32.3371, Books: All structures great and small: Cheng

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-3371. Wed Oct 27 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.3371, Books: All structures great and small: Cheng

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Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2021 23:05:24
From: Janacy van Duijn Genet [lot at uva.nl]
Subject: All structures great and small: Cheng

 


Title: All structures great and small 
Subtitle: On copular sentences with shì in Mandarin 
Series Title: LOT Dissertation Series  

Publication Year: 2021 
Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
	   http://www.lotpublications.nl/
	

Book URL: https://www.lotpublications.nl/all-structures-great-and-small 


Author: Hang Cheng

Paperback: ISBN:  9789460933813 Pages: 281 Price: Europe EURO 34


Abstract:

This dissertation provides a description and analysis of the Mandarin copula
shì and copular structures containing it. On the basis of a comprehensive
description of the syntactic distribution of shì and properties of different
types of copular sentences (predicational, specificational, and equative),
this study proposes a unified structural analysis for predicational and
specificational copular sentences in Mandarin.

It is proposed that shì is a functional element in the structure of the
clause, whose role is to establish the subject--predicate relation.
Importantly, shì is not a verb, and copular structures in Mandarin contain no
verb phrase at all, which is consistent with proposals about pronominal
copular elements in other languages, such as Hebrew and Polish.
Specificational copular sentences are analysed as inverted predicational
copular sentences, derived via predicate inversion. This analysis captures
both the underlying similarities and the differences between the two types of
copular sentences. It is also pointed out that the third type of copular
sentences, equatives, is clearly distinct from both predicational and
specificational copular sentences and should thus be analysed in a different
way.

The dissertation also proposes that tense is not always syntactically
expressed in Mandarin copular structures. While sentences with a stage-level
predicate express tense syntactically, those with an individual-level
predicate do not.
 



Linguistic Field(s): Syntax

Subject Language(s): Chinese, Mandarin (cmn)


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=156675




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