Stage/Individual-level Predicates, Topics and Indefinite Subjects

Stage/Individual-level Predicates, Topics and Indefinite Subjects1 Shuiying Yao Department of Chinese Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hongkong shuiyingyao@gmail.com Abstract. Unlike Erteschik-Shir (1997) and de Swart (1999), we argue that the so-called Davidsonian arguments both in stage-level and individual-level predicates are able to function as topics, namely, existential stage topics and generic situation topics, respectively, which conforms with the well-known definiteness topic constraint. These two types of topics, however, are available only when the Davidsonian argument is bound via different means: the former gets bound in the existential domain, while the latter is constrained by the generic operator. Concerning the situation variable constrainer in sentences with individual-level predicates, we argue that besides general additional information, like adverbials ‘usually’ in English, ‘tongchang’/’yibande’, ‘yaoshi… jiu’ (if… then), etc, in Mandarin, bare NPs with kind- denoting and predicates denoting inherent property will help accommodate the generic operator, and thus a generic situation topic is available and sentences with indefinite subject NPs and individual-level predicates thus get licensed. As a consequence, we suggest that the necessary condition for the indefinite subject sentence should be that the indefinite subject NP is interpreted as specific or a stage topic/generic situation topic is available. Keywords: stage/individual-level predicates, topics, indefinite subjects 1. Introduction It has long been noted that the distribution of sentences with indefinite subject NPs is quite restricted, especially with respect to Mandarin Chinese which does not allow an indefinite NP to appear in the subject or topic position unless it is interpreted as specific (see Chao 1968, Li and Thompson 1981, Lee 1986, Tsai 2001, Xu 1996, among many others) or gets bound by an existential or a generic operator (Pan 2009). Some recent studies, however, claim that it is not correct to treat sentences with indefinite subjects uniformly without distinguishing between stage- level and individual-level predicates (Erteschik-Shir1997, de Swart 1999), as shown by sentences from English (1)-(2) and Mandarin (3)-(4), which clearly shows that both these two languages allow sentences with the indefinite subject and a stage-level predicate, as in (1a) and (3a), but not sentences with the indefinite subject and an individual-level predicate, as in (1b) and (3b). However, when the subject is a bare NP, sentences with individual-level predicates are acceptable, as in (2b) and (4b), contrasting with the indefinite subjects in (2a) and (4a): English (1) a. A man arrived (stage-level predicate) b. *A man is smart. (individual-level predicate) (2) a.*A dog is intelligent. (indefinite NP) b. Dogs are intelligent (bare NP) 1 I thank professor Haihua Pan for discussions and suggestions on the very draft, as well as the final version of this paper. Also, I thank Dr.Yurie Hara and the anonymous PACLIC 24th reviewers for comments. Copyright 2010 by Shuiying YAO PACLIC 24 Proceedings 573 Mandarin (3) a. yi-ge nanhai zai henkuai de pao (stage-level predicate) one Cl boy –ing very quickly DE run ‘A boy (outside) is running quickly’. b.*Yi-ge nanhai hen huopo (individual-level predicate) one-Cl boy very lively ‘A boy is very lively’. (4) a.* Yi-ge nanhai …

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