Unvalued interpretable features and topic A-movement in Chinese raising modal constructions

The purpose of this paper is three-fold: (i) I argue that topic A-movement exists in Chinese. Specifically, I show that argument displacement in Chinese raising modal constructions (RMC) containing raising modals like yinggai ‘should’ and keneng ‘likely’ is A-movement to spec-TP, yet semantically exhibits topicality; (ii) even though Miyagawa's (2010) extension of Chomsky, 2007 and Chomsky, 2008 feature inheritance hypothesis to the Topic feature provides a possible derivational system to capture topic A-movement in this construction, I show that object topic A-movement in this construction is underivable under Miyagawa's (2010) probe-driven system of movement based on feature inheritance. This is because of a timing problem regarding feature inheritance and Chomsky's (2001) Phase-Impenetrability Condition independently noted by Epstein et al. (2012) and Richards (2011); (iii) I propose that two major modifications are needed to maintain the basic assumptions of Miyagawa (2010) to derive object topic A-movement in RMC: (a) a more fine-grained characterization of topic A-movement on the basis of the dissociation of feature interpretability and feature valuation (see Pesetsky and Torrego, 2007, Carstens, 2010, Carstens, 2011 and Bošković, in press), and (b) the adoption of Bošković’s (2007) moving-element-driven theory of movement.

► Topic A-movement exists in Chinese raising modal constructions. ► Object A-movement is not derivable based on feature inheritance. ► Feature valuation and feature interpretability should be lexically dissociated. ► Case feature and Topic feature drive A-movement in Chinese.