{"title":"A pragmatic explanation of the <i>mei</i>-<i>dou</i> co-occurrence in Mandarin.","authors":"Mingming Liu","doi":"10.1007/s10831-021-09227-x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mandarin universal terms such as <i>mei</i>-NPs in preverbal positions usually require the presence of <i>dou</i> 'all/even'. This motivates the widely accepted idea from Lin (Nat Lang Semant 6:201-243, 1998) that Mandarin does not have genuine distributive universal quantifiers, and <i>mei</i>-NPs are disguised plural definites, which thus need <i>dou</i>-a distributive operator (or an adverbial universal quantifier in Lee (Studies on Quantification in Chinese. Ph. D. thesis, UCLA), Pan (in: Yufa Yanjiu Yu Tansuo [Grammatical Study and Research], vol 13, pp 163-184. The Commercial Press)-to form a universal statement. This paper defends the opposite view that <i>mei</i>-NPs are true universal quantifiers while <i>dou</i> is not. <i>Dou</i> is truth-conditionally vacuous but carries a presupposition that its prejacent is the strongest among its alternatives (Liu in Linguist Philos 40(1):61-95, 2017b). The extra presupposition triggers Maximize Presupposition (Heim in: Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenssischen Forschung, pp 487-535. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1991), which requires [<i>dou</i> <i>S</i>] block [<i>S</i>] whenever <i>dou</i>'s presupposition is satisfied. This explains the <i>mei</i>-<i>dou</i> co-occurrence, if <i>mei</i>-NPs are universal quantifiers normally triggering individual alternatives (thus stronger than all the other alternatives). The proposal predicts a more nuanced distribution of obligatory-<i>dou</i>, not limited to universals and sensitive to discourse contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":45331,"journal":{"name":"Journal of East Asian Linguistics","volume":"30 3","pages":"277-316"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8606252/pdf/","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of East Asian Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-021-09227-x","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2021/11/22 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
Mandarin universal terms such as mei-NPs in preverbal positions usually require the presence of dou 'all/even'. This motivates the widely accepted idea from Lin (Nat Lang Semant 6:201-243, 1998) that Mandarin does not have genuine distributive universal quantifiers, and mei-NPs are disguised plural definites, which thus need dou-a distributive operator (or an adverbial universal quantifier in Lee (Studies on Quantification in Chinese. Ph. D. thesis, UCLA), Pan (in: Yufa Yanjiu Yu Tansuo [Grammatical Study and Research], vol 13, pp 163-184. The Commercial Press)-to form a universal statement. This paper defends the opposite view that mei-NPs are true universal quantifiers while dou is not. Dou is truth-conditionally vacuous but carries a presupposition that its prejacent is the strongest among its alternatives (Liu in Linguist Philos 40(1):61-95, 2017b). The extra presupposition triggers Maximize Presupposition (Heim in: Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenssischen Forschung, pp 487-535. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1991), which requires [douS] block [S] whenever dou's presupposition is satisfied. This explains the mei-dou co-occurrence, if mei-NPs are universal quantifiers normally triggering individual alternatives (thus stronger than all the other alternatives). The proposal predicts a more nuanced distribution of obligatory-dou, not limited to universals and sensitive to discourse contexts.
期刊介绍：
The study of East Asian languages, especially of Chinese, Japanese and Korean, has existed for a long time as a field, as demonstrated by the existence of programs in most institutions of higher learning and research that include these languages as a major component. Speakers of these three languages have shared a great deal of linguistic heritage during the development of their languages through cultural contacts, in addition to possible genealogical linkage. These languages accordingly possess various common features. Another important factor that ties them together as a field is that they have shared a common tradition of linguistic scholarship, a tradition that distinguishes itself from the study of western languages. Against this tradition, much recent work has approached these languages from a broader perspective beyond the area, considering them within contexts of general theoretical research, bringing new lights to old problems in the area and contributing to current issues in linguistic theory. But there continues to be good reason for scholars working in this approach to hold a special interest in each other''s work. Especially with the amount of most recent theoretical work on these languages, the field of theoretical East Asian linguistics has been fast growing. The purpose of the Journal of East Asian Linguistics is to provide a common forum for such scholarly activities, and to foster further growth that will allow the field to benefit more from linguistic theory of today, and enable the languages to play a more important role in shaping linguistic theory of tomorrow.
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