A-not-A Questions in Mandarin Chinese: An HPSG
Account
Wenjie WANG
April 20, 2015

Contents
1 Introduction
1.1

3

Brief Look at A-not-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

1.1.1

Reduplication in A-NOT-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4

1.1.2

“A” of A-NOT-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

52 Existing Accounts
2.1

2.2

2.3

8

Restrictions on A-not-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1.1

On the Modiﬁability of A-NOT-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.1.2

Co-occurrence with LE-ZHE-GUO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.1.3

Sentence-Final Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.1.4

Quantiﬁed Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Other types of questions in Mandarin Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.1

还是 hàishì Disjunctive

2.2.2

MA-questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Existing HPSG-based accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3 Purpose and Scope

21
1

2
4 HPSG Account

23

4.1

Brief Introduction to HPSG and MRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.2

Groundwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2.1

A-not-A as coordinate structure? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.2.2

Character/Syllable List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.2.3

The Headedness of A-not-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.3

Basic A-not-A / Basic Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.4

A-not-A contracted / Contracted Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.4.1

4.5

4.6

4.7

Single-character entries for bound forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

VP-not-VP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.5.1

AB-not-AB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4.5.2

More complex VP-NOT-VP structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Other Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.6.1

VV-compounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.6.2

VP-neg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

The “monolithic” approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

5 Implementation

40

5.1

The ZHONG [|] grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.2

Preliminary Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

5.3

Test-suite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

5.4

5.3.1

Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

5.3.2

Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

6 Limitations and Ongoing Investigation

44

7 Conclusion

44

3

Abstract
In this paper, I look at a-not-a questions in Mandarin Chinese, and create an accountbased on the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Minimal
Recursion Semantics (MRS). While the a-not-a structure has seen extensive research in thepast decades, they have largely been movement-based. Thus, this paper attempts to provide
a non-movement but constraint-based HPSG/MRS account, which has thus far not been
performed. Secondly, I have also begun initial implementation of said account into the HPSGbased zhong [|] computational grammar for Chinese. While the basic forms of the a-not-a
structure were accounted for and implemented, it was found that limitations in the systemand formalisation prevented vp-not-vp questions from being successfully implemented.

1 Introduction
In this paper, I will be looking at the a-not-a question structure of Mandarin Chinese andprovide an account of this phenomenon based on the frameworks of Head-driven Phrase Structure
Grammar (HPSG) and Minimal Recursive Semantics (MRS) (Pollard and Sag, 1994; Copestake
et al., 2005). Simultaneously, this account will be implemented into the HPSG/MRS-based zhong[|]computational Chinese Grammar developed by Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
This paper is divided into six (6) main sections. In the current section (§1), I will run throughthe basic properties of a-not-a questions. Next, in §2, I look more into the existing accounts andtheir handling of the a-not-a structure, as well as two other question types in Mandarin Chineseand how they compare to a-not-a questions. §3 gives a general idea of the scope of this paper’s
analysis and the intended coverage. §4 will provide the HPSG account and §5 will touch brieﬂy on
the implementation of the HPSG account into the zhong [|] grammar. Finally, §6 will mention
the limitations of the current implementation, as well as the work that remains to be done.

1.1 Brief Look at A-not-A
The a-not-a structure is one of the methods available in Mandarin Chinese for posing alternative or yes/no questions. It is thus named because the structure is composed of an element abeing immediately followed by a copy of itself that is negated (Li and Thompson, 1989). For easeof reference, the two copies of a are labelled as a1 and a2 , according to their linear (left-to-right)
order. In Mandarin Chinese, not can be either of the negators 不 bù or 没 méi, the choice of
which depends mainly on the aspect of the a element (stative or imperfective, and bound eventsor perfective, respectively), similar to when they are used as actual negators.1
1

In this paper, I shall use not to refer to either of these where speciﬁcity is not required.

