Pronouns, null arguments, and ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

This paper argues that both overt and null pronouns in Mandarin are the elliptical counterparts of corresponding overt noun phrases. Specifically, null pronouns are the pronominal counterparts of bare nouns, which are typically restricted to unique definite environments, while overt pronouns are the pronominal counterparts of demonstrative descriptions, which are typically restricted to anaphoric definite environments. This result provides support for a hypothesis we call Determiner-Pronoun Parallelism: the idea that a language’s pronominal inventory is isomorphic to its determiners used for the expression of definiteness distinctions.