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
Downloaded:	101 times

 

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