Abstract
Based on a hitherto neglected set of multiple pre-subject modal sentences, this article offers a novel syntactic account of Mandarin modals whereby the derivation of pre-subject modal sentences involves Internal Merge of modals to specifiers of the left-peripheral focus projection, and discusses new problems facing a traditional head-movement analysis and the existing XP-movement accounts. Our proposal lends novel support to recent claims that “true” syntactic head movement targets specifier positions.
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Notes
In fact, this is not the typology of movements that Arregi and Pietraszko (2021) propose, but nonetheless suffices for current purposes.
The use of the discontinuous coordinator ji…ye helps preclude ATB subject extraction, since it is a category-sensitive coordinator that does not conjoin full clauses:
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To be even more explicit, we assume that features on a lexical item are ordered (à la Müller 2010), such that when Foc0 bears two or more structure-building features of the same kind, they are discharged one at a time.
The question of whether the so-called epistemic modals are in fact adverbs is not new. In fact, Lin (2012) also faces the same question from a reviewer who questions the status of epistemic modals, and devotes an entire section to addressing the question. Chou (2013), who adopts the same assumption as Lin’s, also addresses a similar concern in a footnote. We refer the interested reader to Lin (2012: Sect. 4) and Chou (2013: fn. 7) for further discussion on why epistemic modals are not adverbs. See also J.-W. Lin and Tang (1995).
We thank a reviewer for suggesting that we explore the current question.
The Bulgarian facts also fall under Richards’ (1997, 1998) Principle of Minimal Compliance. The basic idea is that once a constraint is obeyed once, the part of the structure where the constraint is obeyed can then tolerate subsequent violations of the constraint. We refer the interested reader to Richards’ work for details, and leave open how the Principle might be reconciled with the observed Mandarin facts.
A reviewer wonders whether factors like topicality might have an effect on the order of the pre-subject modals (see Jaeger 2004; Krapova and Cinque 2005; Scott 2012 on such such effects with multiple wh-movement in some languages). No such effect has been found. We thank the reviewer for raising this question.
Bošković (1999) offers an alternative way of implementing focus movement that is also target-driven. In particular, whereas the wh-feature on the Bulgarian interrogative C0 has the “Attract-1F” property, the focus feature has instead the “Attract-all-F” property. Accordingly, each instance of [•M0•] that the Mandarin Foc0 bears will be of the “Attract-1F” type.
A reviewer notes that our account would predict sentences containing the adverbial you ‘again’ and a pre-subject modal to exhibit the order modal–subj–you–XP. This is indeed correct:
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Notice that in order to uphold the alternative where examples like (59b) and (61b) are directly excluded in the syntax, one would have to assume that semantics is directly relevant to syntax, that “scope considerations” (whatever this means) can drive syntactic movement, and/or that the modal movement in question is not feature-driven.
One potentially relevant fact is that Mandarin modals can appear in A-not-A form, e.g. ying-bu-ying-gai ‘should-neg’; dei-bu-dei ‘must-neg’ (Chao 2011:749). Notice that the A-not-A form is possible with words belonging to different categories: xi-bu-xi-huan ‘like-neg’; piao-bu-piao-liang ‘pretty-neg’; ba-bu-ba ‘ba-neg’; bei-bu-bei ‘pass-neg’; zai-bu-zai ‘at-neg.’ Crucially, the following examples (either specifiers or adjuncts) are ill-formed: *man-bu-man-de ‘slowly-neg’; *fei-bu-fei-chang ‘extremely-neg’; *dao-bu-dao-di ‘after all-neg.’ Hence, Mandarin modals pattern with lexical and functional elements like the verb xihuan ‘like’ and the BA marker (which are minimal projections) rather than adverbials like manmande ‘slowly’ (which are maximal projections) in terms of A-not-A formation. We leave to future work whether this fact can indeed be taken to constitute evidence that Mandarin modals are, or can be, minimal projections.
To avoid potential misunderstandings, we should emphasise that our refinement applies only to the null Foc0 under discussion. Likewise, examples like the following are unproblematic:
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Recently, Sun (2021: Sect. 3.2) offers convincing evidence that F-marking and [Foc] are distinct notions (at least in Mandarin), based on the absence of superiority effects in multiple focus sentences involving zhiyou ‘only.’ In her account, crucially, an F-marked element does not necessarily bear the [Foc] feature. Since there is independent evidence that F-marking and [Foc] are distinct in Mandarin, we will thus claim that the F-marked phrase in (i) may lack [Foc]; notice that unlike examples involving lian…dou focus or shi, we know of no evidence that suggests that the F-marked phrase in (i) is targeted by any syntactic operation that induces word-order effects.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Karlos Arregi for helpful discussion, as well as three anonymous reviewers and the handling editor Line Mikkelsen for their constructive comments. We also thank Weiying Gu, Hongyan Li, Yiyun Li, Yenan Sun and Yun Xu for their judgements. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Lai, J.YK., Li, H. Moving heads to specifiers: Evidence from Mandarin multiple pre-subject modals. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 42, 247–272 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-023-09579-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-023-09579-0