The Chinese negation marker bu and its association with focus

Peppina Lee Po-Lun, Pan Haihua

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The Chinese negation marker bu 'not' is analyzed as a clitic-like element in the literature (Huang 1988; Ernst 1995; etc.) in order to explain why it cannot co-occur with (i) the perfective marker -le or (ii) manner phrases in the V-de construction. Huang (1988) assumes that bu must cliticize onto auxiliaries/modals or the following verb, and since bu cliticizing directly to a verb induces a "nonevent" that is semantically incompatible with -le and manner phrases, facts (i) and (ii) are thus accounted for. Grammatical sentences without auxiliaries/modals are assumed to have an empty modal with future or volitional meaning, giving bu the meaning won't. Unlike Huang, Ernst (1995) argues that bu is proclitic on the adjacent word. He explains facts (i) and (ii), respectively, by the boundedness conflict between bu, assumed to occur only with unbounded situations, and perfective -le that requires bounded situations, and by assuming that the XP trace of a manner phrase between bu and the verb prevents bu from cliticizing to any lexical element, leading to ungrammatical sentences. However, closer examination shows that bu can co-occur with both manner phrases in the V-de construction and perfective -le. In this paper we argue that bu is not a clitic-like element and claim that it is a focus-sensitive operator. We propose an interpretation condition (IC) for bu that says that bu induces a tripartite structure if there is a focus to its right; otherwise it negates the adjacent word. By appealing to scope interaction, IC, and the assumption that perfective -le has a clausal scope (Pan 1993; Lin 1999), we can explain facts (i) and (ii) better than Huang (1988) and Ernst (1995).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)703-731
Number of pages29
JournalLinguistics
Volume39
Issue number374
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2001
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The Chinese negation marker bu and its association with focus'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this