One trigger, multiple movement types: an economy approach to the Chinese even-construction
Huacheng Cao
March 2024 

This paper examines the syntactic properties of the lian. . . dou construction in Mandarin Chinese (also known as the Chinese even-construction). I observe that despite constant syntactic and semantic effects, DP foci undergo A-movement while VP and CP foci are derived by A’-movement. To account for this, I argue that movement types are not always tied to the agreeing feature(s) involved (cf. van Urk 2015), but can also be determined by economy. The agreeing feature involved in the lian. . . dou construction is identified as the [ScalarAdd] feature, which triggers movement of the focused phrase but does not specify the movement type. I show that the divergence in movement types follows from economy and the constraint on the interpretation of A-chains, without resorting to the [ScalarAdd] feature. An explicit economy calculus implies that A-chains are arguably less costly than A’-chains, resulting in a preference for A-chains. However, A-chains are restricted to abstraction over individual-type variables (type < e >). VP/CP foci cannot undergo A-movement because they are expressions of higher types (e.g., type < e,t > and < s,t >). Consequently, while DP foci undergo A-movement due to economy, only A’-movement is available for VP/CP foci.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008399 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in The Proceedings of the 60th meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 60)
keywords:	lian. . . dou construction; mandarin chinese; the even-meaning; phrasal movement; the a/a distinction; economy, semantics, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [March 2024]
Downloaded:	210 times

 

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