Referential Indefinite Subjects in Chinese: A Corpus-Based Study
Xiaowen Nie
University of Arizona
Feng-hsi Liu
University of Arizona
Abstract
It has been observed that referential indefinite NPs do not normally occur as subject in Chinese. But a number of studies (e.g. Fan 1985, Liu 2018) report that referential indefinite subjects are actually found in natural data. This raises the question of when and why indefinite NPs can be used as subjects. To date what has been documented is limited to isolated sentences without explanations. The present study will explain the presence of indefinite subjects from a discourse perspective. In particular, we propose that referential indefinite subjects in Chinese are licensed by two factors: information status (Prince 1992) and topic prominence (Givón 1983). Our analysis is based on LDC corpora.
First, in most cases we find that the referent of an indefinite subject in Chinese is neither new, nor old, but inferable (Prince 1992), such as the referent of the NP yìfāng xiǎo mùyuán ‘a small tomb’ in (1). The existence of the tomb can be inferred from a dead person being treated as a god.
-
Liào Tiāndīng sǐhòu chuánshuō wúshù, xiāngmín jiāng qí fèngwéi shénqí jìbài, yìfāng xiǎo mùyuán zài yìjiǔwǔbā nián biànchéng yízuò dàmiào, xìntú sànbù sìfāng wǔlù…
“There were countless legends after Liao Tianding died: peasants treated him as god; became a huge temple in 1958; laymen can be found everywhere…”
In contrast, unacceptable indefinite subjects that have been documented carry new information, such as (2):
-
*Kuai lai; yige xuesheng zai bangongshi deng ni.
“Come quickly, is waiting for you at the office.”
The second factor, topic prominence (or the lack of it), is demonstrated in (3).
-
Xiǎobùshí zài dékèsàsīzhōu qiānshǔle 150 gè sǐxínglìng. Yífèn diàochá tòulù, xiǎobùshí píngjūn zhǐ huā 15 fēnzhōng juédìng shìfǒu qiānshǔ sǐxínglìng.
“Bush signed 150 death warrants in Texas. disclosed that Bush averagely spent only 15 minutes to decide whether to sign a death warrant.”
When the referent of an indefinite subject initiates a quote, the focus is the quote itself. The referent of the subject is ‘unimportant’ (Givón 1983) and is not mentioned again in the following discourse.
Thus indefinite subjects are restricted to inferables and topics with no continuity. This pattern is in accordance with the old-before-new principle except that it allows for an escape clause—subjects can be new when they have no continuity at all.