Ebook: On the syntax of the suo construction in classical Chinese

Taipei: National Taiwan Normal University. In Journal of Chinese Linguistics 2005, 33/2, pp. 233-267.
-
[NSC 89-2411-H -003-029] (AHCI).This paper investigates the suo construction in Classical Chinese and attempts to provide a proper syntactic analysis of it by comparing it with its modern Chinese counterpart. I extend and modify Ting’s (2003a) analysis of the modern suoconstruction to account for the Classical suoconstruction. Like its counterpart in modern Chinese, the Classical suo is a clitic in overt syntax, raising from N0 to I0 in overt syntax. This explainsits fixed position with respect to other elements in the clause, as well as the fact that it may stand for grammatical object, location, but not grammatical subject. The reason why it may stand for manner and reason as well as grammatical object of a preposition, in contrast to the modern suo, is due to different categorial status of coverbs in modern and Classical Chinese; namely, that modern Chinese prepositions are in fact verbs in Classical Chinese. Unlike the modern suo, which is a variable, the Classical suoundergoes further movement from I0 to C0 at LF to fulfill its operator status. I argue that this explains why suo is optional in modern Chinese, but obligatory in Classical Chinese.