Studies On Donkey Sentences

Donkey sentences were first discussed by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippos. Interest in such sentences was revived in the 1980s. Tipical donkey sentences are conditionals and relative clauses with a quantified NP. Based on the theory of generics and Hess (1989a, 1989b), the present dissertation proposes a third companion, i.e., the generic donkey sentence. It argues that these three types of donkey sentence find expressions in Chinese as well as in English. Detailed discussions are made on Chinese generic donkey sentences and quantified relative clause donkey sentences.The dissertation is composed of six chapters. The first chapter introduces the subject matters, theoretical frameworks and methodology of the present study. It claims that Chinese has another type of donkey sentence related to genericity. It also argues that just like English, it does have quantified relative clause donkey sentences.Chapter two reviews the literature on donkey sentences. With the revived interest in indefinites, donkey anaphora has developed into a hot issue in the field of semantics. Three main approaches are gaming recognition in interpreting donkey sentences, namely, Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), E-type Pronoun Approach (EPA) and Dynamic Binding Approach. This dissertation argues, however, that these theories do not capture the whole picture of donkey anaphora. There is actually another type of sentence, the type of sentence that contains relative clause introduced by a generic NP, which are not given adequate account of. And such sentences are not taken care of in the Chinese donkey business. In addition, the typical Chinese donkey sentences turn out not to be conditionals as generally believed, but sentences containing a relative clause realized by the deP construction.Chapter three looks into generic sentences, concentrating on their basic varieties and properties, genericity and its quantification, and the semantics of the generic operator. Based on Hess(1989a, 1989b), we further clarify and enrich the notion of implicit donkey sentence. As generics express quantification over individuals, they are similar to frequency adverbs, so it is plausible to claim that Gen is just another frequency adverb functioning as "usually". The Gen operator and the universal operator are thus distinguished.Chapter four discusses implicit generic donkey sentences in Mandarin Chinese. They have the following features: (1) the clauses display a parallel structure and are co-related; (b) the first occurrence of the indefinite noun phrase is anaphoric to the second; (c) they are generic, with the implicit generic operator Gen functioning as a...