On Chinese temporal clauses.

摘要

This dissertation investigates three issues of temporal clauses in Mandarin Chinese: the syntax of de shihou ‘when’ clauses; the syntax of yi-qain/yi-hou ‘before/after’ clauses, and the behavior of the preposition zai in post-subject positions when it takes a temporal clause.; Temporal elements such as de-shihou ‘when’ and yi-qian/yi-hou ‘before/after’ have traditionally been analyzed as clause linking units or postpositions. In this thesis, I argue that shihou and qian/hou are in fact head nouns of noun phrases: de-shihou clauses are relative clauses while yi-qian/yi-hou ‘before/after’ clauses are noun complement clauses. Adopting Kayne's (1994) analysis of relative clauses, I argue that de is an enclitic determiner that takes CP as its complement and the adverbial element shihou raises to Spec CP. The remnant IP then raises to Spec DP to license de. In yi-qian/yi-hou clauses, I argue that qian and hou are temporal localizers which take a clausal complement. Since zhi is the classical form of de and zhi-qian/zhi-hou have the same function as yi-qian/yi-hou in temporal clauses, I argue that zhi and yi also head DPs with qian/hou as NP complements. The complement CP raises to Spec DP to license yi/zhi.; The preposition zai usually occurs in a temporal clause in an adjunct position, and is optional, especially when the clause is sentence-initial. However omitting zai in a sentence like Wo *(zai) Lisi chusheng yi-qian zao jiu chuguo le ‘I had gone abroad before Lisi was born’ where the temporal clause follows the main clause subject makes the sentence to be less acceptable. I argue that the omission of zai in sentence of this sort results in two DPs in a sequence, which leads to a garden path effect. When two DPs occur in the sentence initial position without zai, the two DPs can easily be interpreted as either a coordination or a topic-subject relationship. Inserting zai between the two NPs is preferred in order to avoid the garden path.