4
1.1.1

Reduplication in A-NOT-A

In its most basic form, a is reduplicated in full; however, it can also be partially reduplicated.
The following examples illustrate some of these possibilities:(1) a. 张三
喜欢
狗 不
喜欢
狗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān gǒu bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
Zhangsan likedog NOT likedog?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

狗？
喜欢
不
喜欢
b. 张三
zhāngsān xǐhuān bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
dog?
NOT like
Zhangsan like
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

c. 张三
喜 不
喜欢
狗？
zhāngsān xǐ bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
Zhangsan xi- NOT likedog?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

d. * 张三喜欢 不喜 狗？
zhāngsān xǐbù xǐ gǒu ?
Zhangsan like NOT xi- dog?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs??’e. * 张三喜 不
喜 狗？
zhāngsān xǐ bù xǐ gǒu ?
Zhangsan xi- NOT xi- dog?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

f. 张三
喜欢
狗 不
喜欢？
zhāngsān xǐhuān gǒu bù xǐhuān ?
Zhangsan likedog NOT like?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

g. * 张三喜欢狗 不喜？
zhāngsān xǐhuān gǒu bù xǐ?
Zhangsan likedog NOT xi-?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

h. * 张三喜 狗 不喜欢？
zhāngsān xǐ gǒu bù xǐhuān ?
Zhangsan xi- dog NOT like?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

5
As shown in the examples above, partial reduplication can result in either the verb phrase being
reproduced without its complement, or the verb phrase being reproduced without its complement
and with only its ﬁrst character/syllable. The latter form of reduplication can be seen as a violationof lexical integrity, as the single-character forms are bound forms and cannot exist independently(see §4.2.2 and §4.4.1 for more).
Partial reduplication is not equally applicable to both a1 and a2 , as seen in (1g). For a2 ,only one type of partial reduplication — deletion of complement — is permitted.2 Moreover, (1h)shows that a1 cannot go through single-character reduplication if its complement is also copied,
indicating that leaving out constituents from the reduplication process can only occur linearly up
to the left-most element.3

1.1.2“A” of A-NOT-A

Apart from being verbs or verb phrases as shown previously, the a elements can also be adjectives, prepositions (or coverbs) and modals, as long as they can function as syntactic heads ofa predicate (Tseng, 2009). The same possibilities for full or partial reduplication is extended tothese other types as well.
(2) a. Adjective
张三
高 不
高？
zhāngsān gāo bù gāo?
Zhangsan tall NOT tall
‘Is Zhangsan tall?’b. Adjective (optional partial reduplication)
张三
健 (康)
不
健康?
zhāngsān jiàn(kāng) bù jiànkāng?
Zhangsan healthy
NOT healthy‘Is Zhangsan healthy?’c. Preposition/Co-verb
张三
在 不
在 家？
zhāngsān zài bù zài jīa?
Zhangsan at NOT at home
‘Is Zhangsan at home?’
2

A type of reduplication unique to a2 is one where a2 is completely absent, resembling a form of ellipsis. Thisparticular variant is known as the vp-neg or a-not pattern. I look at this type brieﬂy in §4.6.2.
3
An alternate procedure could be that there is deletion/elision occurring after a full reduplication to produce
the partially-reduplicated forms, with deletion being required to occur linearly towards the left-most element.

6
d. Modal Verbs张三
要 不
要 吃 苹果？
zhāngsān yào bù yào chī píngguǒ?
Zhangsan want NOT want eat apple
Does Zhangsan want to eat apples?

e. Frequency Adverbs
张三
常
不
常
迟到？
zhāngsān cháng bù cháng chídào?
Zhangsan often NOT often late-arrive‘Does Zhangsan often come late?’f. Degree Adverbs [Tseng (2009), Eg 1]
* 张三
很 不
很 喜欢
李四？
*zhāngsān hen bù hen xǐhuān Lisì?
Zhangsan very NOT very like
Lisi
‘Does Zhangsan like Lisi very much?’

