mandarin discourse adverbs as presupposition triggers

296 Pages·2015·1.71 MB·English

MANDARIN DISCOURSE ADVERBS
AS PRESUPPOSITION TRIGGERS

YUAN MENGXI

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
JUNE 2015
CITY UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
香港城市大學

MANDARIN DISCOURSE ADVERBS AS
PRESUPPOSITION TRIGGERS
漢語副詞類話語標記的語義預設研究

Submitted to
Department of Linguistics and Translation
翻譯及語言學系
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
哲學博士學位

by

YUAN Mengxi
袁夢溪

June 2015
二零一五年六月
Abstract
In cooperative human communication, the speaker needs to mark the relationship
between his utterance and the given information, because the hearer interprets the
utterance with respect to the information she has already got. Languages adopt
variousdevicestomarktherelationshipbetweentheutteranceandthecontext,andthis
dissertation is concerned with two of them, i.e., Mandarin adverbs dique ‘indeed’ and
zhende ‘really’. These two adverbs do not contribute to the truth-conditional meaning
ofanutterance,butratherconveyinformationabouthowutterancescontainingthemare
connected to the previous discourse, hence belong to the group of discourse markers.
This dissertation explores the semantic contribution of discourse markers through a
detailedstudyofdiqueandzhende.
Onthebasisofempiricaldataandanaturalnessratingexperiment,Ishowthatdique
and zhende impose different restrictions on the previous discourse of a sentence, hence
they are analyzed as presupposition triggers. Dique presupposes that its prejacent is
old information, while zhende presupposes that its prejacent is old information and it is
challenged by some discourse participant. This difference in presuppositional content
explains the distinct behaviors of dique and zhende. I also provide a syntactic analysis
ofthediscourseadverbsthatcorrespondstothesemanticaccount.
The interaction between dique/zhende and interrogative clauses reveals some
interesting semantic properties of questions. VP-initial dique/zhende can occur in ma
questions. These adverbs presuppose that a possible answer has been suggested, while
the question indicates that the speaker is still seeking an answer. Thus, ma questions
are modified by the adverbs so that the modified questions express the speaker’s bias
towards the suggested answer. Unlike ma questions, the other three kinds of questions,
i
i.e., A-not-A questions, alternative questions and wh-questions, cannot co-occur with
VP-initial dique/zhende. This distributional difference suggests that these three kinds
of questions have distinct semantics from ma questions. I show how the syntactic and
prosodicfeaturesofthethreekindsofquestionsderiveanassertionofignorance,which
requires a neutral context. The neutrality requirement contradicts the presuppositions
triggeredbyVP-initialadverbs,resultingintheincompatibilitybetweenthesequestions
andVP-initialadverbs.
This dissertation shows how discourse adverbs mark various relationships between
the utterance and the previous discourse, and demonstrates how discourse adverbs
modifyassertionsandquestionsbycontributingtopresuppositionalcontents.
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Acknowledgements
I still remember the summer of 2011, when I just received the PhD offer and felt
excited and nervous about my new life. In that summer, I read the acknowledgements
ofseveraldissertations,wonderinghowmanyroadsmustIwalkdownbeforeIcanwrite
my own. Time flies, and four years is just a blink of an eye. Now here I am, reaching
the end of my PhD life. I would not have come this far if it weren’t for the support and
helpfrommyteachers,friendsandmyfamily.
First of all, I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to my supervisor,
Yurie Hara, for her continuous support of my PhD study and related research, for her
patience, care and luminous guidance at every step of the way. She guided me to the
field of formal semantics. I remember reading Montague semantics and studying the
ABCsofformalsemanticsinthefirstfewyearswithherhelp. Throughoutmydoctoral
program, she has offered invaluable comments and suggestions on my research with
her profound knowledge and rich research experience, and she continually taught me
to think critically and to express ideas clearly. Yurie is also the most responsible and
conscientiousteacherIeverknow. Wemeetalmosteveryweekduringthesefouryears,
and she spent an extremely large amount of time discussing Chinese data with me and
revising my abstracts, posters, proceedings papers and every draft of the dissertation. I
have benefited enormously from these discussions and revision suggestions, and I very
appreciate the time she spent on me and her patience in helping me. Every Chinese
knowsthatthewriterLuXunwasgreatlyinfluencedbyhismedicalteacherMr. Fujino,
whohelpedLuXunprepareclassnotesandcorrectedeverysinglegrammaticalmistake
of his work. I am really fortunate and grateful to meet a mentor who is just like Mr.
Fujino. When I suffered from illness and everything became so difficult, she kept
iii
encouraging me and helped me with my teaching duties. I would most definitely not
beabletofinishmyPhDstudyandthisdissertationwereitnotforYurie. Shehasbeen,
and always will be, my role model as a professional researcher. Thank you very much,
Yurie!
Iamalsogratefultothemembersofmyqualifyingpanel,HaihuaPanandPaulLaw,
whoprovidedmewithilluminatingsuggestionsthatareindispensabletothecompletion
of this dissertation. Haihua Pan always amazes me with the breadth and depth of his
knowledge on all areas of language research. His courses not only taught me how
to do linguistic research, but also made me become interested in Chinese language
phenomena. IthankPaulLawfordetailedcommentsandenlighteningdiscussionsabout
various aspects of this research. Probably because semantics is not his primary field of
interest,hecanalwaysprovidemewithalotofinsightsfromotherperspectives.
Iwouldalsoliketothanktheexaminersofthisdissertation: EricMcCready,PoLun
Lee and Stefan Kaufmann. They pointed out many fundamental problems that I have
overlooked,enabledmetorethinksomeoftheissues,andledmetodigsomequestions
moredeeply. Theircommentshavebeenextremelyhelpfulinpreparingthefinalversion
ofthedissertation.
I am indebted to several linguists outside the department for helpful discussions
and comments. Satoshi Tomioka discussed the initial research plan with me and gave
me an endless source of information and inspiration. He also read many of my later
manuscripts, made valuable suggestions, and asked important questions that helped
clarify my thought. Kyle Rawlins offered me big help during my short visit to the
DepartmentofCognitiveScienceatJohnsHopkinsUniversity. Ibenefitedtremendously
from the discussions of his weekly semantic lab meeting, where Kyle and many
colleagues in the Department provided constructive suggestions and useful references
