Mingming Liu

Varieties of Alternatives

Focus Particles and wh-Expressions in Mandarin

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book concerns two focus particles (jiu, dou) and wh-expressions (shenme = 'what', na geren = 'which person') in Mandarin Chinese. These items are systematically 'ambiguous' and have played important roles in various aspects of Mandarin grammar. An idea based on alternatives and varieties of alternatives in particular - following Chierchia's 2013 analysis of the polarity system - is pursued to account for the systematic ambiguities. The unambiguous semantics of jiu, dou and wh-expressions are maintained and 'ambiguity' explained through varieties of alternatives interacting with other independently motivated aspects of the structure they occur in. By examining these aspects in detail, the book will help readers gain a better understanding of a broad range of phenomena that involve these items - including exhaustivity, distributivity, questions and conditionals.

Produktdetails

• Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics 3
• Verlag: Peking University Press / Springer / Springer Nature Singapore / Springer, Berlin
• Artikelnr. des Verlages: 978-981-13-4826-6
• Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018
• Seitenzahl: 196
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. Dezember 2018
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 155mm x 11mm
• Gewicht: 307g
• ISBN-13: 9789811348266
• ISBN-10: 981134826X
• Artikelnr.: 54771610

Autorenporträt

Dr. Mingming Liu  received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2016 and currently works as an assistant professor at the School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, China. His work has addressed several aspects of Mandarin grammar: focus particles such as the famous dou "each, all, even, already" and other only-like exclusives, wh-expressions and wh-conditionals, Mandarin conditionals in general and resultative verb compounds. He has published articles in several peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.

Inhaltsangabe

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Background.- Chapter 3. Varieties of Alternatives: Mandarin Focus Particles.- Chapter 4. More Exclusives.- Chapter 5. Mandarin Wh-conditionals: Challenges and Facts.- Chapter 6. Proposal-A: Wh-conditionals as Interrogative Conditionals.- Chapter 7. Proposal-B: Wh-conditionals as Interrogative Dependency.- Chapter 8. Concluding Remarks.