The Syntax of Answers to Yes/No Questions in Mandarin

This thesis discusses answers to yes/no questions in Mandarin from the perspective of syntax. It describes yes/no questions and answers especially the fragment answers in Mandarin according to their forms and structures. The fragment answers to yes/no questions can employ either echo answers or particle answers, and the particle answers en and en ̃ can follow either the truth-based answer system or the polarity-based answer system. A fragment answer is derived from its full sentential answer in which there is a strong interpretable [Focus] feature on the Focus Phrase(FocP) which is in the highest position in the domain of the CP. The focus of a yes/no question is the variable polarity. The strong interpretable [Focus] feature attracts the PolP with the [uFocus] feature to the specifier of the FocP to check the unvalued [Focus] feature. The TP is deleted first with several ellipses followed gradually. This thesis, not only describes yes/no questions and answers in Mandarin based on their forms respectively, but also researches the syntactic derivation of answers to yes/no questions in Mandarin. Furthermore, it also contributes to the syntactic research on de structures in yes/no questions and answers.