Embedded Interrogatives In Chinese And Predicates That Embed Them

A great deal of attention has been paid to the phenomenon that predicates in English take embedded interrogatives as their complements. This thesis refers to Grimshaw‘s(1979) view on the embedding predicates and the proposal of Karttunen(1977) on the semantic denotation of embedded interrogatives, and explore the embedding predicates and embedded interrogatives in Mandarin Chinese employing X‘-theory, the Projection Principle and Case Theory. The study mainly aims at solving the following questions of embedded interrogatives in Mandarin Chinese: 1) What are the syntactic and semantic features of question-embedding predicates? 2) How does the interrogative mood of the sentences containing embedded interrogatives represent? 3) What are the similarities and differences between the semantic meaning of embedded interrogatives and concealed questions?This thesis analyzes from the following aspects: the selection restriction and classification of embedding predicates in Mandarin Chinese, the semantic interpretation of embedded interrogatives and concealed questions. The conclusions are as follows:First, complement selection is realized jointly by s(emantic)-selection and c(atergorial)-selection, with the former selects the semantic type of the complement and the latter selects the syntactic category of the complement. The semantic types of complements we discuss are propositions, questions and exclamatives; and the syntactic categories are CPs, NPs and Null complement. Only the constituents with the semantic type Q and syntactic category CP can be embedded by the question-selecting verbs. However, we find some predicates can embed complements with semantic type Q but syntactic category NP. This kind of complements can be paraphrased by interrogative complement clauses referred to as concealed question, which is a special form of embedded interrogative.Second, the interrogative mood of sentences containing embedded interrogatives is influenced by several factors. We find that the interrogative mood has selection restrictions on the semantic meaning of matrix predicates, the personal references, question particles and sentence accent. In addition, the interrogative mood exhibits licensing variability in certain context.Third, by interpreting embedded interrogatives and concealed questions, and comparing the distribution of embedded interrogatives and concealed questions as well the selection criteria of embedding predicates, we reach the conclusion that embedded interrogatives denote a world-independent proposition concepts expressed by their true and exhaustive answers whereas the concealed question denote a world-dependent proposition whose interpretation is related to the conceptual cover. Moreover, we point out that the selection criteria of verbs in Mandarin Chinese is the requirement of semantic denotation and world-(in)dependent of the complements.