HAL Id: hal-01905157
https://hal.science/hal-01905157
Submitted on 25 Oct 2018
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entic research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.
L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diusion de documents
scientiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.
Introduction to the Special Issue on Complex Sentences
in Chinese
Waltraud Paul, Victor Junnan Pan
To cite this version:
Waltraud Paul, Victor Junnan Pan. Introduction to the Special Issue on Complex Sentences in
Chinese. Linguistic Analysis, In press, The syntax of complex sentences in Chinese, 42 (1-2). �hal-
01905157�
1
Introduction to the Special Issue on Complex Sentences in Chinese
*
September 2018
Waltraud Paul
1
& Victor Junnan Pan
2
1
Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l’Asie orientale (CRLAO), CNRS-EHESS-INALCO, Paris
2
Institut Universitaire de France, CNRS, University Paris 7
The notion of complex sentence is based on the dichotomy between main clause, on the one
hand, and subordinate clause or adjunct clause, on the other. Subordinate clause is used here
mainly as a semantic label chosen to capture its relation of modification with respect to the
main cause. Whether the subordinate clause is indeed in a hierarchically lower position with
respect to the main clause, as implied by the meaning of subordinate when taken as a
syntactic term, is often glossed over and in fact is not necessarily the case. Adjunct clause, by
contrast, started out as a syntactic label in X-bar theory, but quickly became a term of a hybrid
syntactic-semantic nature covering different types of non-main (non-complement) clauses,
irrespective of whether they were actually syntactically adjoined to the main clause or not.
We therefore prefer the more neutral term adverbial clause and use the dichotomy
‘adverbial clause vs main clause’ in order to refer to the component parts of a complex
sentence. This is artificial insofar as the complex sentence qua matrix clause in fact subsumes
the adverbial clause as one of its constituents, as is evident when replacing the adverbial
clause in e.g. If he doesn’t come, I’ll go on my own by a simple adverbial NP such as
tomorrow: [
Matrix Cl
Tomorrow, I’ll go on my own.]. But this terminological distinction allows
us to refer to each clausal domain separately and to divide complex sentences into different
subtypes according to the relative order of its component clauses: (i) ‘adverbial clause - main
clause’, (ii) ‘main clause - adverbial clause’, (iii) ‘matrix subject - adverbial clause - main
predicate’, i.e. the case where the adverbial clause appears below the matrix subject and above
the matrix predicate. To determine the hierarchy between main clause and adverbial clause in
these different types as well as their respective internal structure is the main aim of this
special issue.
Such an investigation is necessary because the structure of complex sentences in
Chinese has hardly been studied within the generative framework.
1
This is surprising insofar
as complex sentences served as a crucial testing ground for binding theory in the wake of
Huang (1982), in particular the binding construal possibilities for zìjǐ ‘self’ (cf. Huang/Li/Li
2009, ch. 9 for discussion and references), but also with respect to the licensing conditions for
pro drop (null subjects). The wealth of studies on zìjǐ ‘self’ hardly ever addressed the question
of the internal structure and hierarchy of complex sentences, but implicitly took for granted
the identity between Chinese and English in this domain. This might partly be due to the fact
that for a long time syntactic theory did not provide many structural options for the analysis of
complex sentences other than right or left adjunction to the main clause. However, even
within the adjunction scenario more fine-grained approaches to complex sentences existed.
For example, Haiman (1978) back in the seventies argued for an analysis of
conditional clauses in English and other languages as topics from a semantic and morpho-
syntactic point of view. Similarly, when Greenberg’s (1963: 111) universal 14 (“In
conditional statements, the conditional clause precedes the conclusion as the normal order in
all languages.”) is transposed into structural terms, the conditional clause occupies a position
higher than the consequent clause, as demonstrated by Whitman (2008: 235):
*
We are grateful to Audrey Li for comments and suggestions on a previous draft. We would also like to thank
the editor of Linguistic Analysis, David Willingham, for his constant and cheerful support.
