Speaker: Yu-Yin Hsu 許又尹 (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Title: Interaction of syntax and information structure: Focus-driven T-to-C movement of modal auxiliaries in Mandarin Chinese
Date: Mon 8 July (note day change)
Location: Lipsius 1.33
Zoom: Link / Meeting ID: 626 6867 6455 / Passcode: @7ZYhz.q
Time: 16:15 – 17:30
In this talk, I present some less-discussed empirical observations regarding the interpretive effects and structural restrictions of modal auxiliaries that occur in sentence-initial positions in Manarin Chinese. These data suggest that a new analysis of modals in Mandarin Chinese should be considered; that is, overt head-movement of a modal auxiliary to the sentence periphery, i.e. T-to-C movement, to value strong focus features and to focus-mark either the proposition or the subject of a sentence. In this presentation, I will share my views on how this proposal explains the markedness exhibited by such sentences, correctly predicts the structural and semantic restrictions of modal sentences, and directly explains the scopal interactions observed between modals and various types of focus constructions. The results shed new light on how Chinese, though typologically distinct from Germanic and Romance languages, exemplifies a similarly fine-grained structure in the sentence-internal domain, parallel associations of scope-bearing units with the sentences’ left periphery, and a neat interaction of syntax with discourse configurations. This also shows that changes in Mandarin word order are not simply optional or free in syntax, and that information structure roles are represented as formal syntactic features.