Demonstrates the specific ways in which the influence of Chinese manifests itself in the structure of the noun phrases containing relative-clause modifiers in colloquial Singapore English. Argues that while previous researchers have been correct in pointing out the substratal influence of Chinese, they have not gone far enough in articulating the…

Proposes that, with Fiengo and May's (1994) indexing theory, a full-fledged reconstruction approach to null argument phenomena in such languages as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is possible. Argues that null noun phrases in these languages must be empty phrase markers underlyingly, not empty pronouns, and their reference properties can be…