Chinese is a discourse-configurational language: Miyagawa’s typology revisited

Abstract

Assuming the Strong Uniformity Principle, Miyagawa recently proposed a typology of languages based on distinct patterns of Feature Inheritance at Phase C. In this typology, Chinese is identified as a Category II language (with the δ-feature on C and the φ-feature on T). That is, Chinese is regarded as a non-discourse-configurational language similar to English. This paper aims to review Miyagawa’s discussion of Chinese and argue for its reclassification as a Category III language, that is, a discourse-configurational language like Spanish. I contend that Miyagawa’s discussion of Chinese only pertains to Aboutness-shift topic, a type of topic base-generated in the CP domain across languages; as a result, his conclusions are unsustainable. On the other hand, I show that phenomena like Object Preposing, forced A-focalization, and the distribution of Familiar and Contrastive topics in non-assertive embedded clauses provide compelling evidence that the δ-feature has lowered to T in Chinese. Finally, I address a potential counterargument presented by the Chinese wh-adverbial zenme ‘how come’. I argue that zenme is not base-generated in the CP periphery, but rather inserted in the TP layer.