DOES MODERN CHINESE ALLOW GENITIVE SUBJECTS?

Abstract

This paper investigates whether Chinese allows genitive subjects, and shows that it actually does. Based on newly found data, we will argue (i) that not only Altaic and Indo-European languages, but also one of the Sino-Tibetan languages, allows genitive subjects, (ii) that the Transitivity Restriction on genitive subjects is not operative in Chinese, unlike Japanese, (iii) that genitive subjects are allowed not only in head-final languages, but also in head-initial languages, and genitive subject licensing may not require a covert complementizer in Chinese, and (iv) that the fact that a deep genitive subject is allowed in Chinese suggests that the language possesses the abstract adnominal form of a predicate.