Publication of "On the Syntactic Hierarchy of Wh-words in Mandarin Chinese (现代汉语疑问词的句法层级再探)" in Essays on Linguistics (语言学论丛)

The article of Prof. Victor Junnan PAN and Zetao Xu, in title of “On the Syntactic Hierarchy of Wh-words in Mandarin Chinese (现代汉语疑问词的句法层级再探)” is published on Essays on Linguistics (语言学论丛) (Volume 1, 2022).

Abstract This paper examines higher readings, such as “denial”, “causal” and “reason”, and lower readings, such as “instrumental”, “manner” and “purpose”, of wh-adverbials zenme ‘how’ and weishenme ‘why’. In particular, we will discuss the (un)availability of these readings when the relevant wh-words cooccur with the universal quantifier dou ‘all’. The higher readings are unavailable when the relevant wh-adverbials follow dou, which is because as an adverb, dou is not able to be topicalized into a position higher than the functional projections hosting the higher readings. By contrast, the lower readings are not available when the relevant wh-adverbials precede dou, which is because dou is based-generated in a position higher than the projections hosting the lower readings. This analysis will be extended to explain the (un)availability of these readings when the relevant wh-words cooccur with modals such as hui ‘will’, frequency adverbs, temporal adverbials, locational adverbials and certain sentence-final particles. The interaction between wh-nominals with dou will also be examined. Keywords: wh-words, quantifi ers, topicalization, sentence-fi nal particles, left-periphery