Not all adverbs can participate as the a element. For instance, as seen in (2f), degree adverbs
such as 很 hěn “very” cannot be the a element. Tseng (2009) provided a reason, suggesting thatthe a-not-a operator applies to the most immediate morpho-syntactic word (MWd) under its
command, and this MWd needs to be a syntactic head. Since hěn is not considered such a head,
the a-not-a operator is prevented from attaching to and operating on it.
Another constraint on adverbs is that their reduplicated forms are not permitted as a elements.
The two sentences in (3) show the contrast:(3) a. 张三常不常迟到？
zhāngsān cháng bù cháng chídào?
Zhangsan often NOT often late-come‘Does Zhangsan often come late?’b. * 张三
常常
不常常迟到？
zhāngsān chángchang bù chángchang chídào?
Zhangsan often
NOT oftenlate-come‘Does Zhangsan often come late?’

Liu (2010) suggests that this restriction abides by Dai (1990)’s Disyllabiﬁcation Rhythm Rule,
which states that a phonological rule based on metrical requirements determines the reduplication
process of the a-not-a structure.
A special type of a-not-a question involves the use of the copula 是 shì as the a element:7(4) 张三是 不 是 喜欢狗？
zhāngsān shì bù shì xǐhuān gǒuZhangsan BE not BE likedog
‘Is it (true) that Zhangsan likes dogs?’

At ﬁrst glance, it resembles the result of a movement of the question tag 是不是？shìbùshì
“isn’t it?”.
狗, 是 不 是？
喜欢(5) 张三zhāngsān xǐhuān gǒu , shì bù shìdog, BE not BE
Zhangsan like
‘Zhangsan likes dogs, doesn’t he?’Due to shì frequently being used as a translation of English “to be”, such a variant has beentermed b-not-b questions Liu (2010), While interesting, I will not deal with this variant in thispaper.

8

2 Existing Accounts
The a-not-a structure has seen extensive research in the past decades. Among the early accounts of this structure is Huang (1991), who proposes modular accounts for the various patterns
and forms of a-not-a questions. He suggests that a-not-a questions are realised as a constituent
that contains an a-not-a question feature [+Q]. Using example (6), this feature is realised byre-duplicating the constituent that immediately follows it (the VP), and then inserting the appropriate negator between the copies:(6) [Adapted from Huang (1991), Example 44]
Example Declarative Sentence:你 喜欢狗nǐ xǐhuān gǒu
you like
dog‘You like dogs’

S
INFL′

NP
你
nǐ
you

INFL0
+Q

VP
V

N

xǐhuān gǒu
likedog
As we have previously seen in §1, this targeted constituent can be partially or fully reduplicated.
Therefore, [+Q] can reduplicate the entire VP, or it can reduplicate just the V or even its ﬁrst
character. The addition of this [+Q] feature, he argues, is similar to what is used to form theWH-questions, and makes a-not-ab syntactically on-par with WH-questions.
Huang’s account, however, was not entirely complete. In particular, McCawley (1994) remarkson the a-not-a structure, and pin-pointed Huang’s vague account of the not element, stating
Huang’s failure to state the presence of there being two types — 不 bù and 没 méi — each of which
are used under diﬀerent circumstances, the former being used for statives and imperfectives, while
the latter is used to negate bound events or perfectives.

