Reviewed by Haitao Liu, Communication University of China

This book analyzes Chinese syntax within the framework of generative linguistics. Although not intended for learners of Chinese, it may serve as a reference book for those who formally research Mandarin Chinese syntax.

Ch. 1 (9–37) is about parts of speech, which the authors refer to as categories. In light of the study of other languages, the authors suggest that the syntactic behavior of a word determines its category, which can be construed through a cluster of positively- or negatively-valued features.

Ch. 2 (38–76) focuses on the nature of argument structure. For maximal explanatory power, a theory with the least stipulation is presented here for the lexico-semantic decomposition of verbs.

Among the wide range of topics touched upon in the discussion of canonical sentence structure in Ch. 3 (77–111), verb phrases and their components receive the most attention. The authors systematically distinguish between adjuncts and complements, search for the best syntactic representations of five different postverbal constituents and explore a realistic mechanism to handle semantic notions such as aspect and modality in the syntax of Chinese.

Ch. 4 (112–52) deals with the passive bei construction, which takes two forms depending on the presence or absence of an agent phrase. After demonstrating the pros and cons of a movement-based approach and an approach based on complementation, the authors argue that the Chinese passive involves both movement and complementation.

In Ch. 5 (153–96), the authors explore passives and ba constructions. Despite their similar argument structures, these constructions differ in the scope of acceptability—a disparity originating in the different subcategorization requirements of ba and bei, which is evident in their syntactic structures. Additionally, the authors propose an analysis of the complicated ba construction to secure a possible mechanism for an affected interpretation.

Ch. 6 (197–235) deals with topic and relative clause structures, in which a clause is used to modify a head noun phrase. The authors demonstrate that these two constructions are similar but not identical, arguing that variations within relative constructions suggest a cluster of empirical generalizations that can be traced to the absence or presence of a relative operator.

Ch. 7 (236–82) investigates the syntax of interrogative sentences, especially wh-questions and A-not-A questions (a special type of disjunctive questions) and suggests a modular approach to the latter.

Ch. 8 (283–328) takes up the syntactic structure of noun-headed phrases (i.e. nominal expressions). The authors maintain that Chinese noun phrases, like those in other languages, exhibit more complicated structures than perceived at first glance. They propose a full determiner phrase (i.e. a structure in which smaller phrases headed by a numeral expression, a classifier, and a noun can be embedded) and illustrate that such a framework permits deviations and affords explanations in terms of (in)definiteness, specificity, and compositional semantics.

Ch. 9 (329–71) discusses donkey anaphora, a linguistic phenomenon somewhere between definite coreference and variable binding. There are, according the authors, two types of donkey sentences each with their own distinctive properties. The insight into these two types of donkey sentences, the authors believe, may resolve an important controversy between two recently prominent theories for handling indefinite noun phrases and their referential properties.

This book will be helpful to both students hoping to know more about the formal treatment of Chinese syntax and to theoretical linguists interested in the universal principles of human languages.