Quantification and Its Scope Interpretation in Mandarin Chinese

• Main Authors: Barry Chung-Yu Yang, 楊中玉
• Other Authors: Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/89178224745320634756

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 語言學研究所 === 90 === It is argued in this thesis that Chinese quantifiers should be treated as variables instead of quantifiers. Three reasons account for that: 1) these quantifiers do not manifest any island effects in various island constructions while they may take the wide scope reading; 2) they generally can not stand alone and have to co-occur with certain overt or covert quantificational operators; 3) their interpretations depend heavily on the properties of these operators. The lack of island effects is investigated as a starting point to explore the property of Chinese quantifiers. Three types of quantification are discussed in this thesis. They are the polarity licensing of renhe 'any', the universal quantification of mei 'every', and the existential quantification of numeral plural determiners, e.g., san 'three'. All these three constructions strongly suggest that Quantifier Raising (May 1997,1985), an LF-movement to syntactically define the scopes of quantifiers, is not applicable to Chinese since none of the three above constructions show any island effects while the quantifiers in question may take the wide scope reading. Then, taking a broader view, we find that these quantifiers generally can not stand alone. To get properly licensed, they have to co-occur with certain operators, e.g., NEG elements bu 'not', mei 'not', or distributive dou 'all' in the polarity licensing, the distributive dou 'all' and the collective gongtong 'together' in universal quantification, and the existential operator you 'have/exist' in existential quantification. In some constructions, though there is no overt operator around to license these quantifiers, it is proposed that there are still certain operators existing, only that they are covert this time. Further, the interpretation of these quantifiers is derived both from the inherent properties of their corresponding operators and the positions of these operators. For instance, when the universal quantifier mei 'every' goes with the distributive operator dou 'all', a distributive reading is yielded; when it goes with the collective operator gongtong 'together', a collective reading is yielded. What's more, it is the position of the operators that marks the scope of the quantifiers but not the quantifiers themselves that mark the scope of their own. Therefore, when the operator is located within a complex NP, a narrow scope (or NP-internal) reading is yielded, whereas when it is out of the complex NP, a wide scope (or NP-external) reading is yielded. An operator-variable binding approach is adopted throughout this thesis to account for the proposal that Chinese quantifiers should be treated as variables. Meanwhile, as later suggested in Chapter Four, the predicate type plays an crucial role in determining the interpretation of Chinese indefinite subjects. A syntax-semantics interface is then proposed to account for it with three interactive dimensions, i.e., specificity, distributivity, and scope.