A Sentence Medial Clause Typing Intoneme in Mandarin A-NOT-A Questions

Abstract

A sentence medial intoneme is argued to be responsible for typing Mandarin A-NOT-A questions. In narrow syntax, it is merged higher than deontic modals and lower than Tense; after spell out, it is realized phonetically as a high low intonation starting from the left edge of the A-NOT-A predicate. Th is proposal is supported by a sentence medial segmental particle in Chinese dialects, which further corroborates the Intonation Particle Hypothesis by showing that typing particles in non sentence final positions are also variants of intonations. Besides, the Mandarin nu clear stress rule derives two prosodic features of A-NOT-A questions : No intonational breaks within the A-NOT-A predicate and destressing of the negation word. The two features follow from the requirement that only one intonation is allowed in the nuclear stress domain and instantiate interaction among different stresses