On the implicit negation and NPI licensing of dou(都)
Yuan Yuli · 2007
This paper introduces firstly the disputes on the scope adverb dou's associated constituents and binding direction.Following the leftward binding approach proposed by Jiang(1998),it hypothesizes that sentences like Xiaoli dou mai nizi de yifu(小李都买呢子的衣服)might have omitted the predicate-copying topics like mai yifu(买衣服).With a pragmatic test of topic chaining and semantic tests of licensing negative polarity items(NPI),it verifies this hypothesis and demonstrates that dou has two semantic functions in some constructions:(1) leftward binding its associated constituents;(2)creating an implicit negative context and licensing an NPI,e.g.,conglai(从来).It also discuses the syntactic consequences of dou's NPI licensing,i.e.,dou and another adverb ye(也)have different distributional selection in the constructionWh+dou/ye+VP.Finally,with a statistical analysis of real textual data,it proves that conglai is an NPI.