Information structure constraints and complex NP islands in Chinese

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the complex NP island effects in Chinese. I follow Ginzburg & Sag (2000)'s analysis of in situ wh-interrogative construction and propose that feature percolation from the non-head clause daughter to the head daughter is required for a proper treatment of in situ wh-relative. A semantic analysis of the idiosyncrasy of weishenme 'why' reveals that a definite reading is forced for a wh-relative when weishenme stays in situ. This requirement causes feature percolation into relative head to fail. In this way I show that island effects in Chinese can be independently ruled out in the grammar as a case of contradiction.