VARIETIES OF ALTERNATIVES BY MINGMING LIU A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School—New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Linguistics Written under the direction of Veneeta Dayal and approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Varieties of alternatives by MINGMING LIU Dissertation Director: Veneeta Dayal This dissertation concerns two focus particles (jiu, dou) and wh-expressions (shenme ‘what’, na geren ‘which person’) in Mandarin Chinese. These items are systematically ‘ambiguous’ and have played important roles in various aspects of Mandarin grammar. An idea based on alternatives and varieties of alternatives in particular – following Chierchia’s 2013 analysis of the polarity system – is pursued to account for the systematic ambiguities. Unambiguous semantics of jiu, dou and wh-expressions is maintained and ‘ambiguity’ explained through varieties of alternatives interacting with other independently motivated aspects of the structure they occur in. A better understanding of a large array of phenomena that involve these items – exhaustivity, distributivity, questions and conditionals – is achieved. ii Version Information Current version: 2.0 Version 1.0 filed version 10/4/2016 Version 2.0 fixed typos, expanded discussions; released on website 1/6/2017 iii Acknowledgments I would like to start with a paragraph from Chierchia 1984: iv that best describes the current form of the dissertation: Various circumstances in my life prevent me from being a student any longer. For this reason, it was necessary to finish the present dissertation. But this should not be taken to imply that I regard it in any way as a complete piece of work. This dissertation would not have been possible without support from many people, especially my adviser Veneeta Dayal, who has been the best adviser I could possibly imagine. She has guided me through every step of my academic development, and her answerhood operator started the entire dissertation. I am extremely grateful for her guidance, encouragement, support, patience and open mind. I am also very lucky to have my current committee. Simon Charlow’s seminar on alternatives has been instrumental and discussion with him has always helped me clarify my thoughts. Mark Baker was willing to read several drafts of the thesis and his detailed comments and sharp insights have improved the quality of the dissertation. Gennaro Chierchia has been my role model. His works on pluralities, anaphora and especially the polarity system have a great influence on every aspect of the dissertation. He has also been extremely supportive and generous with his time. I admit discussion with him was sometimes exhausting, but I have learned a lot from his valuable comments and rigorous constructive criticisms. I hope I have answered even half of his questions. I should also thank my other semantics teachers Roger Schwarzschild, Maria Bittner, Kristen Syrett, Thony Gillies and Lucas Champollion, and other syntax and phonology teachers at Rutgers Ken Safir, Jane Grimshaw, Viviane Deprez,´ Bruce Tesar, and Alan Prince. Parts of the dissertation was presented on various occasions. I have benefited especially from discussions with and (comments from) Sam Alxatib, Sigrid Beck, Daniel Buring,¨ Ivano iv Caponigro, Ivano Ciardelli, Yanyan Cui, Dun Deng, Mitcho Erlewine, Yael Greenberg, I-Ta Hsieh, Hans Kamp, Chris Kennedy, Manfred Krifka, Jess Law, Haoze Li, Xiao Li, Jo-wang Lin, Kyle Rawlins, Bernard Schwarz, Florian Schwarz, Anna Szabolcsi, Satoshi Tomioka, Wei-Tien Tsai, Alexander Williams, Ming Xiang, Yimei Xiang, Linmin Zhang, Ede Zimmermann and Eytan Zweig. I have enjoyed myself at Rutgers with my friends: Ang, Beibei, Deepak, Diti, Eason, Hope, Jeremy, Kunio, Lynette, Matt, Naga, Nick, Sarah, Shu-hao, Teresa, Todor, Umit,¨ Vandana, and Vartan. Finally I want thank my family and especially my wife Sha, for her love, understanding and constant support during my six year graduate studies. The career I have been pursuing is a hard one, and it would not have been possible without her. The dissertation is supported by the Mellon Dissertation Fellowship from the Rutgers Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, to which I am grateful. v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................ ii Acknowledgments ...................................... iv 1. Introduction ........................................ 1 1.1. The cast of characters................................ 1 1.2. Main themes..................................... 4 1.2.1. No functional homonyms......................... 4 1.2.2. Varieteis of alternatives.......................... 7 1.2.3. Combinability................................ 