Defining and automatically identifying words in Chinese

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Professor in charge of dissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my committee members. Many thanks go to my advisor Peter Cole, without whose encouragement and support this dissertation would not have been possible. I owe Peter more than just the dissertation: I first learned to make syntactic argumentation from Peter and benefited immensely from his insistence on making one's arguments as clear as possible. I would also like to thank Martha Palmer, who not only gave me the opportunity to work on the Chinese Treebank Project at University of Pennsylvania and got me started to think about the issues discussed in this dissertation, but also guided me on the computational aspect of this dissertation. Thanks also go to Rolf Noyer, whose comments on the previous draft of this dissertation lead to substantial improvements. His comments also corrected my misinterpretations of certain parts of the Distributed Morphology theory, the theoretical framework adopted in this dissertation. I learned a great deal from the advanced syntax seminars taught by Gaby Hermon. I benefited from Bill Idsardi's linguistic expertise in general and I would like to thank him for his patience with me in my earlier years in the program before I settled down with a research program. vi Besides my committee members many people have contributed to my education here in the United States. I would like to thank …