1
Among the three available monographs on complex sentences, i.e. Eifring (1993, 1995), Xing Fuyi (2001) and
Lu Peng (2003, 2008), only the latter briefly examines possible differences between adverbial clauses in terms of
Haegeman’s (2002) dichotomy central vs peripheral clauses.
2
(1) [
S'
If conditionals are specifiers of S' [
S
they precede the consequent]]
This can be directly applied to Chinese where conditional clauses can be analyzed as clausal
topics and as such precede the consequent as well. Translating the X-bar schema with an S-
adjunction of the clausal topic in (1) into a split CP à la Rizzi (1997), this results in a
configuration where the conditional clause is located in the specifier position of Topic Phrase,
whose head can be realized optionally by topic markers such as ne (cf. Gasde & Paul 1996):
(2) [
TopP
[
cond.cl.
Rúguǒ tā bù lái ] [
Top’
[
Top°
ne] [
TP
wǒ jiù zìjǐ qù ]]]
if 3SG NEG come TOP 1SG then self go
‘If he doesn’t come, then I’ll go on my own.’
Other types of adjunct clauses can likewise be analyzed as clausal topics:
(3) [
TopP
[
inferential.cl.
Jìrán tā yǐjīng lái -le ] [
Top’
[
Top°
ne]
since 3SG already come-PERF TOP
[
TP
wǒmen jiù zhíjīe gēn tā shuō]]].
1PL then directly to 3SG say
‘Since he is already here, we can talk to him directly.’
(4) [
TopP
[
concessive.cl.
Suīrán tā hěn piàoliàng] [
Top’
[
Top°
∅]
although 3SG very pretty
[
TP
wǒ háishì bù xihuān tā ]]].
1SG still NEG like 3SG
‘Although she is pretty, I still don’t like her.’
(5) [
TopP
[
causal.cl.
Yīnweì tā méi yǒu shíjiān] [
Top’
[
Top°
∅]
because 3SG NEG have time
[
TP
wǒ zhǐ néng zìjǐ qù]]].
1
SG only can self go
‘Because he has no time, I cannot help but going on my own.’
While the topic position occupied by these different types of adjunct clauses is fairly obvious,
the categorial identity of the so-called “conjunctions” (rúguǒ ‘if’, jìrán ‘since’, suīrán
‘although’, yīnwèi ‘because’) is not clear. In addition, “conjunctions” probably do not form a
homogeneous class, but might involve adverbs, prepositions, postpositions and
complementizers.
The potential analysis of conjunctions as adverbs goes back to Chao Yuen Ren (1968:
113, §2.12.6; 790, §8.4). It is based on the observation that with respect to their position,
conjunctions pattern with adverbs and can either precede the subject or occur in the canonical
adverb position, i.e. below the subject and above the verb. More precisely, as observed by Lu
Peng (2003, 2008), conjunctions such as rúguǒ ‘if’, jìrán ‘since’, suīrán ‘although’ show the
same distribution as sentential adverbs such as xiǎnrán ‘naturally’, qíshí ‘in fact’, xìnghǎo
‘fortunately’ etc. (also cf. Paul (2016) for further discussion and references):
(6) [
TopP
[
cond.cl.
Tā rúguǒ bù lái ] [
Top’
[
Top°
ne] [
TP
wǒ jiù zìjǐ qù ]]]
3
SG if NEG come TOP 1SG then self go
‘If he doesn’t come, then I’ll go on my own.’
3
(7) [
TopP
[
concessive.cl.
Tā suīrán hěn piàoliàng] [
Top’
[
Top°
∅]
3SG although very pretty
[
TP
wǒ háishì bù xihuān tā ]]].
1SG still NEG like 3SG
‘Although she is pretty, I still don’t like her.’
(8) {Xiǎnrán /Qíshí} tā {xiǎnrán/qíshí} huì shuō fǎwén
naturally/ in.fact 3SG naturally/in.fact can speak French
‘Naturally/In fact, he can speak French.’
At first sight, the same observation also seems to hold for yīnwèi ‘because’, which can either
precede (cf. (5) above) or follow the subject:
(9) [
TopP
[
causal cl.
