A DRT Analysis Of Chinese Donkey Sentences

Donkey sentence phenomenon is first discovered by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippos around the fifth century A.D.,but the researches on it by the logical semanticists begin in 1980 s.There are two kinds of classic donkey sentences: one in conditional configuration such as "If a farmer owns a donkey,he beats it" and the other in relative clause configuration such as "Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it".Two defining characteristics can be summed up from these two types of classic donkey sentences:(1)the indefinite noun phrase does not have existential meaning as the traditional semantics takes it but presents universal interpretation;(2)there exists an anaphoric relation between the pronoun and its indefinite NP antecedent,though the pronoun is beyond the syntactic scope of that indefinite NP.In view of this controversial phenomenon in the linguistic circle,various solutions have been put forward,among which,Discourse Representation Theory(DRT)is widely accepted and has the stronger explanatory power for the donkey sentence issue.DRT is a kind of semantic theory proposed by Hans Kamp in the beginning of 80 s to describe the meaning of the natural language dynamically,and one of its features is that it can deal with anaphora of the pronoun and the semantic interpretation of the indefinite noun phrases.From the late 1990s?,some overseas Chinese scholars begin to explore whether there exists the similar donkey sentence phenomenon in Chinese too.Cheng & Huang(1996)first introduce the Chinese conditional sentences into the research field of the donkey sentences,and put forward that there are two types of donkey sentences in Chinese: bare conditionals and ruguo/dou-conditionals.Although many scholars such as Huang(2003);Lin(1996,1998);Pan & Jiang(1997);Wen(1997,1998),et al.cast doubts on the dichotomy between bare conditionals and ruguo/dou-conditionals,in general they all agree there exist conditional donkey sentences in Chinese.After that,Chen(2013);Shen(2012);Wen(2006,2008)propose that there also exist quantified donkey relative clauses and implicit generic donkey sentences.In fact,there is no consensus on the question of the classification and form of donkey sentences in Chinese.Now that DRT does have a strong explanatory power for the two classic donkey sentences in English,then can it be used to explain the Chinese donkey sentence phenomenon directly? Therefore,two issues will be mainly discussed in this paper: first,identify the real donkey sentences in Chinese;secondly,analyze the Chinese donkey sentences in the framework of DRT.Two proposals will be put forward in response to two issues above.The first proposal identifies that there really exists donkey sentence phenomenon in Chinese,that is,donkey conditionals.Specifically,we take the two defining characteristics of the classic donkey sentences as the standard to examine three types of donkey sentences in Chinese proposed by the Chinese academia and prove that only the conditionals with wh-words such as???,???‘If X comes first,X eats first'belong to true donkey sentences.In contrast,the sentences containing a relative clause realized by deP construction with the form of a pair of identical bare nouns such as????????‘Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it'and the correlative structure with the indefinite noun phrases having the generic meaning acted as the correlative components such as????,???‘One should answer for what he does'do not fall into the category of the donkey sentences because they violate the first defining characteristic of the classic donkey sentences,namely,indefinite noun phrases take universal reading.The second proposal is that on the basis of a certain modification and supplement DRT can be used to analyze the Chinese donkey sentences.To put it simply,in Chinese donkey sentences,that is,the conditionals with wh-words like???,???‘If X comes first,X eats first',DRT considers wh-words“?”in two clauses as variables and they do not have any quantificational force at all.They gain their universal meaning through an implicit generic operator that binds the wh-words“?”in these two clauses unselectively.However,it is worth noting that English and Chinese are very different from syntax to semantics.So in order to make DRT explain the Chinese donkey sentences well,a little modification and supplement could be made based on the fact that the main ideas of DRT remain unchanged to meet the special syntax phenomenon involved in the Chinese donkey sentences.