A Study of Negative Polarity Items in Chinese Existential Sentences

Abstract

Negation is crucial to semantics. Negative polarity items (NPI) play an important role in negation. There are a few studies on NPIs in Chinese, but so far no research is on NPIs in Chinese existential sentences (ESs). Because the existential verb “ you ” (have) is combined with the negative marker “ mei ” (not) in Chinese ESs, unlike in other types of sentences where “ meiyou ” (not have) together function as a negative marker. We wonder whether this combination of a single negative marker and an existential verb affects the licensing conditions of NPIs. This is why we study negative polarity items in Chinese ESs. We investigate the variety of negative polarity items which can be allowed in Chinese ESs, and their licensing conditions. It is found that four types of negative polarity items can occur in Chinese ESs, i.e. negative polarity adjectives, negative polarity adverbs, negative polarity wh-words, and negative polarity ‘one’ phrase as minimizer. In this paper, we just focus on the last two types of negative polarity items that can occur in Chinese ESs. The linguistic facts show that negative polarity wh-words (except ‘ duoshao’ ) and negative polarity ‘one’ phrase as minimizer in Chinese ESs can be licensed by negative sentences, yes-no interrogative sentences, A-not-A interrogative sentences, and the antecedent clause of a conditional. We claim that negative polarity wh-words (except ‘ duoshao ’) and negative polarity ‘one’ phrase as minimizer in Chinese ESs are strong NPIs. It has been found that NPIs can be licensed by negative sentences in Chinese according to the previous studies. Our new contribution to the field is that we have found NPIs in Chinese ESs can also be licensed by yes-no interrogatives, A-not-A interrogatives and the antecedent clause of a conditional apart from negative sentences. This finding is to some extent accountable for NPIs in other Chinese constructions.