1 Finiteness of Clauses and Raising of Arguments in Mandarin Chinese*

This paper argues that Mandarin Chinese clauses exhibit the finite/nonfinite contrast, and, based on this discovery, shows that the EPP is the driving force for A-movement. The evidence is the raising of arguments from the TP complements of different kinds of modals. It is argued that the epistemic modals in Mandarin Chinese take a finite TP complement, while the modal hui ‘will ’ and the root modals take a nonfinite TP complement. Though the epistemic modals take a finite TP complement, they nonetheless permit subject-to-subject raising. This phenomenon can be accounted for if we assume that the EPP drives A-movement, and agreement blocks A-movement. Mandarin Chinese doesn’t have grammatical features; as a consequence, the subject of a finite clause doesn’t perform checking of grammatical features, and thus is free to raise. This phenomenon, therefore, is evidence against the checking-based theory to A-movement. If feature checking is involved in raising in Mandarin Chinese sentences, extra assumptions must be made, resulting in a great burden of proof