Deriving Head-Final Order in the Peripheral Domain of Chinese

Abstract

This article proposes a unified analysis of the peripheral projections in Chinese, which does not rely on a head-directionality parameter. Each of these projections constitutes a phase and its head bears an EPP feature, which must be satisfied. Chinese peripheral projections demonstrate four different ways to satisfy the EPP. Importantly, sentence-final particles project phases, and their complements obligatorily move to the specifier as a last resort to satisfy the EPP. Movement of the complement to the phase edge would postpone the transfer of phrases embedded in the complement, allowing these phrases to move later. When the phase edge is not available for the moved complement, phrases embedded in the complement are not able to be extracted in the later stage, after the complement is transferred. This constitutes a strong argument in favor of the obligatory complement-to-specifier raising analysis for sentence-final particles in Chinese.