New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax by Waltraud Paul

Abstract

Reviewed by: New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax by Waltraud Paul Jingxia Lin New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 271). By Waltraud Paul. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2015. Pp. xvi, 357. ISBN 978-3-11-033877-3. $154 (hardcover). [Corrigendum] New Perspectives on Chinese Syntax by Waltraud Paul (2015) is a theory-oriented discussion of Chinese syntax after Huang, Li, and Li (2009). Even though the book does not provide a full coverage of Chinese syntax as expected of descriptive or reference grammars, it explores in depth the most controversial issues with a new analysis in the generative approach. While each chapter tackles different topics in Chinese syntax, the chapters form a coherent whole to accomplish the major goal of the book, which is to deconstruct typological generalizations, particularly the concept “cross-categorial harmony”, as part of grammar. Cross-categorial harmony in this book refers to “the observation that in many languages the order between a head and its complement is the same across different categories.” (p.2) The book is organized into eight chapters. I will review each chapter and then comment on the book as a whole. Chapter 1 is a preface-like short introduction to the book. It sets out with a list of questions in Chinese syntax that will be addressed in the book, and then states the position of the whole book: while the concept of cross-categorial harmony has become important since Greenberg (1963), it is based on a statistical observation and thus cannot be a principle of grammar. Chapters 2 – 7 dwell on one topic of Chinese syntax in each chapter. Among them, Chapters 2-4 involve joint work and discussion with two other linguists, Redouane Djamouri and John Whitman. These chapters are very readable thanks in part to two helpful features: each chapter is skillfully balanced at 40-50 pages, and the key ideas of each [End Page 451] chapter and most of the sections are easily accessible to readers via the summaries and interim summaries thoughtfully provided by the author. Chapter 2 is devoted to the debate of VO vs. OV word order in Chinese, with the aim of invalidating Li and Thompson’ (1974) claim that Chinese has undergone major word order change in its history. This chapter argues that VO has been the main order from the earliest attested history of Chinese (oracle bone inscriptions) to Modern Mandarin. Section 2.1 demonstrates that in oracle bone inscriptions, there are only two cases of OV order: focalization of the object and object pronouns in negated sentences, but even for these two cases, the underlying head-complement configurations are consistent with the VO order. Section 2.2 centers on Modern Mandarin. It firstly shows that the extended verbal projection (e.g., AuxP and AspP) displays head-complement order in accordance with VO, and then provides an extensive discussion of the bǎ construction. It argues that bǎ is not a preposition, but rather a higher head that takes as complement the verbal projection on the right side. In other words, the bǎ construction is also in a head-complement order. Chapters 3 - 5 discuss three lexical categories that have triggered heated debates in the literature: prepositions, postpositions, and adjectives. In these chapters, the author points out that the three categories all exist in Chinese, and thus challenges the typological generalization that isolating languages have less lexical categories than inflected languages. Chapter 3 argues for prepositions as a distinct category. After providing a list of words that are exclusively prepositions and a list of prepositions that have a homophonous verbal counterpart in Section 3.1, the chapter presents further evidence in the next three sections to show that prepositions form a distinct lexical category: prepositions are incompatible with adverbs or negation, and they cannot function as predicates or occur without their objects (i.e. they disallow preposition stranding). The chapter then turns to a diachronic study regarding verb-to-preposition reanalysis. It finds that zì ‘from’ and yú ‘at, to’ have been prepositions since the very first attested material (oracle bone inscriptions), i.e. not all prepositions were reanalyzed from verbs. The chapter thus states that the category preposition must...