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ERIC Number: ED351854
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1992
Pages: 44
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Locative Inversion in Cantonese.
Mok, Sui-Sang
This study investigates the phenomenon of "Locative Inversion" in Cantonese. The term "Locative Inversion" indicates that the locative phrase (LP) syntactic process in Cantonese and the appears at the sentence-initial position and its logical subject occurs postverbally. It is demonstrated that this Locative Inversion is a widespread syntactic process in Cantonese and the sentence-initial LPs in the Locative Inversion are argued to be subjects that come from the postverbal complement position in the majority of cases. It is also possible to move a preverbal adjunct locative phrase to the subject position in the existential "yau" (have) sentences. This movement hypothesis is crucially dependent on the relative distribution and co-occurrence restrictions between the sentence-initial LPs and their coreferent proform "hai dou" (there). One important observation drawn from the SuperRaising analysis of the sentence-initial locative phrases is that "pro" in Chinese, albeit an A-specifier, will not block A-movement, unlike what is predicted by the theory of Relativized Minimality. (JL)
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A