※ 清華語言所新050次專題演講公告 ※

講者：魏廷冀 教授 (國立高雄師範大學)

題目：How to split questions in Mandarin Chinese

日期：2018年4月13日 (星期五)

時間：中午12時30分 開始

地點：人社院 B305研討室

摘要：This paper proposes a revised bi-clausal analysis for split questions (SQs) in Chinese in terms of pro construal, dissimilar to a bi-clausal account employing focus movement and deletion in Arregi (2010) and another bi-clausal account employing the silent head in Kayne (2015) and Tang (2015). We argue that the tag of Chinese SQ is a base-generated clause, [pro (copula) tag ma/ne], composed of a subject pro, an optional copula, a tag, and a final particle, instead of being derived from a fully-fledged structure parallel to the wh-part akin to those of English and Spanish SQs. We also provide a formal way to distinguish typical SQs from pseudo-SQs in Mandarin Chinese by identifying whether an SQ is answered separately, whether its tag moves, and whether a copula appears in front of the tag. Cross-linguistically, the result of this paper leads to an implication that the derivation of a fragment (tag) depends on whether it moves or not and whether a copula exists.