The semantic licensing conditions of indefinite subjects in Mandarin Chinese
Pan Haihu · 2009
This paper discusses the licensing conditions of indefinite subjects in Mandarin Chinese. It finds that most of the indefinite NPs in the subject (or topic) positions are licensed semantically by some quantificational operators. In general,three types of sentences allow indefinite subjects:thetic judgment sentences,generic sentences and distributive sentences. The indefinite subjects in the first type are mapped into the nuclear scope together with the whole thetic judgment sentences,and bound by an existential operator,and getting the existential reading. The indefinite subjects in the second type are mapped into the restrictor and bound by a generic operator,with the generic interpretation. The indefinite subjects in the third type are also mapped into the restrictor; and a universal operator,which is similar to the universal quantifier mei (every) in Chinese,will give them a universal interpretation.