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Part of
New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax: Studies in honor of Yen-Hui Audrey Li
Edited by Andrew Simpson
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 272] 2022
► pp. 219–248

Skolemized topicality for indefinites and universal quantifier mei-phrases in Chinese

| Haverford College, USA

This paper argues for a Skolemized topicality account for two seemingly unrelated phenomena in Chinese: (a) subject mei-phrases requiring dou/indefinites/reflexives in their predicates, and (b) indefinite subjects receiving specific reading. I present evidence that these subject phrases are in the topic position, which I argue is equipped with a Skolem function. Skolemization of the indefinites results in a constant, leading to a referential indefinite reading; and the effect of Skolemization on the mei-phrase results in the Skolem function seeking a free variable within its predicate to replace, which creates pairings/matchings with the variable introduced by the restrictor of mei. Distributivity is a natural consequence of Skolemization of mei-phrases in the topic position. Skolemized topicality might be viewed as Skolem Closure applied to the topic position in division of labor with Existential Closure applied to the open proposition.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The subject mei-phrase requiring co-occurrences of dou/indefinites/reflexives in its predicates
  • 3.Specificity of subject indefinites
    • 3.1Indefinite subjects
    • 3.2Stage-level predicates (SLPs) with indefinite subjects enhanced by spacio-temporal anchoring (S.-Z. Huang 1996, 2004)
  • 4.Proposal – Skolemized topicality for subject indefinites and universal quantifier mei-QPs
    • 4.1The Skolemized topicality hypothesis vs. the Skolemized EVERY hypothesis (S.-Z. Huang 1996, 2005)
    • 4.2How a Skolem function works with topical indefinites and topical mei-QP
  • 5.Universal quantifiers as topics in Chinese
    • 5.1 Xu & Liu (2007)
      • 5.1.1Xu & Liu’s main points
      • 5.1.2Mei-QP as topics (Xu & Liu 2007: 166–171)
    • 5.2 Mei-QPs in the topic position for scoping– Wu & Larson (2019)
  • 6.Indefinites as topics in Chinese
    • 6.1Specificity/referentiality of the indefinite subjects and TopicP
    • 6.2SLPs and Topic
    • 6.3Xu & Liu (2007) on Indefinites as topics
  • 7.On Mei-VP
  • 8.Testing the Skolemized topicality hypothesis on Ba-constructions
  • 9.Comparing Skolemized topicality with simple topicality proposed in Xu & Liu 2007
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 April 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.272.08hua
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