The classification of de-marked modification structures in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

The particle de 的 occurs with higher frequency than any other particle in Mandarin Chinese. Its main function in Chinese noun phrases is to link attributive words or phrases to the head noun. Classification of the different uses of the particle de has been of interest to linguists and computational linguists alike, not least because of its importance for machine translation from Chinese to English. The primary aim of this thesis is to describe and, where necessary, systemize existing classifications of the noun phrase internal occurrences of de. To this end, we have built a small-annotated corpus of de constructions using the TypeCraft Interlinear Glossed Text (IGT) Repository. In addition, we have made use of the TypeCraft Mandarin corpus as the data source for our linguistic classification of de constructions. This thesis distinguishes the uses of de in modification and relativisation structures, and explores sequences of de-attributes.