The Intervention Effect Of Interrogative Wh-words In Mandarin Chinese

This thesis is devoted to address the issue of the intervention effect of wh-words in interrogative readings. Many linguists such as Beck (1996), Beck & Kim (1997), Tanaka (1997), Hagstrom (1998), Tanaka & Mika (2007), etc. have studied this issue. Among their approaches, Beck's MNSC, Tanaka's LCC and Beck's focus semantic interpretation are the most compelling ones. Recent study shows that the intervention effect is a cross-linguistic phenomenon, and it is reported to exist in Mandarin Chinese as well. However, the study of interrogative wh-words is not so hot as its non-interrogative readings in Chinese. The purpose of this thesis is to make a description of intervention effect of interrogative wh-words in Mandarin Chinese and to explore the underlying principles behind such intervention effect.In this thesis, seven typical wh-words–weishenme'why', zenme'how', shei'who', na'which', shenme'what', heshi/shenmeshihou'when', and nali'where'–will be observed. The sensitivity of intervention effect of each wh-word would be examined. In addition to the study of wh-words, the interveners will be further examined. We have two findings:1) wh-words in Mandarin Chinese fall into two groups: in the first group, wh-words like weishenme and zenme are blocked by most of the interveners; in the second group, wh-words like shei, shenme, na, nali, heshi/ shenmeshihou are blocked only by a few of the interveners.2) The strongest intervener is ye'also', while the weakest one is daduoshu/shaoshu NP'most of / a few of NP'.The first finding will support Tsai (1994)'s theory on wh-words in Chinese, that is, nominal wh-words are variables whose scope is defined by unselective binding and no LF movement is involved; while adjunct wh-words are true quantifiers whose scope has to be set by LF movement. As to the explanation of the second finding, three typical interveners, ye, daduoshu/shaoshu NP and bu are discussed. Focus structure, Heimian indefinite theory and the concept of presupposition would be applied to investigate the different blocking ability of interveners.