Title

Scopal Parallelism and Economy in Mandarin Chinese

Author

Wei, Ting-chi

Genre

Article  

Pages

503-539

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese  

Key words

Mandarin Chinese scope, quantifier-raising, parallelism, economy, isomorphism

Abstract

        Issues of scope in Mandarin Chinese have been explored by linguists from different perspectives, such as S.-F. Huang (1981), C.-T. Huang (1982a, 1982b), Lee (1986), Aoun & Li (1989, 1993a), and Liu (1997). In the spirit of isomorphism, they have empirically and theoretically captured the scopal differences between Mandarin Chinese and English. As a new trend in this field, Fox (2000) proposes two principles for scope interpretation: Scope Economy and Ellipsis Scope Generalization. His view has been strongly supported by Takahashi’s (2008) scrambling analysis of scope in Japanese. However, the gap between scopal parallelism and economy in Mandarin Chinese leaves unexplained. This study attempts to (i) find the patterns of scopal interaction in elliptical structures in Mandarin Chinese, and (ii) check if these patterns are aligned with the principles of parallelism and economy. We conclude that parallelism and economy are strictly observed in interpreting scopal interaction in Mandarin Chinese, akin to English and Japanese.