On the Uncleftability of Direct Object in Chinese

Abstract

While Keenan and Comrie's (1977) Accessibility Hierarchy (AH) theory has been considered applicable to syntactic processes other than relativization, apparent counterevidence is not lacking which poses a potential threat to the validity of the theory. For example, while in general Chinese cleft sentences obey the AH, the uncleftability of the direct object (DO) poses a problem for the AH. This study, however, shows that DO uncleftability in Chinese follows not from overgeneralization of the AH, but from a language-specific constraint on linear order between the contrastive focus marker, or more generally the quasi-verb, and the main verb in Chinese. Thus while the AH attains some measure of plausibility as a universal tendency, it nevertheless can interact with, and be negatively affected by, language-specific constraints.