Tā yīnweì méi you shijiān] [
Top’
[
Top°
∅]
3SG because NEG have time
[
TP
míngtiān de huìyì jiù bèi qǔxiāo-le ]]].
tomorrow SUB meeting then PASS cancel- PERF
‘Because he has no time, tomorrow’s meeting was canceled.’
However, this is somewhat puzzling, given the existence of the preposition yīnwèi ‘because
of’; it would appear more plausible to analyze yīnwèi in example (5) as a head as well, i.e.
either as a preposition or a complementizer, not as an adverb. If it is assigned the status of
complementizer, then an additional projection hosting tā above the CP headed by yīnwèi
‘because’ must be postulated for (9). (10) provides an analysis along these lines where tā
‘s/he’ in TopP
2
is co-indexed with the empty pronoun present in the clausal complement of
yīnwèi ‘because’. TopP
2
in turn occupies the specifier position of the matrix TopP
1
:
(10) [
TopP1
[
TopP2
Tā
i
[
causalCP
yīnweì [
TP
pro
i
méi you shíjiān] ] ] [
Top1’
[
Top1°
∅]
3SG because NEG have time
[
TP
míngtiān de huìyì jiù bèi qǔxiāo-le]].
tomorrow
SUB meeting then PASS cancel- PERF
‘Because he has no time, tomorrow’s meeting was canceled.’
In principle, this opens the possibility of analyzing rúguǒ ‘if’, jìrán ‘since’, suīrán ‘although’
etc. as complementizers as well and to derive their position to the right of tā ‘s/he’ in (6) - (8)
above not by their sentential adverb status (allowing for two positions), but by topicalization
of the subject tā ‘s/he’.
2
To decide between these two competing analyses and their
ramifications is one of the central research questions to be addressed in this special issue.
Importantly, the existence of the two analytical options illustrated in (9) - (10) crucially
hinges on the existence of null subjects in Chinese. The unavailability of null subjects in
English illustrates one of the major differences between the two languages that make it
impossible to simply treat their complex sentences on a par, contrary to what has been
implicitly assumed so far.
Let us now leave the issue of the categorial identity of “conjunctions” and return to the
syntactic properties of complex sentences themselves. One influential account of adverbial
clauses, hence complex sentences, is that by Haegeman (2012), as well as her earlier and
subsequent works. She establishes a correlation between the internal syntax of adverbial
2
We abstract away here from the additional possibility of topicalizing the subject in the adverb scenario as well.
4
clauses, i.e. the (non) availability of argument fronting, on the one hand, and their degree of
“integration” (central vs peripheral) with the main clause, on the other.
(11) *If these exams you don’t pass, you won’t get the degree. (Haegeman 2012: 156)
(12) If some precautions they did indeed take, many other possible measures they neglected.
(Haegeman 2012: 159)
While the if-clause in (11) states a condition for the event in the main clause to happen and is
therefore classified as a central adverbial clause (CAC) by Haegeman, this is not the case for
the “peripheral” if-clause in (12), which instead expresses a contrast with respect to the
proposition in the main clause.
Phenomena such as argument fronting are considered to be typical of main clauses and
hence are called main clause phenomena (MCP) or root clause phenomena. (cf. a.o. Heycock
2006 and Haegeman (2012). Importantly, MCP are not restricted to main clauses, but also
exist in a relatively well-defined subset of embedded clauses, among them the clausal
complement of bridge verbs and the so-called peripheral adverbial clauses (PAC) (cf.
Haegeman 2002).
In earlier approaches, the incompatibility of CAC with argument fronting was
accounted for by the truncation account (cf. Haegeman 2006) postulating a reduced left
periphery for central adverbial clauses, hence incapable of hosting fronted arguments. By
contrast, Haegeman (2012) proposes a movement account for the derivation of central
adverbial clauses, in combination with selective intervention as discussed in Starke (2001)
and Rizzi (2004). More precisely, “temporal and conditional clauses are hidden relatives in
which argument fronting is ruled out by intervention” (Haegeman 2012: 285).
