Chinese topic constructions are derived by movement: evidence from acceptability judgment experiments

Abstract

Abstract Chinese, a topic-prominent language, abounds with gapped and gapless topic constructions. Several explanations of how topics are derived have been proposed, which fall into three categories: the base-generation approach, the mixed approach and the movement approach. In this study, we conducted two experiments to examine the island sensitivity of topic constructions in Chinese, bringing novel evidence to adjudicate the different approaches to topicalization in this language. The results indicate that island effects can be detected in both gapped and gapless topic constructions, which supports the movement approach to topic constructions in Chinese, making influential hypotheses such as the topic licensing condition and the topic interpretation condition dubious. Our findings also provide new evidence for the influential proposal that Merge is applied freely (Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz & Ken Hale (eds.), A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Chomsky, Noam. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures, 104–131. New York: Oxford University Press, Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Robert Freidin, Carlos Otero & Maria Luisa Zubizarreta (eds.), Foundational issues in linguistic theory: Essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, 133–166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130. 33–49).