| The dissertation attempts to provide some answers to the two core issues concerning wh-conditionals in Mandarin Chinese.These two questions,one is the matching requirement for the two identical wh-items,the other is the alternation between the wh-item and a pronoun in the consequent clause,remain puzzling and unsolved since Cheng&Huang(1996)raised these issues nearly 30 years ago.Based on new data unnoticed by previous studies,the dissertation approaches the two issues mentioned above from five perspectives.As each perspective corresponds to one Chapter,there are all together five Chapters in the main part,with two additional Chapters,Chapter one as introduction and Chapter seven as conclusion.Chapter two suggests that the non-interrogative wh-items in Chinese are ambiguous.However,previous researches which limit the ambiguity to universal reading and existential reading could not explain a third reading.I propose that this potential third reading is a higher-order reading,which could be better explained from the perspective of numerical quantification while reducing the referential reading to a weak and minimal status.Chapter three compares the syntax and semantics of four types of matching‘wh...,wh...'constructions in Chinese.These new data unveil that‘donkey anaphora'does not contribute to the matching requirement,which may be caused by quantification.Furthermore,I find that predicate plays a decisive role in determining the referential reading of the matching wh-items.Predicate fully control the referential reading of the wh-items in simple sentences while it could only partially do so in complicated sentences,where operators,such as‘Dou'and‘Jiu'are present.Chapter four examines one of the operators,‘Dou'.Contrary to previous beliefs,‘Dou'is not a focus particle,nor an exhaustifier here.It is proposed that‘Dou'is a numerical operator.This numerical operator can license the universal reading of the matching quantifiers or the matching wh-items,which explains why the same sentences without‘Dou'are ungrammatical.Chapter five proposes that Chinese non-interrogative wh-items are numerical quantifiers,which have a semantic makeup of 'numerical meaning+referential meaning'.It is proved that the numerical part overrides the referential part in most cases.It is also proved that this numerical reading could explain the matching requirement of the wh-items in Chinese wh-conditionals since the two identical'shei' always agree in number.However,It could not do so with a morphologically different wh-item,even if they are identical in reference.Chapter six focuses on 'Jiu'.Contrary to previous understanding,'Jiu' is not a conditional marker in Chinese wh-conditionals.It is proposed that like 'Dou','Jiu'is also an overt numerical operator.But different from 'Dou','Jiu' licenses'exactly one' reading.As a singular operator,'Jiu' assign a singular value to 'shei' in the antecedent clause,then this singular 'shei' could agree in number with a singular third person 'ta',which explains why the wh-item could alternate with a pronoun in the consequent clause. |
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