Even-Focus and VP-Fronting in Mandarin Chinese

1. The Puzzles The goal of this paper is to account for the semantics-syntax mismatch and the optionality on the LF-PF mapping in Mandarin lian...dou VP-focus constructions. Specifically, I propose that the observed puzzle in this paper can be explained with the Copy Theory (Chomsky (1995), Bobaljik (2002), and others) and the theory in Bobaljik and Wurmbrand (2008) on LF-PF mapping. In Mandarin Chinese, the even-focus construction, in addition to the focus, contains two morphemes: lian and dou. The morpheme lian is attached to the focus, while the morpheme dou occurs in the preverbal position. Moreover, the sequence of the focalized element and lian must move to the position that precedes dou. In the vanilla case of this construction, the semantic focus corresponds to the fronted constituent at the surface representation: in (1b) the nominal object sherou ‘snake meat’ is focalized and moves to the pre-dou position with lian; in (2b), the sentential complement of the verb zhidao ‘know’ is focalized and fronted with lian ‘even’. As shown in (1) and (2), there is a unique correspondence between the semantic focus and the fronted constituent at surface.