Reanalysis of Gapless Relative Clause

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

This paper compares the two most common analyses of gapless relative clause such as Zhangsan tan gangqin de shengyin (literally, the sound of Zhangsans playing the piano) in Mandarin Chinese. Such construction is analyzed to hold either a noun-complement relation [1, 2] or a predicate-subject relation [3] between the Head noun and its gapless relative clause. This paper rather rejects both analyses by collecting and analyzing more data of gapless relative clause, regular relative clause and appositive clause, suggesting such gapless relative construction to be independently existent from the other two constructions.