Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka, to appear.
“Sentence-final particles at the vP phase edge.”
Proceedings of the 25th North American Conference of Chinese Linguistics (NACCL 25).
I propose that the low class of Sentence-Final Particles (SFPs) in Mandarin Chinese (sentence-final le, éryǐ, láizhe...) are head-final heads in the extended vP periphery, rather than in the CP domain as previously analyzed, substantiating a prediction made by Hsieh & Sybesma (2011). Evidence for the proposal comes from the semantic scope of sentence-final éryǐ and le with respect to negation and modals. Consequences for the syntax of Chinese SFPs and for the Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC) are discussed.
For full discussion, see “Low sentence-final particles in Mandarin Chinese and the Final-over-Final Constraint” in JEAL