On true empty category
This addresses a theoretical issue in linguistics for researchers studying Universal Grammar, but it is incremental as it critiques and refines an existing hypothesis.
The paper tackles the problem of accounting for certain empty object positions in linguistics that seem incompatible with existing empty categories, by evaluating evidence from topicalization and showing it can be explained without invoking a proposed true empty category.
According to Chomsky (1981, 1986), empty categories consist of PRO, pro, trace, and variable. However, some empty object positions seem to be incompatible with extant empty categories. Given this, Li (2007a, 2007b, 2014) and Li & Wei (2014) raise the true empty category hypothesis, which holds that true empty category is only an empty position with category and Case features. As a last resort option, it is used mainly to meet the subcatgorization of a verb. This assumption is ingenious, and if proved to be true, it will exert a great impact on the study of UG. In this paper, we evaluate their evidence from topicalization and demonstrate that it can be accounted for without invoking true empty category.