Juxtaposed possessives ta baba 'her/his father' in Mandarin Chinese

•Only singular pronouns and bare kinship terms can form juxtaposed possessives (JPs).•JPs are independent from double nominal constructions and de possessives.•JPs have the following structure: [DP [D pronouni] [KinP [Kin kinship term] proi]].•The pronoun is not interpreted in D and pro shares phi-specification with it.•JPs are directly referential where the kinship term is identified by the pronoun.

This paper investigates juxtaposed possessives (JPs) in Mandarin Chinese (MC) such as ta baba 'her/his father', where a personal pronoun ta '(s)he' is juxtaposed with a kinship noun baba 'father' and the two bear a kinship relationship. I assume that a DP is projected in Mandarin nominal expressions and pronouns are Ds while bare proper names are DPs. On this basis, I argue that in JPs, the kinship term is a head taking a pro complement, projecting a Kin(ship)P projection. This KinP is then combined with a D head (a personal pronoun), which agrees in phi-specification with pro. This analysis predicts the absence of proper names and the unacceptability of non-bare pronouns and kinship terms in JPs. In addition, it captures the semantic properties of JPs: directly referential with the pronoun functioning as the anchor of the speech act.