How different are expletive and referential pronouns? A parsing perspective

Abstract

An expletive use of the third person pronoun ta in Mandarin Chinese poses a number of theoretical challenges which have not been met satisfactorily by existing analyses. In this paper we propose a unitary analysis of expletive and referential uses of the pronoun within the framework of Dynamic Syntax (Kempson et al., 2001; Cann et al., 2005). Since the distinction between the different uses of the same pronominal form is determined only by looking at the context that involves both local and external linguistic content, ta can be treated uniformly as a place-holder projecting an interim value which is contextually provided. While the referential pronoun takes its value from an antecedent, the expletive takes its value from a postverbal indefinite expression. Both processes are pragmatic in nature, in that the content of different types of pronouns, though underspecified by their form, is enriched from context. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.