Abstract
Abstract The thesis aims to study Chinese VP ellipsis construction under a Minimalist Approach. It is proposed that there are four constructions relating to VP ellipsis in Chinese, i.e. ye-shi, ye-you, mei-you, and modal. The constructions involving VP ellipsis can be captured under a hypothesis in which a Focus Phrase, dominated by a Topic Phrase, immediately dominates the elided VP or other functional projection. Subject in the target clause is in fact a focus topic while preverbal adverbials like ye and mei locate the specifier of FP with respect to their focus nature in Chinese. Under the feature-checking mechanism, the subject and the focus element are merged to eliminate the [Topic] and [Focus] feature. Within the previously known requirement that elided phrases express semantically entailment information, the proposed VP ellipsis constructions satisfy the e-Givenness Condition. It emerges from the thesis that rejecting that presentational use of you construes a lower ellipsis site (v’ or V’) it is suggested that what elided in the case be a phrasal level. Although Chinese subordinate structures seem to be blurred in its ellipsis nature, some of which are subject to VP ellipsis construction. From a cross-linguistic investigation, it is further suggested that in languages with no V to T movement, Chinese has VP ellipsis on a par with English on the one hand, and patterns together with Japanese and Korean on having Null Object Construction on the other.