The Syntax And Semantics Of Floating Quantifiers Phenomenon In Chinese

A floating quantifier is a quantifier that is not adjacent to the objects which it quantifies.Floating quantifiers in Chinese has been a topic of discussion in the field of linguistics for decades.Although there has been considerable work on the scope and syntactic mechanism of Chinese floating quantifiers,little of them are macroscopic.There are still some controversies on the definition and syntactic analysis method of floating quantifiers in Chinese.Whether "Dou" has the nature of floating quantification or not? Do other quantifiers also have this nature? Which analysis method is more suitable to analyze the Chinese floating quantifiers? Is there a unified analytical method to settle the debate on shift and non-shift analysis in Chinese? In addition,there are some issues that need to be clarified: Why do the quantifiers in Chinese deviate from its quantified objects? And the influences of floating quantifiers on semantic interpretation and informa t io n expression are still waiting for further researching.Therefore,this paper aims to discuss the problems above at two level: syntax and semantics.Firstly,by comparing with other languages,this paper exclude "Dou" from the Chinese floating quantifiers.And by observing the relationship between other quantifiers and noun phrases,we identify the scope of Chinese floating quantifiers: univer sa l quantifier;quasi-universal quantifier;existential quantifier and numeral-classifier.Secondly,This paper discusses the syntactic mechanism based on the movement constraints,the corresponding structure of floating and non-floating,and the syntactic distribution of Chinese floating quantifie rs.The problem of movement constraints in stranding analysis is discussed by island sensitivity test,and the floating and non-float ing quantifiers is discussed with the label algorithm.If there are covert quantifier operators,they will affect the syntactic distribution of floating quantifiers.The island sensitivity test and the label algorithm prove the rationality of the stranding analysis.The assumption of covert quantifier operators supplement to the stranding analysis,making it more suitable for analyzing Chinese floating quantifier phenomena.In the end,the thesis offers a preliminary discussion about the causes and effects of the floating quantifiers in Chinese.Some of the Chinese floating quantifiers are constrained by the labeling algorit hm,leading to the separation between quantifiers and their objects.While others are due to the lack of closeness between the quantifiers and their objects,resulting in selective separation.The floating quantifiers in Chinese can influence the semantic interpretat io n and the information expression.