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