The Syntax and Semantics of Prenominals: Construction or Composition? *

Although the adjunct–complement dichotomy has long been recognized in traditional Chinese linguistic study for the analysis of clausal and verb-phrase structure, research on nominal structure has traditionally recognized only a general dingyu or ‘determinative’ category in the pre-nominal position. While most generative works on Chinese syntax have followed the X-bar theory and recognize an adjunct–complement distinction for the noun phrase as well as other phrases, few have offered systematic evidence from Chinese to prove this view. In the meantime, some recent typological works have claimed that for a number of languages with head-final noun phrases, the adjunct–complement distinction does not exist, and that a constructionist view that takes all the clausal prenominal modifiers under an undifferentiated ‘noun-modifying’ category should be adopted.

This paper presents empirical evidence to reaffirm the existence of an adjunct–complement dichotomy in the nominal structure in Chinese as well as other languages. Extensive evidence is amassed supporting the view that only when adjuncts are structurally positioned higher than complements and the semantic component rules apply accordingly can the relevant facts be appropriately explained. We also take up the facts that have been used to support the constructionist approach and show that they in fact do not serve their purpose. We show that the seemingly uniform de-constructions are in fact heterogeneous, and that the high degree of interpretive and analytic variability and the apparent lack of appropriate input to relativization have their independent sources not peculiar to nominal structure. Once the independent factors are isolated, the syntax and semantics of the prenominal elements can be derived according to standard procedures.