Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Nonveridicality and Existential Polarity Wh-Phrases in Mandarin |
| Author: | Zhiguo Xie |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Institution: | Cornell University |
| Linguistic Field: | Semantics |
| Subject Language: |
Chinese, Mandarin
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| Abstract: |
In this paper I first gave a more detailed description of the distribution of Mandarin Chinese EPWs than available in the literature. Then I examined two influential treatments of NPIs in the context of EPWs: von Fintel's Strawson Downward Entailment analysis and Giannakidou's Nonveridicality analysis. I showed that neither of them can capture all the relevant data. The Nonveridicality proposal does a better joh in that it only falls short of the sensitivity of EPWs to some aspect operators. Drawing on Klein et al (2000)'s analysis of Mandarin
Chinese aspect particles, I revised Giannakidou's Nonveridicality for aspectual/temporal operators to cover the 'problematic' data. If the analysis proposed in this paper is on the right track, it would provide cross-linguistic support to Giannakidou's Nonveridicality analysis of polarity items, which is flexible enough to account for crosslinguistic variation. |
| Type: | Individual Paper |
| Status: | Completed |
| Publication Info: | Proceedings of CLS 43. |
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