9
Huang et al. (2009) modiﬁes to Huang (1991)’s initial appraisal and analysis, by stating that the
not-a part of the structure is generated based on morphologically-motivated reasons. The notelement is no longer inserted as an independent element, but is instead borne from the appropriate
negation of the second a element (a2 ), and that the aspectual properties of a will determine theform of the negator. As such, a compound verb such as 看懂 kàndǒng ”read.understand” — whichis composed of an action (“read”) plus a result (“understand”) — must take méi as the negator.
Liing (2014) makes similar criticisms of the analyses in Huang (1991) as well as Huang et al.
(2009). She said that although the latter paper had extended its coverage of the not element, it was
still inadequate. Firstly, it failed to take into account that some words which are ungrammaticalwhen negated can nevertheless be negated when used in the a-not-a structure:(7) [Adapted from Liing (2014), examples 12a and 12a’]无情。
a. * 他 不tā bù wúqíng
he NOT non.empathic‘He is not without empathy’b. 他 无情不无情？
tā wúqíngbù wúqíng
he non.empathic NOT non.empathic‘Does he lack empathy?’Also, Liing argues that morphological rules will not have accounted for situations where thesame character/word is “morphologically unvarnished”, and can be negated by either negator:(8) a. 去 不去qù bù qùgo NOT go‘Are you going?’b. 去 没去qù méi qù
go NOT go‘Have you gone/been to (somewhere)’

Ernst (1994) looked at the co-occurrence of adjuncts with a-not-a questions, and highlighted
that many adjuncts such as 一定 yídìng “deﬁnitely” and 乱 luàn ”chaotically” cannot be used withor modify the a-not-a structure (not in fact other question types), but certain adjuncts such as
今天 jīngtiān “today” can be used. It was proposed that the latter types of adjuncts behave in an10argument-like manner, making them diﬀerent in scope on the logical form and thus able to modify
questions.
A particularly distinct account is Gasde (2001), who approached the structure with the premiseof Chinese being originally SOV. He argued that the underlying deep structure (DS) of an a-not-a
structure — or any existing SVO sentence, for that matter — is in fact SOV, and is realised asthus:(9) Adapted from Gasde (2001), Examples 4.11, 4.12
看不看 ] ]
a. [ 你 [ 电影[ ni [ diànying kàn-bù-kàn ] ]you movie watch-not-watch
b. [ 你 [ 电影看不 ] ][ ni [ diànying kàn-bù ] ]you movie watch-not
The constituent kàn-bù-kàn is made up two components: the stem kàn and what he termed
the “semi-suﬃx”, which is bù-kàn in (9a) and bù in (9b). These semi-suﬃxes, he suggests, “can be‘taken along’ or ‘left behind’” when generating the ﬁnal structure. As such, the a-not-a structure
can be realised by the movement (or not) of the components, with the corresponding traces stillin place. This, as he claims, properly accounts for sub-patterns of a-not-a , such as a-not-ab,
ab-not-a and even a(b)-not.
(10) From Gasde (2001), Examples 4.1’, 4.2’, 4.9’
a. [ 你 看不看i[ 电影t1 ] ][ ni kàn-bù-kàni[ diànying ti ] ]you watch-not-watch movieb. [ 你 看1 [ 电影ti -不看] ][ ni kàni [ diànying ti -bù-kàn] ]you watch movie-not-watch
c. [ 你 看1 [ 电影ti -不] ][ ni kàni [ diànying ti -bù] ]you watch movie-notHuang (2008) explores a possible variant of a-not-a questions known as VP-neg questions. In
such a variant, the right A is completely elided, with not marking the end of the sentence, thus
making a type of A-not structure:11(11) 张三
喜欢 狗 不？
zhāngsān xîhuān gou bu?
Zhangsan likedogs NOT‘Does Zhangsan like dogs or not?’(12) 张三
睡觉了
没（有）？
zhāngsān shùijiào-le mei(you)?
Zhangsan sleep-PERF NOT‘Has Zhangsan slept or not?’This structure has also been called the VP-neg question structure or negative particle
question structure, and Huang has been deemed it “controversial” as there has been no consensus
among linguists on whether the VP-neg form is a reduced/derived form of a-not-a . (See §4.6.2
for more on the vp-neg structure)
In proposing the non-context-free nature of Mandarin Chinese, with a-not-a questions asa point of investigation, Radzinski (1990) raised the question of whether the reduplication (orcopying) process was a semantic or syntactic process. In the former, it has been suggested that the
not-a part is derived by producing a semantically-negated form of the a element. This semantic
approach appears to be attractive because it allows a perfectly duplicated copy of a2 , since a2 is
simply a semantically negative form of a1 and is otherwise identical. Radzinski countered this bysaying that were a-not-a truly the juxtaposition of two semantically-opposite forms, then thejuxtaposition of two antonyms would likewise be grammatical and valid in the a-not-a forms.
This, however, is not possible and Radzinski therefore concluded that the copying process is a
syntactic process instead.
Overall, the existing accounts had relied heavily on the mechanisms of movement and transformations in order to account for the a-not-a structure. These mechanisms, however, are notsubscribed to in the HPSG formalism, which instead works on a constraint-based approach. As
such, while the main observations of the a-not-a structure in the existing accounts can be used as
reference (including observations such as occurrences, grammaticality, restrictions, etc), the actual
mechanisms and analyses will have to be re-thought for my account.

