Head dependency and degree words in Mandarin
In Mandarin Chinese, the degree word
ji ‘extremely’ can occur either to the left of
a gradable expression, like other degree words, or at the end of a
sentence, followed by the particle le. Meanwhile,
head dependencies have been recognized to be either syntactic or
non-syntactic, and syntactic head dependencies can be established by
either a movement chain or a non-movement dependency. This short
paper argues for two dependencies in the ji-final
construction in Mandarin: one is seen in the syntactic Focus Agree
dependency of the non-temporal sentence-final le,
and the other is seen in the non-syntactic head dependency of the
degree word ji.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Observations on ji in the JI-LE
construction
- 3.Observations on S-le in the JI-LE
construction
- 4.The head dependencies in the JI-LE construction
- 5.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgments
-
Notes
-
References