Abstract
Inspired by the split-CP hypothesis, different orders of the functional projections in the left periphery are proposed for Chinese. Based on previous studies, this paper proposes the following hierarchy for Chinese: AttitudeP1 > AttitudeP2 > Special QuestionP > Illocutionary ForceP > Only-focusP > Sentential.AspectP > TP. These projections host sentence final particles (SFP) or null operators. When the compared projections are both head-final, the syntactic word order reflects the relevant hierarchy; when the compared projections are not uniformly head-final, their scope interaction reflects the order. This study shows that the higher a projection, the more subjective its interpretation and the harder it can be embedded. For instance, being subject-oriented sentential aspects and only-type focus are not directly linked to the speaker’s attitude and therefore, they can be embedded and be interpreted within the subordinate clause. As for the SFPs linked to illocutionary forces, some can be embedded, while others cannot. Special questions and the SFPs expressing the speaker’s mood, interjection and attitude cannot be embedded at all. This fact is regarded as an indirect argument in favor of my proposal.
Acknowledgments
I would also like to express my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for comments, suggestions and corrections. Special thanks go to Jacopo Garzonio and Hans Obenauer for helping me with special questions in Italian dialects.
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Note
Earlier versions of this article were presented at different conferences and I express my gratitude to the audiences for their questions and valuable comments which helped me to shape the present version, especially Waltraud Paul, Cécile De Cat and Karen Lahousse (Workshop New forays into root phenomena in The 44th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Universidad de la Rioja, Logroño, Spain, 2011), Dylan Wei-Tien Tsai, Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine (for the discussion on the two eryi ‘only’), C.-T. James Huang (The 7th Conference of the European Association of Chinese Linguistics (EACL-7), Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy, 2011), Guglielmo Cinque, Timothy Bazalgette, Jenneke van der Wal and Lutz Marten (Workshop Parametric variation in discourse-configurationality in The 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, (SLE 2012), University of Stockholm, Sweden, 2012).
©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
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