A Study of Empty Category in Pivotal Sentence in A Dream in Red Mansions

Abstract

The study of the explanatory power of Government and Binding Theory for Chinese is popular. It’s worth noting that Empty Category constitutes an integral part in the Government and Binding Theory proposed by Chomsky. Taking the Empty Category Theory as the example, referring to A Dream in Red Mansions as the data, this paper is going to research the existing, distributing and inherent laws of Empty Category in pivotal sentence. Theta theory is the theoretical foundation for Empty Category that exists in the pivotal sentence. The empty category, which is produced from D-structure, is classified into proforma in the pivotal sentence.