This analysis can be straightforwardly applied to Chinese temporal clauses featuring
shíhòu ‘moment, time when’ which involve a relative clause and where argument fronting is
excluded:
3
(13) Tā dào Běijīng de shíhou,
3SG arrive Beijing SUB moment
wūrǎn jiù yǐjīng hěn yánzhòng le.
pollution then already very serious SFP
‘[At the time] When he arrived at Beijing, the pollution had already been very bad.’
By contrast, although conditional clauses will turn out to be (potential) CACs in Chinese as
well, they are clearly not hidden relatives; inter alia they do not always require the presence
of conjunctions such as rúguǒ ‘if’ (cf. (2) and (6) above), but can also be “bare”:
(14) [
TopP
[
cond.cl.
Tā bù lái ] [
Top’
[
Top°
Ø] [
TP
wǒ jiù zìjǐ qù ]]]
3SG NEG come TOP 1SG then self go
‘If he doesn’t come, then I’ll go on my own.’
This once again highlights the necessity to determine the relevant diagnostics distinguishing
CACs from PACs in Chinese, for they do not necessarily coincide with the diagnostics
working for English.
In fact, with respect to the CAC vs PAC dichotomy, in addition to the order (i)
adverbial clause – main clause’ discussed so far, the two other possible orders mentioned at
3
This analysis is adopted by Wei & Li (this volume).
5
the beginning of this introduction must be taken into account as well, i.e. (ii) ‘main clause –
adverbial clause’ (cf. (15)), and (iii) the order where the adverbial clause appears below the
matrix subject: ‘matrix subject – adverbial clause – matrix predicate (cf. (16)):
(15) Tā dōu zǒu lù shàng bān, chúfēi xià yǔ.
3SG all walk road go work unless fall rain
‘He usually walks to work, unless it rains.’
(16) Tā [chúfēi xià yǔ] fǒuzé dōu zǒu lù shàng bān.
3SG unless fall rain otherwise all walk road go work
‘He usually walks to work, unless it rains.’
The outline given above of the empirical and analytical issues involved and the
problems raised provides us with the background for the research questions addressed in this
special issue
The contribution by Redouane Djamouri opens the discussion. He examines complex
sentences in the oldest attested material, i.e. the Shang inscriptions, dating from the early
Archaic Chinese period (EAC: 13
th
c. – 11
th
c. BC), and through the subsequent stages of late
Archaic Chinese (LAC: 10
th
c. BC – 2
nd
c. BC). Complex sentences in Archaic Chinese show
the order ‘adverbial clause – main clause’, and can be demonstrated to clearly differ from
simple sentences with several predicates, despite the lack of conjunctions and correlative
adverbs. In EAC, conditional clauses can furthermore be distinguished from temporal clauses
based on the type of negation and auxiliaries allowed in each type of adverbial clause. For
LAC, Djamouri analyzes in depth the well-known and so far poorly understood exceptional
preverbal position available for object pronouns under negation. He provides extensive
evidence for the empirical generalization that the preverbal position is possible in root
contexts only. In non-root contexts, by contrast, object pronouns follow the negated verb, just
like object NPs (given the SVO order in Archaic Chinese). It is thus the root vs non-root
dichotomy that provides the key to a long-standing puzzle in the syntax of Archaic Chinese,
where so far no satisfactory analysis had been offered for the seemingly erratic distribution of
object pronouns in negated sentences.
Victor Junnan Pan and Waltraud Paul provide a comprehensive overview of the syntax of
complex sentences in Mandarin Chinese. Their article focuses on complex sentences
involving conditional, causal, concessive, inferential and temporal clauses, because these
adverbial clauses all precede the main clause in their default order. The orders ‘main clause –
adverbial clause’ and ‘matrix subject – adverbial clause - matrix predicate’ are examined as
well and argued not to be derivable from the default order ‘adverbial clause – main clause’.
