Silent Verbs in Northern Mandarin: A Silence Neither Gaps Nor Emptiness Can Fill

This paper reanalyzes examples with missing verbs. Northern Mandarin rejects argument nominal phrases after a silent verb, as well as silent verbs inside islands. These restrictions suggest a grammatical process which silences verbs. I propose that these restrictions are the result of VP-topicalization followed by ellipsis. This analysis accounts for the island sensitivity of these constructions: since VP-topicalization feeds ellipsis, constructions with elided VPs are not derivable from configurations where movement is impossible. Also, to avoid topicalization along with the VP, the argument must move out of VP; the subsequent topicalization of the VP containing the argument's trace would then give rise to a configuration where that trace c-commands the moved-out DP. Adjuncts do not pose a problem because they are located outside of that smallest VP-shell. The data presented here are accommodated by neither of Tang's (2001) proposals for silent verbs (gapping and empty verbs). Instead, they provide support for a third source for silent verbs, VP-ellipsis via topicalization.