2.1 Restrictions on A-not-A
Apart from the basic features investigated in the previous sections, there are also addition
constraints and restrictions on the occurrence of the a-not-a structure. In this section I shalllook brieﬂy at a few of these restrictions.

12
2.1.1

On the Modiﬁability of A-NOT-A

To recall, Ernst (1994) and Law (2006) had noted the diﬀerence between diﬀerent types ofadjuncts/adverbs in terms of their ability or inability to modify a-not-a structures, such thatadverbs like yídìng “deﬁnitely” are forbidden while those like jīntiān ”today” are permitted.
The restrictions discussed in those studies, however, occur on the a-not-a phrase level. It
should be noted that modiﬁcation of the a elements themselves is also not allowed. For example,
McCawley (1994) as well as Liing (2014) noted the restrictions on negation for a elements which
already has a negative element as its ﬁrst character/syllable. As stated, this was in part, this has
been attributed to the already-present negative element in the a-not-a structure.
In fact, it could be extended that any modiﬁcation to the a elements themselves does notappear to be permitted. For example, McCawley (1994) noted that the predicate phrases modiﬁedby elements such as the degree adverb 很 hen “very” and adverbs such as 只 zhi “only” and 也 ye
“also” are not permitted, as illustrated by the following examples:(13) a. * 你 很 喜欢
狗 不
很 喜欢
狗？
nǐ hén xǐhuān gǒu bù hén xǐhuān gǒu
you very likedog NOT very likedog
b. * 你 只 不只 喜欢狗？
nǐ zhǐ bù zhǐ xǐhuān gǒu
you only NOT only likedogc. * 你 也 不也 喜欢狗？
nǐ yě bù yě xǐhuān gǒu
you also NOT also like
dog
2.1.2

Co-occurrence with LE-ZHE-GUO

This restriction on modiﬁcation extends to the post-modifying elements 着 zhè, 了 lè and 过guò. These elements, which I’ll refer to collectively as the le-zhe-guo markers, serve as aspectual
markers. Zhè is the durative marker, lè indicates the perfective and guò indicates the experiential
aspect.
As a whole, aspectual markers are not necessarily permitted with the bù-form of a-not-a . The
marker guò, however, can co-occur if used with the méi-form a-méi-a structure. This restriction
is identical to that of an ordinary negative sentence involving bù or mèi.
As with the ordinary negation, bù modiﬁes states and imperfectives, while mei modiﬁes boundevents and perfectives.

13
2.1.3

Sentence-Final Particles

Not all sentence-ﬁnal particles (SFPs) can be used with a-not-a questions. For instance, theSFP variant of 了 lè cannot be used with a-not-a questions because it can only take a declarativeor proposition under its scope, and cannot have scope over a question. Likewise, the question SFP
吗 mā cannot take scope over a-not-a because it is already a question.

