Revisiting the Final-over-Final Constraint in Zhongyuan Mandarin

Abstract

This paper observes that the modals di and dei can occur postverbally in Zhongyuan Mandarin. A head-final analysis for the postverbal di and the sentence-final dei will be provided to explain why they can occur postverbally. I will expand on an analysis of sentence-final particles (SFPs) by Erlewine (2017) that breaks the structure into regions such that the Final-over-Final constraint (FOFC) holds within a region. I argue that only di yields an FOFC violation, which can be repaired by object movement. The observations in Zhongyuan Mandarin shed light on the nature of FOFC: it is not only a structural constraint but also an output constraint.