The Syntactic Status of de and the Internal Structure of de Constructions in Chinese

Abstract

This paper addresses some relevant explanations concerning de and de constructions in Chinese. Based on a detailed description of the main features of de, a novel analysis of the syntactic status of de and the internal structure of de constructions is proposed. It is argued that de, as a functional category, cannot be separated from the genitive constituent, and hence it cannot function as a head. In effect, the nature of de constructions is determined by the definite article, numerals or quantifiers and has nothing to do with de per se. De is a linking marker, which is used to connect the constituents preceding and following it, including the constituents with features of [+N] and [-V]. De can adjoin to the Spec or complement. As a consequence, in terms of structural segmentation, de should be segmented either with the Spec or with the complement, but it is only a clitic of the Spec or complement. Since de is not the head of de constructions, it cannot project as DeP.