2.1.4

Quantiﬁed Subjects

A particular property of a-not-a questions noticed by Wu (1997) is the restriction on quantiﬁed
noun phrases (NP) in subject position, as the following examples show:(14) Adapted from Wu (1997), example 3
a. ? 每个 人都跑 不跑？
měi gè rén
dōu pǎo bù pǎo?
every CL person DOU run NOT run‘Does everyone run or not run?’b. * 有人跑 不跑？
yǒu-rén pǎo bù pǎo??
someone run NOT run?
‘Does someone run or not run?’c. * 没有人跑 不跑？
méi-yǒu-rén pǎo bù pǎo?
nobodyrun NOT run‘Does nobody run or not run?’The ﬁrst instance is highly “deviant” (which Wu reasoned is due to the ambiguity that arises
from meigeren being either a quantiﬁer or a group-denoting NP), while the remaining two arecompletely unacceptable.
This, as a result, makes it diﬀerent from typical yes/no questions. Wu establishes that an
a-not-a question is made up of two “cells” which are mutually exclusive but jointly exhaustive,
which means they cover all sets of possibilities — there is no third option. While this gels withreferential NPs as the subject, it does not with quantiﬁed NPs because such NPs consist of manymembers, each of whose truth value pertaining to the a-not-a question might diﬀer. Thus,
their choices will become non-mutually-exclusive and non-jointly-exhaustive, which should not be
possible with a-not-a questions. Therefore, such questions are semantically anomalous.

14

2.2

Other types of questions in Mandarin Chinese

In addition to the a-not-a structure, there are other ways to ask questions in Mandarin
Chinese. This section takes a brief look at two such question types — the 还是 háishì disjunctive
and the 吗 ma-question — and compares them to the a-not-a structure.
2.2.1 还是 hàishì Disjunctive
The 还是 háishì “or” disjunctive typically involves distinct choices, such that the general structure can be a háishì b ([A or B]). If more than two choices are involved, then háishì “or” istypically used only to conjoin the last two conjuncts, with the rest separated conventionally bycommas (or the “list-commas” used in Chinese writing), similar to how or or and is used in English. The disjunctive can be exclusive and non-exclusive, and the responses can be either one of
the choices, both or even neither.
A variant of this is the a háishì not-a ([A] or [not A]) form, where the second choice is simply
the negated form of the ﬁrst. In this form, the disjunctive is strictly exclusive and a choice has tobe made between the two. This is because both disjunctive propositions — p or ¬p — cover theentire set of possibilities, with no “third choice”. Among the various question types, this particularvariant a háishì not-a disjunctive question appears to be the closest to a-not-a questions.
A key diﬀerence between the two question structures is their permitted order of a or not-a. As
McCawley (1994) pointed out, while the haishi disjunctive has a preference for the positive choice
to come ﬁrst, it still permits the negative choice to come before, even if there is a shift in bias. In
the a-not-a structure, however, such a reversal is not allowed:(15) a. 你 不去 还是去？
nǐ bù qù háishì qù?
you NOT go HAISHI go?
b. * 你 不去 去？
nǐ bù qù qù?
you NOT go go?
c. [From McCawley (1994), Example 13a]
你 不
喜欢
他 还是
喜欢
他？
nǐ bù xǐhuān tā háishì xǐhuān tā?
you NOT likehim HAISHI likehim?
d. [From McCawley (1994), Example 13a’]
*你 不
喜欢
他 喜欢
他？
nǐ bù xǐhuān tā xǐhuān tā?
you NOT likehim likehim?

15
Although the order of the disjunctive elements in the háishì disjunctive can be reversed, itshould be noted again that the positive disjunct being ﬁrst is still the preferred, conventional order.
As such, Liing (2014) believes that the a-not-a construction could in fact be a grammaticalisationof such a preference, which explains why the reverse (not-a a) is not permitted.
A second diﬀerence is the acceptability of modiﬁcation of the a elements in the two question
types. For example, the háishì disjunctive can have its a elements modiﬁed by a degree adverb
like 很 hén “very”, but this cannot be done for a-not-a questions, as we have seen in §2.1.1(McCawley, 1994):(16) a. 你 很 喜欢
狗 还是
不
很 喜欢
狗？
nǐ hén xǐhuān gǒu háishì bù hén xǐhuān gǒu
you very likedog HAISHI NOT very likedog
‘Do you like dogs very much or not like dogs very much?’

