This article examines the distribution and interpretational variability of bare nouns and [classifier+noun] phrases in Cantonese and Mandarin. We argue that bare nouns are never bare in structure and that [classifier+noun] phrases may have more structure than just Classifier Phrase. We show that the lack of articles and number morphology in Cantonese/Mandarin leads to many interesting differences between Chinese-type languages and English-/Italian-type languages.

This article provides a detailed investigation of the prosody and syntax of dislocation in Durban Zulu, an Nguni Bantu language spoken in South Africa. With focus elements obligatorily appearing in an immediately after the verb position, non-focused elements within a verb phrase have to be right-or leftdislocated. We discuss the asymmetries between right-and left-dislocation, showing that only left-dislocated elements can be topics. We argue that aside from a pre-subject Topic position, there is also a Topic position between the subject and the verb phrase. The prosodic phrasing cues in Zulu show that both the CP and the νP phases play a crucial role in determining the alignment with Intonational Phrases.

This article re-examines the controversial shì . . . de construction, which is shown to involve different types of structures, with different syntactic properties. The core of the analysis proposed in this article is twofold: (a) shì is a copula, which selects a small clause (with a subject and a predicate), and (b) de marks the presence of two different non-overt operators (a generalized lambaoperator, and an assertion operator). It is argued that the focus reading connected with shì is simply related to its copular/verbal property. Furthermore, Mandarin allows an in-situ focus strategy using phonological prominence; this strategy interacts with shì and its postverbal constituent.1. Various versions of this article were presented. I thank the audiences in Hiroshima University, at the Workshop on Syntactic Categories and their Interpretation in Chinese (Budapest) and the Chicago Workshop on Chinese Linguistics. I thank Rint Sybesma, Dylan Tsai, Yang Shen, Anastasia Giannakidou, Jason Merchant, Richard Larson for their comments and suggestions. I thank Boya Li, Guozhen Peng, Yue Xuan, Rongjia Cui, and Yiya Chen for detailed discussions of the Mandarin data. I would also like to particularly thank the two reviewers for their detailed comments, and Huba Bartos for his patience as editor of this special issue.4. This implies that in the case of relative clauses, de also indicates the presence of a null operator, rather than de itself being the spell-out of an operator. 5. De may be the head of the AssertionP, which hosts the assertion operator.

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This chapter examines the ambiguity in resultative constructions with verb copying in Mandarin Chinese (resultative de-clauses and resultative compounds) and argues that the ambiguity is the result of two different derivations, which have in common the fact that more than one copy of the verb is phonetically realized. It is argued that both standard movement and sideward movement (in the sense of Nunes 2001Nunes , 2004 are used for verb copying in resultative de-clauses, leading to different interpretations. In the case of standard movement, the subject of the resultative clause is raised to the matrix clause, accompanied by verb movement, yielding an object-result reading. In the case of subject-result reading, ergativity shift is involved and the subject of the resultative clause becomes the subject of the matrix clause. In the latter case, the verb is copied to accommodate a thematic noun phrase associated with a verb (via sideward movement). For both readings, due to a modified structure in the lower copy, both copies are allowed to be pronounced, without violating the LCA. Using data from verb copying in resultatives, the chapter further examines how copying is restricted to avoid unwanted copying, lending independent support to Hornstein and Nunes' (2002) proposal that the copy operation may be triggered by 6-requirements. 1.* [thank the audience in the lectures in Beijing University, LSA summer school, the European Chinese Linguistics Spring School, as well as the audience in the Copying Workshop in Utrecht and the Resultative Workshop in Leiden (June 2005) for comments and suggestions. In addition, I thank the three reviewers as well as Norbert Corver and Jairo Nunes for detailed comments and suggestions.'As for riding that horse, I rejected the claim that Guojing got tired?

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* This chapter incorporates most of the arguments and conclusions in Cheng and Sybesma 1999. In gathering and sorting out the data, we received help and advice from many people, which we gladly and gratefully acknowledge. In particular we would like to acknowledge the input from the following colleagues: Wu: We thank You Rujie for sharing with us his Wu expertise in general and for providing and discussing the Wenzhou data. Thanks a lot! For Shanghainese we are especially indebted to Hua Dongfan. We also discussed Shanghainese with You Rujie, Eric Zee, Lu Bingfu and Duanmu San. Min: The data were provided (and checked with other informants) by C.-C. Jane Tang. Thanks are also due to Tang Ting-chi. Cantonese: Thomas Lee and Sze-Wing Tang helpfully provided judgments. We would furthermore like to thank the following colleagues for more general comments and discussion:

In Mandarin, there is an element de which has for years been the subject of analysis. Li and Thompson (1981) and Ross (1983 and 1984) have tried, with little success, to provide a unified treatment of this element. Li and Thompson (1981) claim that there are several de’s in Mandarin: a possessive marker, an adjectival marker and a nominalization marker. But the structural properties of these de’s and the similarities among them are ignored.Using the Government and Binding framework (Chomsky 1981), I will provide an analysis which accounts for the structural and functional similarities and differences among the various de’s in Mandarin. First, I will state the theoretical assumptions relevant to the discussion of de. Second, I will present the non-controversial evidence showing that de is a head-final complementizer in relative clauses. Third, I will present further data exemplifying a head-final de in other constructions. Fourth, I will demonstrate the impossibility of having a head-final de complementizer in resultative clauses. Finally, I will propose that there are two de complementizers in Mandarin, one head-final, the other head-initial.