This paper proposes an
MP analysis of
possessor raising in Chinese as shown in (1). It is argued that this rather peculiar phenomenon is better accounted for in terms of the MP
feature checking theory than the GB Case Theory. (i) a.
i diao-le . Zhang San lose-ASP two-CL front-tooth 慫hang San has lost two front teeth.?b.i BEI tou-le . Li Si BEI steel-ASP one-CL wallet 慙isi had a wallet stolen.?In earlier analyses within the framework of the Case Theory of GB, Possessor Raising is motivated by Case satisfaction to avoid the violation of Case Filter. But there is a problem left that resists a satisfactory explanation. Particularly, how to account for the Case status of the possessed NP (liangke menya 憈wo front teeth?in (ia) and yige qianbao 慳 wallet?in (ib)), which is left behind after the possessor NP (Zhang San in (ia) and Li Si in (ib)) has been raised to the subject position of the sentence? Xu Jie (1999) claims that though the unaccusative verb in the sentence can抰 assign Accusative Case to the whole complement NP in brackets, it assigns inherent Partitive Case to the possessed NP. Han Jingquan (2000) argues against it and puts forth a 揅ase transmission?proposal, that is, the possessor NP transmits the Case it is assigned at the subject position back to the whole complement NP through the chain resulting from the raising operation. We argue that neither seems to give a satisfactory solution to the problem and tentatively propose an MP analysis of the phenomenon. In the new analysis, it is assumed that the Chinese DP has three features: the feature (D for definiteness), feature and <ф> feature and that the functional head I0 has two features: and . Of the features of the DP, the feature is argued to be strong and the other two weak since a Chinese sentence generally allows a definite rather than indefinite nominal phrase as subject and that Chinese displays next to nothing for the morphological realization of such grammatical features as Case and person, number and gender. Thus, in terms of the feature checking theory of MP, we take the checking of the feature of the possessor NP (=DP) against the feature of the functional head I0 as the primary motivation for possessor raising in Chinese; in other words, the functional head I0 attracts the possessor NP to the position and thus has its strong feature checked; meanwhile, its weak and <ф> features, as free-riders, also get checked. As to the possessed NP, its and <ф> features are checked through the long-distance Agree operation.
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