A Post-syntactic Approach to the A-not-A Questions
Wen-Hsin Karen Tseng · 2009
This paper proposes a post-syntactic analysis for the A-not-A questions in Mandarin Chinese. The operation that forms the A-not-A questions consists of two M-merger stages. First, Lowering attaches the A-not-A operator to the target. Second, Local Dislocation triggers reduplication. Lowering of the A-not-A OP targets is the Morphosyntactic Word that is closest to it. Adjoined modifiers do not block the lowering. On the other hand, Local Dislocation only picks up the adjacent Morphosyntactic Word for reduplication. Different reduplication domains derive the different subtypes of A-not-A questions, such as A-not-AB and AB-not-A. In this way, the A-not-A constructions are analyzed in a unified fashion. 1.