Yeslno Questions in Mandarin Chinese ~evisited*

This article discusses some syntactic peculiarities of Chinese yeslno questions. Starting from the observation that Standard Mandarin shares significant typological features with prototypical SOV languages, Chinese is treated as an underlyingly verb-final language. Based on this heuristic principle, A-not-AB, AB-not-A and AB-not questions are uniformly derived by means of one simple raising rule that operates within the sentence constituent V'. This novel idea is elaborated on in great detail in the first part of the article. In contrast to the prevailing trend, it is argued that the question operator contained in A-not-A and A-not sentences CANNOT be raised to "Comp". In consequence, A-not-A and A-not questions are "typed in the head position of a sentence-internal functional phrase that we call Force2 Phrase (F2P) in the present paper. This position is not to be confused with Drubig's (1994) Polarity1 Phrase (PollP), in the head position of which assertive negations and an abstract affirmative element are located. The existence of a head position F2" other than Poll0 is supported by the fact that F2" can be occupied by certain overt question operators, such as assertive shi-hu-shi, which are compatible with negations. In contrast to the assertive question operator shi-hu-shi which is obligatorily associated with information focus, non-assertive shi-bu-shi serves as a compound focus and question operator whose focus feature is complex insofar as it is composed of two subfeatures: a contrastivity and an exhaustivity subfeature. Non-assertive shi-bu-shi is obligatorily associated with identificational focus in the sense of Kiss (1998). In accordance with some basic ideas of Chomsky's checking theory, the two subfeatures of the complex focus feature carried by the non-assertive shi-hu-slli operator check a correlating subfeature in the head position of a corresponding functional phrase (Contrastive Phrase and Focus Phrase, respectively). The question feature contained in the non-assertive shi-hu-shi operator is attracted by the head of Force1 Phrase (FI') at the level of LF. Due to the fact that FI" is sentence-final, the question feature of non-assertive shi-bu-shi must be Chomsky-adjoined to FI'. Unlike identificational focus phrases which are inherently contrastive, topics are non-contrastive in the default case. As separate speech acts, they are located in a c-commanding position outside the sentence structure. Semantically, there is a difference between Frame-Setting Topics and Aboutness Topics. As shown in the article, both A-not-A and A-not questions on the one hand and yesfno questions ending with ma on the other can be used in neutral and non-neutral contexts. The decisive advantage of mu questions, however, is that their question operator has scope over the whole sentence. The present paper has been written within the context of the DFG project 'Syntax of C-Domain' launched at the Zcntrum fiir Allgcmeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS), Bcrlin, in co-operation with the research group 'Sprachtlieoretische Grundlagen der Kognitionswissenschaft' at thc Universitit Leipzig. The participants in the ongoing project are Andr6 Mcinunger, Kerslin Schwabc. and the author of this paper. I am very grateful to Anita Steube and Bernhard Druhig lor many years of support which have greatly stimulated this project. In addition, I am indcbted to Marie-Claudc Paris, Xu Liejiong, Liu Danqing and Ewald Lang, who provided cnlightening and thoughtful comments on previous versions of this paper. Last hut not least, I owe a special debt to Paul David Doherty for his careful revision of this text.