Subjects and the clausal structure of Chinese and English
The purpose of this dissertation is to develop explanations of some syntactic differences between Chinese and English. The core idea explored is that the absence of subject-verb agreement (i.e. Agr) in Chinese and its presence in English has wide-ranging consequences, most fundamentally in the clausal structure of the two languages. The principles and parameters framework developed in Chomsky 1981 and Chomsky 1986a,b and pursued in the works of a number of other linguists provides the overall theoretical orientation.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign