Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
10-2014
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
Linguistics
Advisor
Robert W. Fiengo
Subject Categories
Linguistics
Keywords
Chinese, incompleteness, questions, semantics, speech-acts, syntax
Abstract
This thesis re-examines the four main question-types in Mandarin Chinese, namely, particle questions, háishì questions, A-not-A questions and wh-questions, whose previous accounts are argued to be unsatisfactory due to various faulty assumptions about questions, particularly the stipulation of `Q'. Each of the four Mandarin Chinese question-types is re-accounted based on the view that questions are speech-acts, whose performance are done by way of speakers' subconscious choice of sentence-types that mirror their ignorance-types, as proposed in Fiengo (2007). It is further demonstrated that viewing questions as speech-acts instead of a structurally marked sentence-type allows a simpler and more intuitive account for expressions that occur in them. Two expressions are re-evaluated for that matter: the sentential adverb dàodi in Mandarin Chinese and wh-the-hell in English.
Recommended Citation
Liing, Woan-Jen, "How to ask questions in Mandarin Chinese" (2014). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/445
