Subject-Object Asymmetry in Constituents' Extraction in Chinese Restrictive Relative Clauses—On the Nullification of Generalized Control Rule (GCR) and the Validity of Its Extended Version

Subject-object asymmetry can be observed in the extraction of the constituents in restrictive relative clauses in Chinese, while movement and base-generation are involved in various relative constructions either singly or together.By classifying and differentiating sufficient empirical data, the present article elaborates on the subject-object asymmetry when relative clauses are modifying different syntactic constituents.While the view of non-subject at the underlying representation and Generalized Control Rule (GCR) are of certain explanatory power, there still remain empirical data that are not well accounted for.By extending GCR, the present article also points out that whether the theme clause can appropriately describe the topic NP is one of the underlying linguistic motivations for the subject-object asymmetry.In addition, the article reanalyzes transitive uses of some unaccusative verbs like fasheng in current literature and concludes that this type of verbs are inherently not compatible with subjects, but license topics at the beginning of sentences.Diagnostics like relativization support this analysis.Future studies should to delve into the possible effects on the formation of double relative clauses by the order of relativizing subjects and objects.