abstract: The primary topic of this dissertation is the grammaticalization of negation in three Sinitic language varieties: Hakka, Mandarin, and Southern Min. I discuss negative morphemes that are used under different modality or aspect contexts, including ability, volition, necessity, and perfectivity. Not only does this study examine Southern Min affirmative and negative pairs, but it also highlights the grammaticalization of negation and parametric differences in negation among the languages under investigation. This dissertation also covers the reanalysis of negatives into interrogatives. I approach the investigation of Southern Min negation from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. I analyze corpus data in addition to data collected from fieldwork for the contemporary linguistic data. For my diachronic research of Chinese negation, I use historical texts and etymological dictionaries. Diachronically, many of the negative morphemes originate from full-fledged verbs and undergo an analogous grammaticalization process that consists of multiple stages of reanalysis from V to T (aspect; modality), and then T to C (interrogative; discourse). I explain this reanalysis, which involves head-to-head movement, using generative frameworks that combine a modified cartographic approach and the Minimalist Economy Principles. Synchronic data show that Southern Min affirmative modals are characterized by a certain morphological doubling. These doublings consist of two near synonyms used in sequence, resulting from the loss of features in a verb and a second verb added as a renewal. In the negation paradigm, some negatives project a negative phrase, while the others serve a dual function, occupying a modal/aspect head as well as a negative head. The latter system is gradually shifting to the former. This study uncovers evidence to counter the long-established paradigm, where negation is tied to its independent modality (abilitive, volitional and necessitive) or aspect (perfective and perfect). I observe a mismatch between the use of interrogatives and their modality/aspect and attribute this phenomenon to feature loss during their reanalysis from negatives to interrogatives. Results however show that consistency occurs in the grammaticalization of negation within Southern Min and intra-linguistically among the three Sinitic languages, and that parametric differences are found at the morphological level. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012

This dissertation is a comparative study of the morphosyntax of the constituents referred to as noun phrases in traditional grammar. In line with Abney’s (1987) Determiner Phrase (DP) Hypothesis, this study investigates the syntactic structures of Sinitic nominal phrases by means of a thorough study of lexical elements, such as numerals, classifiers, possessives, adjectives, and nouns, and functional elements, such as plural/collective markers, force particles, and modification markers. It is argued that the syntactic structure of the nominal phrase is universal regardless of the presence of lexical items which realise the heads of the functional projections. This study further proposes a unified account of the articulated structure of nominal phrases, as a full-fledged DP, to explain the syntactic phenomena in both classifier and non-classifier languages. More specifically, a Probe-Goal feature-valuing model is proposed to account for parametric variation among Sinitic and other languages within the framework of Chomsky’s (2000, 2001, 2004) Phase-based Minimalist Programme. Furthermore, given the assumption of the Split-DP Hypothesis, this study proposes that the DP in Sinitic languages is also not a unitary projection but an articulated array of functional projections, including DforceP, DfocusP, DtopicP and DdefiniteP. As their counterparts in the clausal domain, these functional projections encode discourse-related properties, such as illocutionary force, topic, and focus. As far as modification structures are concerned, this study argues that the bare modifier is base-generated in the Spec of a functional or lexical projection, whereas the marked modifier is adjoined to the left of the nominal phrase by the operation Adjunction.