For this default order, two different analyses are in principle available, due to the
homophony between the particles realizing Top° and the sentence-final particles (SFP)
realizing C-heads. A particle such as ne is either analyzed as the head of TopP hosting the
adverbial clause in its specifier (cf. (17a)), or as the head of CP (with the adverbial clause as
its complement) adjoined to the main clause TP (cf. (17b)):
(17) a. [
TopP
[
cond.cl.
Rúguǒ tā bù lái ] (cf. (2) above)
if 3SG NEG come
[
Top’
[
Top°
ne] [
TPmain cl.
wǒ jiù zìjǐ qù ]]]
TOP 1SG then self go
‘If he doesn’t come, then I’ll go on my own.’
6
b. [
TP main cl.
[
CP
[
TP
Rúguǒ tā bù lái ] [
C°
ne]]
if 3SG NEG come SFP
[
TPmain cl.
wǒ jiù zìjǐ qù ]]]
1SG then self go
‘If he doesn’t come, then I’ll go on my own.’
Given that the data themselves often do not allow to settle the issue and that furthermore the
choice between the two analyses also depends on one’s conception of topic, both options are
maintained as analytical possibilities throughout the article.
The categorial identity of “conjunctions” is for the first time addressed systematically.
Conjunctions in the sentence-initial position of the main clause (e.g. nàme ‘so’ in …nàme wǒ
jiù zìjǐ qù ‘….so I go on my own then’; cf. (17)) are sentential adverbs confined to the pre-
subject position, a class independently attested for Chinese. They differ from the obligatorily
TP-internal preverbal correlative adverbs in the main clause such as jiù ‘then’ in (17).
The status – adverb or head – of the numerous conjunctions in the adverbial clauses (e.g.
rúguǒ ‘if’, suīrán ‘although’ etc.) is much more difficult to determine. As briefly mentioned
above, this is due to two factors: the existence of another class of sentential adverbs,
acceptable in both pre- and post-subject position (e.g. xiǎnrán ‘naturally’, qíshí ‘in fact’; cf.
(7)), and the fact that Chinese allows pro-drop (null subject). The latter leads to a potential
analytical ambiguity for a DP preceding the verb as either a subject in SpecTP (cf. (18a)) or a
topic controlling a null subject in SpecTP (cf. (18b)).
(18) a. [
TP
DP [
T’
[
T
Ø] vP]]
b. [
TopP
DP
i
[
TP
pro
i
[
T’
[
T
Ø] vP]]]
In combination with conjunctions, this positional ambiguity (SpecTP vs SpecTopP)
gives rise to even more parsing possibilities, especially when the conjunction occurs to the
right of an overt DP: ‘DP conj….’ as in (19):
(19) Tā rúguǒ bù lái …….
3
SG if NEG come
‘If he doesn’t come,…’
The possible analyses of this DP are: (i) adverbial clause subject (with the conjunction as
adverb, cf. (20a)); (ii) adverbial clause topic (with the conjunction as C, cf. (20b)), and –
depending on the presence or absence of an explicit subject in the main clause – (iii) matrix
subject (cf. (20c)) or (iv) matrix topic (cf. (20d)):
(20) a. [
TP
DP [
T’
[
°
Ø] adverb vP]]] ….
b. [
adv.TopP
DP
i
[
CP
C° [
TP
pro
i
[
T’
[
T°
Ø] vP]]]] ….
c. [
matrixTP
DP [
T’
[
T°
Ø] [
adv.cl.
…]]] ….
d. [
matrixTopP
DP [
adv.cl.
…] [
main cl.
….]]
The authors spell out the multiple analytical possibilities in the same detailed way as
exemplified by (20a) – (20d) for all the different variants of ‘adverbial clause – main clause’
complex sentences (with the position of the conjunction and the presence of covert and overt
subjects as variable factors). They argue that the only reliable test to decide between
conjunctions qua heads and conjunctions qua adverbs is to extract the adverbial clause object
to the sentence-initial position. Since this extraction gives rise to island effects, they conclude
7
that the adverbial clause conjunctions must be analyzed as heads (i.e. complementizers or
adpositions), not as sentential adverbs.
