Syntax And Semantics Of Negative Polarity Items In English And Mandarin Chinese

In the thesis we primarily focus on the systematic study of negative polarity items (NPIs) in Mandarin Chinese and give a cross-linguistic perspective on syntactic and semantic properties of NPIs compared with those in English, trying to pursuit the question of the nature of Chinese NPIs to a certain depth by finding answers to three questions: (a) what are the semantic properties of NPIs in Mandarin Chinese? (b) what are the licensing conditions of Chinese NPIs? (c) why should Chinese NPIs require such licensing conditions?The phenomenon of English NPIs has been approached from a variety of perspectives in the past forty years and various hypotheses associated with it raise syntactically, semantically and pragmatically important questions. The argument for a cross-linguistic way of perceiving the phenomenon rests partly on the observation that the lack of a systematic study of NPIs persists in current discussion in Chinese, as well as on the desire to uncover connections between English and Chinese. It is hoped that such a cross-linguistic study on NPIs may lend itself to reveal the internal mechanism of Chinese language, the interface of syntax/semantics, and how Universal Grammar works cross-linguistically.Owing to the fact that it is impractical to investigate the phenomenon by listing the family of NPIs exhaustively since the members of the family not only cover various syntactic categories but also can be either single word or complex expressions, in this thesis, we just focus on the investigation of typical examples of Chinese NPIs. NPIs in our thesis can be divided into two groups: indefinite noun phrases (e.g. renhe(any) and non-interrogative wh-phrases) and non-indefinite noun phrases (e.g. negative polarity adverbs such as conglai(ever), wamvan(absolutely), genben(at all) and sihao(a bit), and other NPIs including negative polarity idioms, negative polarity verbs and negative polarity adjectives etc.). And we find that in Chinese, unlike those NPIs which are not indefinite NPs, those NPIs which are indefinite NPs and contain variables should satisfy the binding requirement of a c-commanding operator in order to be licensed.Similar to English word any, renhe(any) in Mandarin Chinese is characterized with two semantic properties: polarity sensitive renhe and free choice renhe, the former of which is licensed in standard negative polarity contexts (e.g. negations, questions and conditionals), while the latter in other contexts and generally has the generic denotation.Although the phenomenon of NPIs in both English and Chinese share the preference for negative polarity sensitivity, Chinese NPIs exhibit some characteristics which English NPIs lack. English NPIs represented by any and ever should be c-commanded by the licenser,...