Description

• Title:
  Why-questions, topicality and intervention effects in Chinese
• Creator:
  Jin, Dawei
• Description:
  This paper revisits intervention effects in Mandarin Chinese why-questions. I present new data showing that the ability for quantifiers to induce intervention hinges upon their monotonicity and their ability to be interpreted as topics. I then develop a semantic account that correlates topicality with monotone properties. Furthermore, I propose that why-questions in Chinese are idiosyncratic in that why directly merges at a high scope position that stays above a propositional argument. Combining the semantic idiosyncrasies of why-questions with the wide scope behaviors of topicality, I conclude that my account explains a wide range of intervention phenomena in terms of interpretation failure.
• Object availability:
  free access
• Rights:
  Prawa autorskie (c) 2016 Dawei Jin
• Date:
  2016.08.01
• Type:
  info:eu-repo/semantics/article;
  info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion;
  Peer-reviewed article
• Language:
  English
• Source:
  Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting; Vol. 2 No. 1 (2016); 91-113;
  Yearbook of the Poznań Linguistic Meeting; Tom 2 Nr 1 (2016); 91-113;
  2449-7525
• Format:
  application/pdf
• Publisher:
  Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan
• Relation: http://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/yplm/article/view/21616/20756
• Subject:
  intervention effects;
  why-questions;
  illocutionary acts;
  wide-scope indefinites;
  Mandarin Chinese
• Identifier: http://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/yplm/article/view/21616
• Data provider:
  Platforma Otwartych Czasopism Naukowych UAM
• Can I use it?:
  seek permission
• Type:
  other