The contribution Adverbial clauses in Mandarin Chinese by Wei Haley Wei and Yen-Hui
Audrey Li is divided into three parts.
Part 1, Preverbal adverbial adjuncts and clauses, concentrates on those adverbial
clauses whose default position is the sentence-initial position. Against this backdrop, their
alternative positions are examined, i.e. the position below the matrix subject as well as the
sentence-final position. An important result is the fact that in Chinese as well, we observe the
dichotomy between central adverbial clauses (CACs) and peripheral adverbial clauses
(PACs).
It is important to point out immediately, though, that argument topicalization (used as
the main test in English) is not the relevant diagnostic to tell these two types apart. In fact, in
Chinese, argument fronting is possible in many embedded contexts, such as the complement
of factive verbs and hence clearly not a main clause phenomenon as in English. By contrast,
the TP-internal position below the matrix subject and either above or below negation and
modal auxiliaries, is shown to be a diagnostic for CACs. As a result, concessive (suīrán
‘although’) and inferential clauses (‘jìrán ‘since, given that’) are classified as PACs, for they
are banned from the position below the matrix subject. In addition, the distinction between
PACs and CACs can be supported by the acceptability of attitude-denoting TP-internal
discourse particles (e.g. yòu ‘again-> obviously’) in concessive and inferential clauses when
in their default sentence-initial position:
(21) a. Jìrán Zhāngsān yòu bú shì gùyì de,
since Zhangsan Attitude not be intentional DE
nǐ jiù yuánliàng tā ba.
you then forgive him SFP
‘Since Zhangsan obviously is not intentional (in doing something), you might as
well forgive him.’ (= their (80a))
b. Rúguǒ Zhāngsān (*yòu) bú shì gùyì de,
if Zhangsan Attitude not be intentional
DE
nǐ jiù yuánliàng tā ba.
you then forgive him
SFP
‘If Zhangsan (obviously) is not intentional (in doing something), you might as well
forgive him.’ (their (80b))
Such discourse particles are also excluded from genuine hypothetical conditional clauses,
hence CACs (cf. (21b) above), but allowed in so-called “premise conditionals”, hence PACs
(cf. (22) below):
(22) Rúguǒ nǐ yòu bú shì zhēnxīn de, …nà wǒ –
if you Attitude not be truly DE then I
nà wǒ jiù shāng-le wǒ mā de xīn le.
then I then break-PERF my mom DE heart SFP
‘If you obviously are not truly in love with me, then I –– then I
would be breaking my mom’s heart.’ (= their (83))
8
Importantly, Wei & Li for the first time point out the relevance of TP-internal discourse
particles as a diagnostic for the CAC vs PAC dichotomy in Chinese, the presence of discourse
particles pointing to the projection of ForceP.
Finally, some reason and concessive clauses in the sentence-final position do not
involve PACs, but instead are root clauses. In this case, both the “main clause” and the
“adverbial clause” have their own illocutionary force and project their own DiscourseP;
following Verstraete (2005, 2007) they are analyzed as being the conjuncts in a coordinate
structure, hence no complex sentence with the adverbial clause modifying the assertion made
in the main clause.
In Part 2, Ordering and syntax-discourse-prosody interface, Wei & Li investigate
adverbial clauses in sentence-final position, based on the general consensus that the sentence-
initial position is the default position for adverbial clauses (except for the exclusively
sentence-final rationale, purposive and result clauses to be discussed in Part 3). They use a
plethora of examples from written and oral corpora, providing the relevant discourse context
as well as prosodic data (F0 diagrams). Two cases of sentence-final adverbial clauses are
distinguished, each with its own syntactic analysis.
In the first case (corresponding to their type 3), the sentence-final position of the
adverbial clause correlates with the emphasis of the first clause, i.e. the main clause. This
emphasis is motivated by the speaker’s belief that the information in the main clause is
unexpected for the hearer; the content of the adverbial clause is, however, assumed to
constitute given information. Syntactically, the order is derived by raising the main clause
from the base order ‘adverbial clause – main clause’, with the raising triggered by the
[emphasis] feature on the main clause. This analysis is supported by the prosodic prominence
on (part of) the main clause, indicated as bold face in (23) below. By contrast, the sentence-
final adverbial clause has a low and falling pitch contour and is pronounced in a faster tempo
than the first clause.
