Concentric - Volume 51, Issue 2, 2025

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of non-canonical wh-questions from a cross-linguistic perspective. This study claims that they are encoded through the interaction of various functional elements, prosodic constraints and pragmatic construals. Our investigation reveals that they combine a wh-expression with a modal element that can be either lexical or silent. Prosodically, they are characterized by distinct pitch and stress patterns. In terms of semantics, these constructions involve negation over modal quantification in conjunction with various not-at-issue contents such as expectations and presuppositions. Pragmatically, they change information-seeking into a denial/disapproval act, typically raising objections to the at-issue content within the scope of sentential wh-adverbs. Finally, we suggest that the origin of non-canonical wh-questions may well trace back to the hierarchical arrangement of causal and source questions: Namely, they are disrupted when the speaker is no longer interested in the cause-effect relationship, holding instead a negative attitude towards the interlocutor’s remarks or behavior. Our approach thus sheds new light on the complex nature of non-canonical wh-questions in relation to their interrogative counterparts.

Unlike earlier studies addressing rhetorical questions in which wh-arguments appear, this work investigates the restrictions imposed on the rhetorical use of Mandarin sentences containing the wh-adjunct, shenme-shihou ‘what-time.’ Sometimes, sentences that contain this wh-phrase can be used as rhetorical questions carrying the refutatory force, while at other times they cannot. I propose to account for this phenomenon by examining the interaction between shenme-shihou ‘what-time,’ modals and the sentence-final particle le, arguing that sentences in which shenme-shihou ‘what-time’ appears can be interpreted as rhetorical questions only when (a) shenme-shihou is a wh-adverb adjoining to a maximal projection that denotes a change of state or expresses an inchoative reading, and (b) the wh-phrase shenme-shihou is not deeply embedded within two bounding nodes. As long as these two conditions are satisfied, a rhetorical interpretation of a shenme-shihou ‘what-time’ sentence can surface. This study not only helps us better understand the mechanism underlying both the interrogative and rhetorical uses of shenme-shihou ‘what-time’ sentences, but also shows that syntax plays an important role in constructing rhetorical questions in Mandarin Chinese.

Alongside superiority shi shenme ‘what is superiority?,’ which displays a canonical word order, the order shenme shi superiority is also possible in Chinese. In this paper I argue that this optionality results from a derivation that starts with merger of the two heads shenme ‘what’ and superiority, which generates a head-head structure that cannot be labeled under Chomsky’s labeling algorithm. The system must therefore resort to movement of either shenme or superiority in order for the structure to be labeled. Evidence for this analysis comes from the fact that when the sentence contains phrasal elements like shenme yisi ‘what meaning’ or shenme ren ‘what person,’ the optionality disappears. I also examine examples involving other interrogative items in the language and claim that this optionality only obtains with shenme ‘what’ and shei ‘who,’ other superficially similar word order patterns being different in terms of their semantic properties. Finally, I discuss the implications of this analysis in the context of symmetry-breaking in the sense of Moro (2000) and of Chomsky’s (2013) labeling algorithm.

This paper observes two disjunction markers in Mandarin Chinese: haishi and huoshi. The aim of this study is to investigate the grammatical distinctions between them. Although both disjunction markers convey logical disjunction meaning or, haishi is primarily associated with interrogative contexts, such as alternative questions, and encodes exclusivity, whereas huoshi is primarily found in declarative sentences, allowing inclusive interpretations. Consequently, I propose that haishi functions as an exclusive disjunction marker, imposing mutual exclusivity on alternatives, while huoshi serves as an inclusive disjunction marker, allowing overlap among alternatives. This proposal thus provides a systematic analysis that accounts for their patterns of interchangeability and non-interchangeability by examining their distributions in the following linguistic environments: alternative and polar questions, embedded clauses of know-predicate, cleft constructions, and downward-entailing contexts.

In comparison to the extensive body of research on canonical expressions of homogeneous plurality, such as Mandarin bare nouns and the English plural morpheme -s, the study of similative plurality in natural language has received relatively little attention in the current literature (with notable exceptions such as Smith 2020a, 2020b). This study addresses this gap by contributing to a typological understanding of similative plurality through an analysis of the Mandarin expression shenme de, which conveys verbal similative plurality. Notably, in contrast to Japanese -tari, shenme de gives rise to two intriguing puzzles: it consistently yields an inclusive interpretation in both upward-entailing and downward-entailing contexts (the monotonicity puzzle) and resists overt contextual restriction (the domain restriction puzzle). Drawing on insights from Smith (2020a, 2020b), we propose a fully inclusive mixture analysis of shenme de and demonstrate how this framework accounts for both puzzles. Finally, based on empirical observations of shenme de, we propose three parameters to typologically characterize similative plurality in natural language: (a) the Category Parameter, (b) the Host Parameter, and (c) the Domain Argument Parameter.

The wh-expressions shei ‘who’ and shenme ‘what’ in Mandarin Chinese not only convey an interrogative meaning but also exhibit existential and universal readings in specific contexts (Huang 1982, Cheng 1991, 1995, Li 1992, Tsai 1994, Lin 1996, 1998). Focusing on the universal interpretation of shei, this paper has three objectives. First, we demonstrate that current state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, lack reliability in distinguishing these three distinct readings of shei. Second, we develop a specialized natural language processing and understanding (NLP/NLU) system capable of processing and interpreting shei across diverse contexts with greater accuracy, transparency, and consistency. Unlike current LLMs, our system is built upon Wang et al.’s (2019a, 2019b) generative linguistics-based NLP/NLU software tools, Articut and Loki, enabling it to require significantly less training data to interpret the universal reading of shei. Third, we compare our model’s performance with that of ChatGPT, demonstrating its superior accuracy and robustness in interpreting the universal reading of shei.