Where do Chinesewh-items fit?

Abstract

This chapter investigates wh-items in Mandarin from a cross-linguistic perspective, seeking to unify their various uses. It stems from: (i) previous approaches to indefinites in Chinese (Cheng 1991; Lin 1998); (ii) Kartunnen’s semantics for questions; (iii) recent work on epistemic indefinites (EIs); and (iv) recent approaches to polarity (e.g. Chierchia 2013). The chapter claims that indefinites in all languages denote existential terms and activate a grammatically determined set of alternatives, factored into meaning through a process of ‘exhaustification’, responsible for the scalar and ‘free choice’ readings of ordinary indefinites (OIs). EIs are viewed in the same way, the only difference from OIs being that EIs’ alternatives cannot be ‘pruned’ (i.e. ‘ignored’) depending on the context. Therefore, with EIs, epistemic effects come about obligatorily. The differences within types of EIs (including Chinese wh’s) are part of (a small set of) parametric differences on how alternatives can be factored in.

Unifying Universal and Existential wh’s in Mandarin

“…First, dou is EVEN, which requires (as a presupposition) its prejacent to be stronger than all the other alternatives (Liu 2017). Next, just as interrogative-wh's in constituent questions as in Karttunen 1977 and indefinite-wh's in negative and modal contexts discussed in Chierchia & Liao 2015, universal wh's denote ∃-quantifiers as well, and as many polarity-sensitive items (and indefinites in general) across languages do, they trigger subdomain alternatives (Chierchia 2013b). Finally, free choice effects that usually accompany disjunctions/indefinites enter the scene, turn these ∃-wh's into ∀ by utilizing the subdomain alternatives, and thus help satisfy dou's strongest prejacent presupposition.…”

“…We have been assuming that exhaustification over pre-exhaustified alternatives of a wh can turn it into a universal. We have also seen that Mandarin wh's without dou are polarity items banned from episodic positive environments, and assumed with Chierchia & Liao (2015) that this is due to a contradiction resulting from obligatory exhaustification of their plain domain alternatives in episodic positive contexts. Combining the two assumptions into a single coherent story however seems problematic.…”

“…To illustrate, consider Chierchia & Liao's (2015) treatment of Mandarin whindefinites. In their account, wh's are just ∃-quantifiers, illustrated in (13a) with the domain explicitly represented as D. The main difference between PSIs such as Mandarin wh-indefinites and plain indefinites (some/a) is that the former obligatorily activate alternatives while the latter only do so optionally.…”

“…Mandarin wh-items are versatile. A simple wh shei 'who' can act as an interrogative word as in (1a) and an existential indefinite in (1b) (Li 1992;Lin 1998b); it can also contribute universal quantificational force in combination with dou 'even/all' in (1c) (Cheng 1995), and receive what seems to be a bound variable interpretation in a so-called wh-conditional (1d) (Cheng & Huang 1996;Chierchia 2000 Wh-conditionals This paper offers a unified account of Mandarin existenial and universal wh's as in (1b-c), in which both denote existential quantifiers underlyingly (see also Chierchia & Liao 2015). ∃-wh's however can be strengthened into ∀-wh's via exhaustification over the domain alternatives, independently needed for free choice disjunction and free choice items across languages (Fox 2007;Chierchia 2013b).…”

Alternatives in different dimensions: a case study of focus intervention

“…One can be found in the restrictor of (wunlun)...dou, where the wh-phrase is interpreted universally (Cheng 1991;Lin 1996); the other can be found in non-veridical contexts, such as in the scope of epistemic modals, where the wh-phrase is interpreted as an existential indefinite (Li 1992;Lin 1998b;Liao 2011;Chierchia and Liao 2015). We discuss how focus intervention manifests in these two uses.…”