(23) Nǐ lándezhù wǒ ma, rúguǒ nǐ xiǎng lán?
you be.able.to. stop 1SG SFP if 2SG want stop
‘Are you able to stop me, if you want to stop me?’ (their example (19))
(Context: Even the speaker’s parents did not succeed in stopping her in the past.)
In the second case (corresponding to their type 4), the sentence-final adverbial clause provides
new information and carries independent stress. It constitutes a fragment, an afterthought
added to the preceding clause and to be interpreted within its scope. With respect to the scope
relation, the sentence-final adverbial clause thus resembles an adverbial clause in sentence-
initial position. This parallel is captured by adopting a bi-sentential-plus-PF-deletion-analysis.
More precisely, the source structure is CP1, i.e. the main clause, followed by a complex
sentence CP2, consisting of an adverbial clause preceding the same main clause CP1.
Deletion of the second instance of CP1 then leads to the surface string: “main clause” -
adverbial clause: [CP1 [
CP2
adv.cl. CP1] => CP1 adv.cl. Accordingly, CP1 is not a “main
clause” within a complex sentence, but is shown to be an independent root sentence, as
evidenced inter alia by its concluding intonation.
To summarize, conditional clauses in the sentence-final position are either peripheral
(type 3) or central (type 4); by contrast, reason and concessive clauses in the sentence-final
position can be either central, peripheral, or an independent root clause. Importantly,
adverbial clauses in sentence-final position are never base-generated in their surface position.
Wei & Li’s derivational analysis is thus different from the right adjunction analysis proposed
in Pan & Paul (this volume). However, both analyses have in common that the order ‘main
clause - adverbial clause’ is not just a “reversal” of the default order ‘adverbial clause – main
9
clause’, but involves a completely different structure, thus tying in with the general consensus
in Chinese linguistics, going at least back to Chao (1968).
Against the background of this fine-grained analysis, Wei & Li then develop a new
approach to the constraints holding for correlative adverbs such as jiù ‘then’ in a main clause
that is followed by an adverbial clause and provide novel data so far not taken into account.
Part 3, Postverbal purposive, rationale, and result clauses: complementation vs
adjunction, turns to the class of adverbial clauses that occur exclusively in postverbal position,
i.e. rationale, result and purposive clauses.
(24) a. Lǎoshī bǎ huàndēngpiàn fàngdà,
teacher BA slide zoom
yǐbiàn [
CP
tóngxué-men dōu néng kàn qīngchǔ].
so.that student-
PL all can see clear
‘The teacher zoomed the slides so that the students could all see clearly.’
b. Huàndēngpiàn zìtǐ tài xiǎo,
slide font too small
yǐzhì [
CP
hòumiàn de tóngxué kàn bú qīngchǔ].
with.the.result.that back DE student see not clear
‘The font of the slides is so small that the students in the back can’t see clearly.’
c. Qǐng bǎ huàndēngpiàn fàngdà yīdiǎnr,
please BA slide zoom a.little
yǐmiǎn [
CP
hòumiàn de tóngxué kàn bú qīngchǔ].
lest back DE student see not clear
‘Please zoom the slides lest the students in the back can’t see clearly.’
(25) Lǎoshī bǎ huàndēngpiàn fàngdà, (lái) quèbǎo
teacher BA slide zoom in.order.to ensure
[tóngxué-men dōu néng kàn qīngchǔ túpiàn].
student-PL all can see clear picture
‘The teacher zoomed the slides (in order) to ensure that all the students can see the
pictures clearly.’
Starting with the purposive clause in (25), the same structural analysis is proposed for
purposives with and without lái ‘(in order) to’ (bare purposives), which are argued to be non-
finite vP complements to the main verb located within vP, on a par with vP complements of
control verbs. This is confirmed by tests involving the scope of the main clause negation and
the c-command domain of the main clause object.
