The syntactic structure of modal verbs in Chinese

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntactic properties of modal verbs in Chinese. By comparing the differences between epistemic and root modal verbs, we try to get the syntactic properties of modal verbs. This paper makes modal verbs related to aspect markers and concludes that root modal verbs originate in ASPP and have complementary distribution with aspect markers; they take VP as their complement. Based on the two arguments that epistemic modal verbs cannot occur in nonassertive contexts and the asymmetry of negation of modal verbs this paper claims that epistemic modal verbs are in IP and move to the position of CP, and they have complementary distribution with nonassertive contexts; they select IP as their complement. The established proposal can adequately account for not only the succession of modal verbs but also some controversial issues. © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.