Parallelism between nominal and verbal domains: Evidence from verbal classifiers

Abstract

Since Chomsky’s (1970) observation that clauses and arguments can project parallel syntactic structures, the parallelism between the nominal and verbal domains has been explored in many studies. This paper addresses a particular parallelism between two functional projections in the nominal and verbal domains: Num(ber)P and Asp(ect)P. Specifically, NumP in the nominal domain is proposed to be parallel to AspP in the verbal domain, and in an English-type language this parallelism is represented by having the same feature, such as [bounded], on both heads. However, it is questionable to what extent the parallelism proposed for an English-type language can be applicable to a classifier language such as Mandarin where CL(assifier)P is known to be the locus of number. By examining the properties of verbal classifiers in Mandarin to address this issue, this paper not only shows that there is a parallelism in Mandarin similar to that in English, but also demonstrates that the parallelism is subject to cross-linguistic micro-variation. In Mandarin, for instance, there is a correspondence between CLP and AspP, but the relevant feature for the parallelism is [class(ification)], which is not the same as the [bounded] feature proposed for English. (Cheongju University)