8 1.2.4. What we see is not necessarily what we get.............. 9 1.3. Overview of things to come............................ 9 2. Background ........................................ 11 2.1. Semantic assumptions............................... 11 2.1.1. The semantic framework......................... 11 Truth-conditions and semantic values.................. 11 Compositionality and LFs......................... 16 Propositions and entailment....................... 18 Intensional contexts............................ 19 2.1.2. Focus association and alternatives.................... 21 2.1.3. Polarity................................... 25 Implicatures................................. 25 Polarity items................................ 28 2.1.4. Pluralities.................................. 40 vi 2.1.5. Questions.................................. 42 Questions as sets of propositions..................... 42 Question-answer congruence....................... 43 Answerhood operator and varieties of alternatives.......... 44 2.2. Syntactic assumptions............................... 47 2.2.1. Adverbial status.............................. 47 2.2.2. Focus association and covert movement................. 48 3. Varieties of alternatives: Mandarin focus particles ................. 50 3.1. Introduction..................................... 50 3.2. Deriving ‘ambiguities’ through alternatives................... 53 3.2.1. Jiu as weak only ............................... 53 A weakened semantics of only ...................... 53 Sum-based alternatives and exclusive jiu ................ 55 Atoms-based alternatives and non-exclusive jiu ............ 57 3.2.2. Dou as even ................................. 58 Basic facts.................................. 58 Towards an analysis............................ 59 Sum-based alternatives and distributive-dou .............. 62 Atom-based alternatives and even-dou .................. 63 3.2.3. Summary.................................. 65 3.2.4. Trivialization................................ 66 Trivialization in the Alternative-Exhaustification approach...... 66 Jiu’s scalar presupposition......................... 68 Dou’s maximality effect.......................... 70 3.3. Regulating ambiguities............................... 71 3.3.1. Contrastive topic and Maximize presupposition............ 71 3.3.2. Strong only .................................. 76 3.4. Connection to previous work........................... 78 vii 3.4.1. No lexical ambiguities for jiu ....................... 78 3.4.2. Dou is not quantificational........................ 81 3.4.3. Dou is not just a maximizer........................ 87 3.4.4. Groups vs. covers.............................. 90 3.5. Conclusion...................................... 92 4. More exclusives ...................................... 94 4.1. Introduction..................................... 94 4.2. Exclusive (dis)harmonies.............................. 95 4.2.1. Dou (dis)harmony............................. 96 4.2.2. Exclusive (dis)harmonies......................... 97 Exclusive (dis)harmony-A......................... 97 Exclusive (dis)harmony-B......................... 98 4.2.3. Towards an explanation.......................... 99 Universal Density of Measurement and Maximization failure.... 99 Problem with less than n .......................... 101 4.2.4. Only’s scalar presupposition....................... 102 Restricted Alt................................ 104 Trivialization................................ 105 4.2.5. Summary.................................. 107 4.3. Too many onlys................................... 107 4.3.1. The puzzle of too many onlys....................... 107 4.3.2. Contrastive Topic.............................. 108 4.3.3. jiuB and atom-based alternatives..................... 109 4.3.4. zhiA/jiuA and DP-internal scope..................... 110 4.3.5. Some consequences............................ 113 4.4. Conclusion...................................... 116 5. Mandarin wh-conditionals: challenges and facts .................. 118 viii 5.1. Introduction..................................... 118 5.2. Basics of wh-conditionals.............................. 121 5.3. Previous analyses.................................. 125 5.3.1. Donkey binding............................... 125 5.3.2. Relativization................................ 126 5.4. Semantic properties of wh-conditionals..................... 127 5.4.1. Maximality................................. 127 5.4.2. Quantificational invariability....................... 128 5.4.3. Uniqueness................................. 133 5.4.4. Minimality.................................. 136 5.4.5. Mention-some................................ 138 5.4.6. Exhaustivity and consequent