Facilitator effects in Mandarin topicalization: Evidence for a crossing-based view of anti-locality
Fulang Chen, Ka-Fai Yip
June 2025
 

In this paper, we demonstrate that topicalization in Mandarin requires either a high facilitator (above vP) or a low facilitator (within vP) on the movement path, and is otherwise illicit. We argue that such facilitator effects arise from the combination of the crossing-based view of anti-locality (Newman 2020), which unifies Comp-to-Spec and Spec-to-Spec anti-locality constraints, and the Principle of Minimal Compliance (Richards 1998), which allows anti-locality to be evaluated only once for a successive-cyclic movement chain.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/009066
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Proceedings of NELS 55
keywords: facilitator effects, anti-locality, principle of minimal compliance, successive-cyclic movement, topicalization, mandarin, syntax
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