TY - CHAP
T1 - Focus, negation and event quantification in Chinese
T2 - How focus helps shape negation in natural language
AU - Lee, Peppina Po Lun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Chinese negators, bu and mei, translated as “not” in English, are assumed to be focus-sensitive indiscriminately. In this paper, I argue that unlike bu, mei does not lexically encode a dependency on the placement of focus, due to the failure of semantic focus to override its syntactic constraint. Syntax has made mei inherently a negative existential quantifier of situations. The role of focus in mei-sentences is to provide the backgrounded event description. Material within the TP scope of mei, excluding the focus, will be structurally mapped to the background part to set up its restrictive domain, and everything within its scope to the nuclear scope. Therefore, although falling under the same category, negators do not necessarily demonstrate the same focus dependency.
AB - Chinese negators, bu and mei, translated as “not” in English, are assumed to be focus-sensitive indiscriminately. In this paper, I argue that unlike bu, mei does not lexically encode a dependency on the placement of focus, due to the failure of semantic focus to override its syntactic constraint. Syntax has made mei inherently a negative existential quantifier of situations. The role of focus in mei-sentences is to provide the backgrounded event description. Material within the TP scope of mei, excluding the focus, will be structurally mapped to the background part to set up its restrictive domain, and everything within its scope to the nuclear scope. Therefore, although falling under the same category, negators do not necessarily demonstrate the same focus dependency.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85064170278&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1075/lfab.15.09lee
DO - 10.1075/lfab.15.09lee
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85064170278
T3 - Language Faculty and Beyond
SP - 245
EP - 282
BT - Language Faculty and Beyond
ER -