ABSTRACT
Chinese is often seen as a typological and a theoretical challenge to assumptions concerning the relevance of syntax in its interaction with semantics and pragmatics. The range of theoretical positions on the importance of syntax in Chinese reaches from its total irrelevance to its equal importance across the languages of the world. The former positions see no necessity of assuming a specific level of syntax, since everything can be accounted for in terms of semantics/cognition or in terms of pragmatics (LaPolla 1990, 2009), while the latter positions take the relevance of syntax for granted (e.g. C.-T. J. Huang et al. 2009), since it is based on Universal Grammar (UG) and the general assumption that syntax as an innate property of the human brain is the same across all human languages. Y. Huang (1994: 2) takes an intermediate position in his statement that ‘the extent to which syntax and pragmatics interact varies typologically’. In his view, languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean are characterized by the fact that pragmatics is involved in linguistic domains that are governed by syntax in languages like English, French or German.
