论旨阶层与衍生经济性-FeaturedArticle.PDF

Featured Article Thematic Hierarchy and Derivational Economy* Language and Linguistics 15(3) 295–339 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1606822 Yen-Hui Audrey Li University of Southern California What thematic hierarchy is has been controversial, and whether it should exist as a theoretical construct has been questioned. This work shows that if thematic hierarchy is represented structurally as layers of projections, it helps to account for some newly observed constraints on object deletion in Chinese. Chinese exhibits much flexibility in the number and type of arguments that can occur with verbs, and subjects and objects seem to be interchangeable in many cases. However, it is shown that constraints can be found amid the great flexibility in argument structure—object deletion is not possible in the cases not following thematic hierarchy, although sub- ject deletion is still possible. Moreover, object deletion is unacceptable in the cases where arguments are added syntactically. Again, subjects can be deleted in such constructions. These generalizations will be captured by the aforementioned layers of projections reflecting thematic hierarchy and a notion of derivational economy— simpler structures are favored when choices are ava