Double quantification and the meaning of shenme, 'what', in Chinese bare conditionals

被引：9

作者：

Lin, JW ^{[1
]}

机构：

[1] Natl Chiao Tung Univ, Dept Foreign Lang & Lit, Hsinchu 30050, Taiwan

来源：

LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY | 1999年 / 22卷 / 06期

关键词：

Artificial Intelligence; Computational Linguistic; Double Quantification; Bare Plural; Bare Conditional;

D O I：

10.1023/A:1005593100617

中图分类号：

H0 [语言学];

学科分类号：

030303 ; 0501 ; 050102 ;

摘要：

This paper shows that the semantics of shenme, 'what', in Chinese bare conditionals may exhibit a phenomenon of double quantification. I argue that such double quantification can be nicely accounted for it one adopts Carlson's (1977a, b) semantics of bare plurals and verb meanings as well as the following two assumptions: (i) shenme, 'what', can be a proform of bare NPs and hence has the same kind of denotation as bare NPs, and (ii) Chinese bare NPs are names of kinds of things. This analysis of Chinese bare conditionals lends support to Carlson's approach to bare plurals despite Wilkinson's (1991) criticisms. I also show that an extension of Heim's (1987) analysis of what as 'something of kind x' to Chinese shenme 'what' encounters problems when shenme 'what' shared constituent of a predicate which applies to kinds and another predicate which applies to objects.

引用

页码：573 / 593

页数：21

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