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A semantic account of quantifier-induced intervention effects in Chinese why-questions

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Abstract

This paper revisits intervention effects in Mandarin Chinese why-questions. I present a novel empirical generalization, in which it is shown that the ability for quantifiers to induce intervention hinges upon their monotonicity and their ability to be interpreted as topics. I then propose a semantic account of intervention that correlates topicality with the monotone properties of intervening operators. A crucial assumption in this account is 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 explained in terms of interpretation failure.

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Acknowledgements

This paper benefits greatly from many discussions with Jun Chen and Lihua Xu. I also want to express my deep gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of Linguistics and Philosophy and the editor Malte Zimmermann for their highly insightful and detailed comments. The paper is much improved because of them. Moreover, I am indebted to Rui Chaves, Jean-Pierre Koenig, Matthew Dryer, Jakub Dotlačil, Cornelia Ebert, Stefan Hinterwimmer, Hadas Kotek and Philippe Schlenker for their invaluable feedback and assistance. Finally, I thank the audiences and reviewers of the 2015 TbiLLC conference, the 2015 Poznan Linguistic Meeting and the 2015 Central European Conference in Linguistics for Postgraduate Students. All the errors in this paper are my own.

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    Dawei Jin

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Jin, D. A semantic account of quantifier-induced intervention effects in Chinese why-questions. Linguist and Philos 43, 345–387 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-019-09270-x

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