Abstract
This work starts with the discussion on the existential sentence formed by you, literally meaning ‘have’, in Mandarin Chinese, especially on the type of sentence in which you is at the sentence-initial position. This type of you construction is called the sentence-initial you, which has the basic structure [you NP XP]. XP is a phrase that whose syntactic status is questionable. In the previous studies, you is regarded as either a verbal element or a “functional” category. According to the verbal analysis, you is an existential verb. The post-you NP is the object, and the XP is an adjunct. According to the “functional” analysis, on the other hand, you is a functional head. The post-you NP is a predicate-internal subject, and the XP is the main predicate. From the evidence provided in this work, I propose that you is a verb. These pieces of evidence include modal constructions, sentences with elements in the left periphery under Rizzi’s definition (Rizzi 2004), and the position of some of the temporal adverbs, such as xian ‘first’, in Mandarin. Since you is a verb, the XP is not the main predicate of the sentence, and thereby an adjunct. In the second part of this work, I discuss other two types of you along with the sentence-initial you, the locative you and the temporal you, both are regarded as verb. The locative you takes a locative subject, and the temporal you takes a temporal subject. Following the theory of Lin (2001) that subjects in Mandarin Chinese are selected by different light verbs, I propose that the differences can be explained by the light verbs that you take. There are two light verbs involved, the light verb EXIST and the light verb OCCUR. EXIST describes a relatively static event, and OCCUR a relatively non-static one. OCCUR is thus required to take an “eventive” element in the sentence, which can be either an eventive object or an XP with non-static reading. On the other hand, EXIST does not have this restriction. The temporal subject of the temporal you can be selected only by OCCUR. The locative subject of the locative you construction and the empty subject of the sentence-initial you construction can be selected by either OCCUR and EXIST. That the light verb projection exists in these you constructions indicates that the sentence-initial you, along with the locative you and the temporal you, are all verbs, not spell-out of an existential quantifier.