Licensing of wh-phrases in Mandarin: evidence from ambiguous structures

Wh-phrases in Mandarin Chinese are in-situ, as they are not displaced in overt syntax. They also can take negative polarity, existential, and universal interpretations; hence are termed “wh- indeterminates”. Both the syntactic licensing and semantic uniformity of these interpretations has been the subject of great debate. The in-situ position of wh-phrases in the syntax of Mandarin results in several cases of where a wh-phrase can carry both an interrogative and non-interrogative reading in the same syntactic structure (1). (1) Zhangsan mei chi shenme Zhangsan NEG.PERFECTIVE eat what a. “Zhangsan did not eat anything” b. “What did Zhangsan not eat?” Traditionally, wh-in-situ has been analysed by positing movement of the wh-phrase at Logical Form (Huang 1992) or the presence of null operator that unselectively binds the wh-phrase as a variable (Aoun and Li 1993). In this paper, I argue that these analyses are insufficient to account for truly ambiguous constructions such as (1), and that a "prosodic operator", as proposed in Pan 2007, more elegantly accounts for the licensing of wh-phrases in Mandarin, especially in consideration of such ambiguous structures. I will also explore more complex ambiguous structures that arise from interaction between wh-phrases and the universal quantifier 'dou' .In (2), the wh-indeterminate shéi occurs in a sentential subject, and dōu can quantify either just the wh-phrase (as in 2a) or the entire indirect question phrase shéi de haizi „whose child‟ (as in 2b). (2) shéi de háizi dōu bù zhòngyào who POSS child all NEG important a. „For all people x, x has a child y, y is not important‟ b. „Who(x) has a child, x is not important‟