The syntax of nominal phrases and the morphology of nominal compounds in Mandarin (Chinese): A comparative study
Fulang Chen
August 2017 

This paper is concerned with a comparative study of the syntactic derivation of two types of nominal phrases (non-predicative de-constructions and generic de-constructions) and the morphological derivation of the corresponding nominal compounds (endocentric nominal compounds and synthetic nominal compounds) in Mandarin (Chinese). The paper shows that mismatches between each type of nominal phrases and the corresponding nominal compounds in Mandarin with respect to LF interpretation and PF Vocabulary Insertion may be accounted for by a single Spell-Out model of morpho-syntax which postulates that morphological and syntactic derivations may share one Numeration and one single Spell-Out. Despite the fact that syntactic derivations and morphological derivations differ with respect to how Merge and Move work, the paper shows that similarities between the morphological derivation of each type of nominal compounds and the syntactic derivations of the corresponding nominal phrase may have consequences for the nature of modification and nominalization and their relation to argument structure.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/003630 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	University of Toronto
keywords:	de-construction, endocentric nominal compound, synthetic nominal compound, interpretation, vocabulary insertion, modification, nominalization, argument structure, morphology, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [August 2017]
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