Luis Vicente (colloquium abstract)

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Verb fronting in Mandarin Chinese

Luis Vicente
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT

In this talk, we examine two Mandarin constructions that exhibit topicalization plus reduplication of a verb, and which we refer to as "verbal clefts" and "verbal lian...dou". The first part of the talk shows that, if abstract away from the double pronunciation issue, the syntax of these constructions is absolutely unexceptional: they exhibit the same properties as regular clefts and regular lian...dou sentences found elsewhere in the language. On the basis of this conclusion, we examine which factors force double pronunciation of the verb in these constructions, but not in comparable non-verbal versions. (Joint work with Lisa Cheng)