Universal Concord and Two Types of Universal Constructions in Chinese

Universal Concord and Two Types of Universal Constructions in Chinese

Hongyuan Dong

Chinese Linguistics Workshop of the DC Metro AreaMarch 16, 2014 @ The George Washington University

H. Dong: Universal Concord

OUTLINE

• Two universal structures :“mei…dou…” and “wh…dou…”

• Their syntactic and semantic properties.

• A new interpretation based on “universal concord”

March 16, 2014 Page 2


TWO UNIVERSAL CONSTRUCTIONS

1. mei … dou…

meibenshui, wo dou xihuan ti

2. wh…dou… shenmeshui, wo douxihuan ti



MEI..DOU… [CONDITIONS]

Leftness Condition• *wo dou xihuan meibenshu

Co-occurrence Condition• *wo xihuan meibenshu• *meibenshu wo xihuan



MEI…DOU… [EXCEPTIONS]

Complex NPs improve acceptability (Cheng 1991)• Wo xihuan ta xiede meibenshu

Ditransitives improve acceptability (Cheng 1991)• Zhangsan gei le meigeren yibenshu

Indefinite NPs improve acceptability (Huang 1995)• Meigeren keyi na liangbenshu

Reflexives also improve acceptability (Huang 1996)• Meige houxuanren tan-le-tan ziji



MEI…DOU… [EXCEPTIONS]

Constrastive focus stress improves acceptability (see also Cheng 1991)

• A: ni haoxiang zhi xihuan zhebenshu!

• B: shei shuo de? Wo xihuan MEIbenshu



MEI…DOU… [SUMMARY]

• Generally speaking, the mei-phrase should occur to the left of the adverb “dou”.

• In certain cases, mei-phrase can stay in situ without “dou”



MEI…DOU… [ISSUES]

• Syntactically, the leftward movement needs to be accounted for

• Semantically, the co-occurrence condition needs to be accounted for

• Semantically “mei” is usually translated as “every”; “dou” as “all/both”March 16, 2014 Page 8


MEI…DOU… [ISSUES CONT’D]

• “every” is a universal quantifier

• “all” is a distributive adverb, similar in its quantification force as a universal quantifier.

• Compositionally, they cannot be in the same sentence.



MEI…DOU…[ISSUES CONT’D]

• In terms of SLA, students of Chinese as L2 always leave out the “dou”.

• This suggests that the follow might be false conceptually:

• “mei”=“every” & “dou”=“all/both”



MEI…DOU… [PREVIOUS SOLUTIONS]

• Huang (1996) : “mei” involves subsets relations; “dou” is a sum operator on events.

• Meigeren dou mai-le yibenshu• The set of people is a subset of book

buyers• There is an individual event for each

book buying. “Dou” sums up these individual events into a plural book buying event.



MEI…DOU… [PREVIOUS SOLUTIONS]

• Lin (1998): “meigeren” denotes a set of individuals. (i.e. more or less like a plural noun, e.g. renmen, zhexieren, etc.)

• “dou” is the usual distributive quantifier

• Meigeren dou you yibenshu• For each of the individuals among

the set of individuals denoted by “meigeren”, the individual has a book.March 16, 2014 Page 12


MEI…DOU… [MY PROPOSAL]

• Intuitively: both “mei” and “dou” have some kind of universal quantification force.

• Accordingly, Huang’s (1996) theory about “dou” seems to be going further away from such a basic meaning of “dou”.

• Lin’s (1998) approach about “mei” strips it of its quantification meaning




• Thus I propose to combine Lin’s (1998) theory with Kratzer’s (2006) theory on concord.

• The basic idea is that: both mei and dou have quantificational force.

• Dou is a real quantifier• Mei only carries an agreement

feature that needs to be checked off by dou




Negative Concord:

• I didn’t say nothin’ [English non-standard]

• Ich hab’ keinem Mensch kein Wort nicht gesagt. [German non-standard]

• I didn’t say nothin’ to no one.




Existential Concord

• Du musst irgendwem irgendwas schenken.

• You must someone something give• You must give something or other to

somebody or other as a gift

• FOR SOME […x…y…]March 16, 2014 Page 16



• Universal Concord:• Kratzer (2006) didn’t have any

example but only said it is a possibility.

• FOR ALL […x…y…]

• Note here “FOR SOME” and “FOR ALL” are propositional quantifiers




• The mei-phrase carries an uninterpretable quantifier feature.

• Dou carries an interpretable quantifier feature

• The feature on mei needs to be checked off by Dou via a local configuration

• vP and IP corresponds to propositions• Movement should preserve scope

relationsMarch 16, 2014 Page 18



• Syntax:




Semantics



WH…DOU…

• As argued by Dong (2009), Chinese wh-words do not have any inherent quantification power, but instead just denotes a set of alternatives.

• E.g. shei [+wh, +focus]: {x| person(x)}• [Zhangsan xihuan shei[+wh, +focus]]• No movement. [+wh] can be checked by

feature movement.• [+focus] is realized as the prosodic pattern

of the sentence with “shei” bears the prosodic prominence.



WH…DOU…

• Movement is needed to check of the [+wh] feature.

• [+focus] is still needed because in this structure, the WH should bear the prosodic prominence



WH…DOU…

• shei dou hen gaoxing• [IPdou [vP shei[+wh, +focus] hen gaoxing]]• [IP shei[+wh, +focus] dou [vP t hen

gaoxing]]



MEI…DOU… VS. WH…DOU… (REMAINING ISSUES)

Multiple association• Meigelaoshi ba meibenshu gei

meigexuesheng dou jieshao le yixia• Shei ba shenme dongxi dou reng-le• *everyone threw out everything• Who threw out everything?Wh…dou… does not allow multiple associationsThe most adjacent one is associated with dou



• Hao, meigeren dou dao le, women kaishi ba!

• Hao, *nageren/shenmeren dou dao le, women kaishi ba!

Wh…dou… seems to have a wider domain.


MEI…DOU… VS. WH…DOU… (REMAINING ISSUES)

Thank you!

Documents

Universal Concord and Two Types of Universal Constructions in Chinese