A Semantic Account of the Intervention Effects in Chinese Why-Questions

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• 关键词：Intervention effects ; Why ; questions ; Illocutionary acts ; Wide ; scope indefinites ; Mandarin Chinese
• 刊名：Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：10148
• 期：1
• 页码：66-88
• 丛书名：Logic, Language, and Computation
• ISBN：978-3-662-54332-0
• 卷排序：10148

文摘

This paper revisits intervention effects in Mandarin Chinese why-questions. I present new data showing that the ability for quantifiers to induce intervention hinges upon their monotonicity and their ability to be interpreted as topics. I then develop a semantic account that correlates topicality with monotone properties. Furthermore, I propose that why-questions in Chinese are idiosyncratic, in that the Chinese equivalent of why directly merges at a high scope position that stays above a propositional argument. Combining the semantic idiosyncrasies of why-questions with the theory of topicality, I conclude that a wide range of intervention phenomena can be accounted for in terms of interpretation failure.