification of a pro is basically syntactic.
When the syntactic rules can not
give account for the reference of a pro, a pro has to recover from another
domain, namely, discourse or pragmatics.
The above line of argumentation helps the switch of the focus from null
subject to null object to make the discussion of pro-drop in Chinese complete.
It will be demonstrated that null object is neither licensed nor identified based
on GCR, but is permitted beyond syntax, that is, in discourse or pragmatics.
Examples (16)-(18) demonstrate this point.
16.
a. *…[s John saw pro].
b. *…(for) [s John to see pro].
c. *…[s Zhangsan kanjian pro le].
Zhangsan see
ASP
… Zhangsan saw pro.
17. ji
chi
pro le
ma?
chiken eat
ASP Q
Did chicken eat pro?
(Huang, 1989: 202)
18. chi pro le.
eat
ASP
Eat pro.
According to Huang, the finite 16 (c) in Chinese and non-finite 16 (b) can be
treated on a par, because they both have only Zhangsan as the accessible
SUBJECT. Thus, in 16 (c) and 16 (b), the pro has to be controlled by the
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subject.
However, this would violate condition B of the Binding Theory,
stating that a pronoun must be free in its control domain, which is the S in (16).
Likewise, for 16 (a), pro cannot be co-indexed with John. Therefore, in
English and Chinese, a null pronominal is excluded from the object position.
Nevertheless, in the conversation context (17) and (18), the null pro in object
position are considered appropriate in this case.
This is consistent as the
claim made before that when the dropped content cannot be licensed or
identified by syntactical rules, it searches help from other aspects.
In this
case, though a null object is illegitimate syntactically in Chinese, it can be
recovered from the discourse information.
Based on the above analyses, a summary can be made about the
distributional and referential properties of pro-drop in Chinese by GCR.
In
Chinese, a governed pro patterns with an ungoverned PRO, grammatically
controlled if occurring under control verbs, but free if embedded under
say-type verbs.
Furthermore, conclusions as a whole can be synthesized.
In absence of Agr, Chinese still allows pro-drop structures to occur, because
mostly the dropped content can be recovered by the syntactic rule of GCR.
Only when syntactic rules cannot license or identify a pro-drop structure do
other aspects of rules come to intervene. Therefore, Baptista (1996) supports
Huang and suggests that there may be a need to modify the account that a pro
is excluded where there is no Agr.
According to the principle of recoverability,
both Huang’s and Baptista’s claims are consistent with the basic assumption of
the standard basic account of this principle.
References
9
Baptista, M. (1996). On the nature of Capeverdean Creole.
In Harvard Working
Papers in Linguistics, 5.
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris, Dordrecht.
Chomsky, N. (1982). Some Concepts and Consequences pf the Theory of Government
and Binding. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Huang, C.-T. J. (1984). On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns.
Linguistic Inquiry, 14, 554-561.
Huang, C.-T. J. (1989). Pro-drop in Chinese: A generalized control theory. In O.
Jaeggli, & K. J. Safir (ed.). The Null Subject Parameter (pp. 185-214). Kluwer,
Dordrecht.
Ouhalla, J. (1999). Transformational Grammar: From Principles and Parameters to
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Raford, A. (1997). Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A Minimal
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Rizzi, L. (1986). On the status of subject clitics in Romance. In O. Jaeggli, & C.
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Dordrecht.
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1.1, 191-214.
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