空間處所介系詞組之比較研究

Following the cartographic approach in mapping distinct functional projections associated with different morphemes or phrasal modifiers (Cinque 1999, 2010), this project aims at presenting a syntactic analysis of the spatial PP system in Mandarin Chinese and, whenever appropriate, examines its differences from other languages. We propose a fine-grained adpositional structure to capture the idiosyncratic properties associated with different heads. In particular, a null noun PLACE is posited to exist in the prepositional projections in Mandarin, which accounts for the mixture of nominal and non-nominal properties exhibited by locative phrases. The proposed structure also enables us to explain the deictic usage of certain demonstrative-locative sequences as well as the possible language variations in whether one language allows the fronted PPs to serve as grammatical subjects or not. Summarizing, the result of this line of research is expected to make substantial contribution to the understanding of spatial P projections in Mandarin Chinese and, more broadly, the syntactic theories of adpositional structure in general.