By contrast, the clauses headed by yǐbiàn ‘so that’ (cf. (24a)), yǐzhì ‘so that, with the
result that’ (cf. (24b)) and yǐmiǎn ‘lest’ (cf. (24c)) license an overt subject DP, hence can be
considered to be finite; they project an IP. They can, but need not be within the scope of
negation. When in the scope of negation, they pattern with bare and lái purposives. When
outside the scope of negation, they occupy a higher position, which is identified as right
adjunction to a projection below the matrix subject and above negation, given that a null
subject in the purposive clause needs to be controlled by the matrix subject.
To conclude this introduction, it is evident that there remain open questions to explore,
despite the comprehensive and fine-grained nature of the analyses proposed here. We
therefore hope that this special issue will inspire future research on the syntax and semantics
of complex sentences.
10
Works Cited
Chao, Yuen Ren. (1968). A grammar of spoken Chinese. Los Angeles: California University
Press.
Eifring, Halvor (1993). Clause combinations in Chinese. Ph. D. dissertation, University of
Oslo.
Eifring, Halvor (1995). Clause combinations in Chinese. Leiden: Brill.
Gasde, Horst-Dieter and Waltraud Paul (1996). Functional categories, topic prominence, and
complex sentences in Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics 34 (2): 263–294.
Greenberg, Joseph H. (1963). Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the
order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg, J.H. (ed.), Universals of language.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp. 73-113.
Haegeman, Liliane (2002). Anchoring to speaker, adverbial clauses and the structure of CP.
Georgetown University Working Papers in Theoretical Linguistics 2: 117-180.
Haegeman, Liliane (2006). Argument fronting in English, Romance CLLD and the left
periphery. In: Zanuttini, R. et al. (eds.). Cross-linguistic research in syntax and
semantics. Georgetown: University Press, 27-52.
Haegeman, Liliane (2012). Adverbial clauses, main clause phenomena, and the composition
of the left periphery. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haiman, John (1978). Conditionals are topics. Language 54(3): 564-589.
Heycock, Caroline (2006). Embedded root phenomena. In: Everaert, M. and Henk van
Riemsdijk (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, vol.2: 174-209.
Huang, C.-T. James (1982). Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. Ph.D.
dissertation, MIT.
Huang, C.-T. James, Y.-H. Audrey Li, and Yafei Li (2009). The Syntax of Chinese.
Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press.
Lu, Peng (2003). La subordination adverbiale en chinois contemporain. Ph.D. dissertation,
University Paris 7.
Lu, Peng (2008). Les phrases complexes en chinois. Beijing: Waiwen chubanshe.
(www.flp.com.cn)
Paul, Waltraud (2016) Where “complex” sentences are not complex and “subordinate”
clauses not subordinate: The case of Mandarin Chinese. In: S Pereira, C. Pinto, F.
Pratas (eds.). Coordination and Subordination: form and meaning. Selected papers
from CSI Lisbon 2014. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 201-224.
(Preprint downloadable at: http://crlao.ehess.fr/index.php?177).
Rizzi, Luigi (1997). The fine structure of the left periphery. In: Haegeman, Liliane (ed.),
Elements of grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp 289-330.
Rizzi, Luigi (2004). Locality and left periphery. In: Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and
beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 223-251.
Starke, Michal. 2001. Move dissolves into Merge: A theory of locality. Ph.D.dissertation,
University of Geneva.
Verstraete, Jean-Christophe (2005). Two types of coordination in clause combining. Lingua
115, 4: 611–626.
Verstraete, Jean-Christophe (2007). Rethinking the Coordinate-Subordinate Dichotomy.
Interpersonal Grammar and the Analysis of Adverbial Clauses in English. Berlin: De
Gruyter.
Whitman, John (2008). The classification of constituent order generalizations and diachronic
explanation. In: Jeff Good (ed.), Linguistic universals and language change. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, pp. 233-252.
Xing, Fuyi (2001). Hanyu fuju yanjiu [A study on complex sentences]. Beijing: Shangwu.