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formeandsharpenedmanypointsIwanttomake. IdomissmydaysatJohnsHopkins
and hope that I can come back one day. Thanks are also due to Christopher Davis,
Gr´egoireWinterstein,C.-T.JamesHuang,MagdalenaKaufmannandUliSauerlandfor
insightfuldiscussionsandhelpfulcomments.
Forhelpwithproofreading,IwouldliketothankDrewReisinger,MichaelYoshitaka
Erlewine and Miriam Claire Nussbaum. They not only helped correct my English but
alsoprovidedvaluablesuggestionsonthecontentofthedissertation.
My gratitude also goes to my wonderful classmates and friends: Bei Chen, Fu
Xie, Haoze Li, Jun Guo, Ling Zhang, Mengbin Liu, Saina Wuyun, Shengxia Huo,
ShuixingZhang,YingLiu,YingLiu(XiaoGao),YizhouLan,YueZhangandYuliFeng,
who offered help with my test of language intuition, encouraged me continuously and
accompanied me through the ups and downs during dissertation writing. I am grateful
tohavethechancetobefriendswiththemandtolearnfromthem,andIthankthemfor
thosegreatparties,hikings,gossipsandmidnightchat.
IgratefullyacknowledgethestudentshipandsupportIreceivedfromtheDepartment
ofLinguisticsandTranslation,CityUniversityofHongKong.
Finally and most of all, I thank my parents Deqi Yuan and Xueping Wang, and my
grandfather Xiyun Wang for their love, patience, understanding and constant support. I
oweeverythingIhaveaccomplishedtomyfamily,andwordsarenotenoughtoexpress
thegratitudeIfeeltothem. IalsothankPengLiforfartoomanythingstolisthere.
The finished dissertation is far from being perfect. Whatever is good in this
dissertation is largely due to the help and support of the people I mentioned above.
Iremainresponsibleforanyerrorsoromissionswhichmayunwittinglyremain.
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Table of Contents
TableofContents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
ListofFigures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
ListofTables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
1 Backgroundandoverview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Generalintroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Previousstudiesondiqueandzhende . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Theoreticalbackground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3.1 Dynamicsemantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3.2 Sententialforces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.4 Overviewofthedissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2 Semanticanalysis: diqueandzhendeaspresuppositiontriggers . . . . . 32
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2 Thebehaviorsofdiqueandzhendeinassertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.1 Diqueinassertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2.2 Zhendeinassertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.3 Formalanalysisofdiqueandzhende . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.3.1 Definitionsofpresuppositionandthetransplicationoperator . . 46
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2.3.2 Formaldefinitionofdiqueinassertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.3.3 Formaldefinitionofzhendeinassertions . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4 Naturalnessratingexperiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.5 Diqueandzhendeinquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.5.1 Diqueinquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.5.2 Zhendeinquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.6 Chaptersummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3 Dique and zhende as presupposition triggers: Evidence from embedded
clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.2 Diqueandzhendeembeddedunderattitudeverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.2.1 Presuppositionprojectionbehaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
3.2.2 Embeddedpresuppositionsandlocalcontext . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.2.3 Sectionsummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
3.3 Diqueandzhendeembeddedunderconditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.3.1 PresuppositionprojectionandtheStalnaker-Lewis-Heimanalysis 97
3.3.2 Mandarinconditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3.3.3 Conditional containing the adverbs: doubt towards old
information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.3.4 Sectionsummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.4 Chaptersummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
4 Sentence-initialadverbsandVP-initialadverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4.2 Sentence-initialadverbsassententialforcemodifiers . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.3 Syntacticanalysisoftheadverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
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4.3.1 ThestructureandpropertiesofChinesetopics . . . . . . . . . . 134
4.3.2 TheDPpositionbeforeVP-initialdique/zhendeisatopicposition136
4.3.3 Sectionsummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.4 Chaptersummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5 MandarinquestionsandVP-initialadverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.2 Differentbehaviorsofthefourkindsofquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.2.1 DifferencesbetweenGroupAandGroupB . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.2.2 Differencesbetween ANAQsand ALTQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.2.3 Anaturalnessratingstudy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.3 PreviousstudiesaboutMandarinquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
5.3.1 Thestudiesofsentence-finalparticlesmaandne . . . . . . . . 159
5.3.2 Dong’s(2009)semanticaccountfor ANAQsand MAQs . . . . . 164
5.3.3 Sectionsummary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5.4 Semanticsofquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
5.4.1 Mandarinmaquestions(MAQs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
5.4.2 MandarinA-not-Aquestions(ANAQs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
5.4.3 Mandarinalternativequestions(ALTQs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
5.4.4 Mandarinwh-questions(WHQs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.5 Comparisonbetweendifferentkindsofquestions . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
5.5.1 Theassertionmeaning: speaker’signorance . . . . . . . . . . . 188
5.5.2 Comparisonbetween ALTQsand ANAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5.6 Theco-occurrenceofVP-initialadverbsandquestions . . . . . . . . . 196
5.6.1 VP-initialadverbdique/zhendeand MAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
5.6.2 VP-initialadverbdique/zhendeandGroupBquestions . . . . . 201
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