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Article published In: International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 3:1 (2016) ► pp.79–100

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On the (non)-existence of verb-stranding ellipsis in Chinese

 | National Taiwan Normal University
Published online: 16 June 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.3.1.03wu
This paper develops the empirical and theoretical basis for the necessity in admitting the operation of verb-stranding ellipsis (VVPE) in Chinese. I present new arguments showing that, though two analytic possibilities — null argument analysis and VVPE analysis — are in principle available in the grammar of Chinese, they can be differentiated in specific syntactic environments. In particular, I show that the existing null argument approaches would have difficulty in accounting for the following facts: disjunction of multi-constituent elements under negation, the difference of island effects in the presence of a linguistic antecedent, the verb identity requirement and the possibility of having part of the idiomatic expression as the missing gap. Therefore, it is argued that VVPE must remain a viable syntactic operation in Chinese when a null object analysis is unavailable.
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