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Volume 19, Issue 1
  • ISSN 1606-822X
  • E-ISSN: 2309-5067
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Abstract

Abstract

One of the issues in the study of is concerned with the ambiguous scope interpretations contributed by the focus adverb . There have been two main camps: the lexical approach and the scope approach. Unlike English, which does not have distinct lexical items for , Mandarin Chinese (Chinese hereafter) utilizes two constructions to express the notion of : (1) The ‘including … all’ construction, and (2) focus adverbs, such as . This paper aims to demonstrate that the construction expresses the typical implicatures in sentences predicted by the scope theory. The seemingly deviant cases that have been argued for a lexical NPI by Rooth, however, either are not construed in sentences or are possibly rendered in sentences provided by the pragmatic accommodation of existential presuppositions. In particular, syntactically marks focus scope and quantifies over a focus domain consisting of the focused phrase and its alternatives in presupposition. The results of this study thus shed further light on the general discussion of in the sense that: on the one hand, the scope theory can make the right predictions, as evidenced by ; and, on the other hand, pragmatic scalar inference of the existential implicatures should be taken into consideration. Ultimately the expression of manifests interfaces of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

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2018-01-05
2025-01-16

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The scope of even
Language and Linguistics 19, 156 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00006.shy
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): even; lexical theory; negative polarity item; presupposition; scalar implicature; scope theory

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