狗 不
很 喜欢
狗？
b. * 你 很 喜欢nǐ hén xǐhuān gǒu bù hén xǐhuān gǒu
you very likedog NOT very likedog
Finally, the a-not-a structure exhibits the eﬀects of island constraints, whereas the háishì
disjunctive does not. The háishì disjunctive can also be used within a relative clause, while
a-not-a cannot.
(17) a. 张三去 还是
不 去 比较
好？
zhāngsān qù háishì bù qù bǐjiào
hǎo?
zhangsan go HAISHI not go comparatively better?
‘Is it better that Zhangsan go (there) or not go (there)?’b. * 张三
去 不 去 比较好？
zhāngsān qù bù qù bǐjiào
hǎo?
zhangsan go not go comparatively better?
‘Is it better that Zhangsan go (there) or not go (there)?’(18) (From Huang (1991), Examples 34 and 35)
a. 你 喜欢[认识 你 还是不 认识 你] 的 人？
ni xǐhuān [rènshì nǐ háishì bù rènshì nǐ] dè rén?
you likeknow you HAISHI not know you DE person‘Do you like people who know you or people who do not know you?’b. * 你 喜欢[认识 你 不认识 你] 的 人？
ni xǐhuān [rènshì ni bù rènshì ni] de ren?
you likeknow you NOT know you DE person‘Do you like people who know you or people who do not know you?’

16
2.2.2

MA-questions

These questions are marked by the sentence-ﬁnal particle (SFP) 吗 mā. Hereafter I shall referto these as MA-questions.
It has been suggested by some (such as Ernst (1994) and Law (2001)) that MA-questions anda-not-a questions are semantically equivalent and thus interchangeable, such that a MA-question
can be paraphrased into an a-not-a question (and vice versa):(19) a. 张三
喜欢
不
喜欢
李四?
zhāngsān xǐhuān bù xǐhuān LisìZhangsan like
NOT like
Lisi‘Does Zhangsan like Lisi?’

b. 张三
喜欢
李四 吗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān Lisì ma?
Zhangsan like
Lisi MA‘Does Zhangsan like Lisi?’

However, there are some diﬀerences between the two structures in at least three aspects whichsuggest they are not, in fact, allostructures of each other.
Firstly, in terms of semantics, scope ambiguity can arise when the universal quantiﬁer 都 dōu isused with MA-questions, but not with a-not-a questions, and the meaning of their responses candiﬀer, particularly when a negative response is given (McCawley, 1994). Taking the two questions
in examples (20a) and (20b) below, I tabulate their possible responses (and corresponding meaning)in (21), based on McCawley (1994).
(20) [Adapted from McCawley (1994), Examples 21 & 23]
a. A-NOT-A question:
他们 都
喜欢 不
喜欢 开车？
Tamen dou xǐhuan bu xihuan kaiche?
they DOU like
NOT likedrive‘Do they all like to drive?’b. MA-question他们 都喜欢 开车 吗？
Tamen dou xihuan kaiche ma?
they DOU likedrive MA
‘Do they all like to drive? / Do all of them like to drive?’17(21) [Adapted from McCawley (1994), Examples 21 & 23]
Response / Question

A-not-A

MA-question喜欢 xǐhuān [like]

They do (all like to drive)不喜欢 bù xǐhuān [not like]

None of them likes to drive

不 bù [“No”]

None of them likes to drive Not all of them like to drive

As can be seen from the above, the negative responses have the same meaning (that none ofthe people likes to drive) for the a-not-a question. This is because the negator bù is in the scopeof dōu in both answers ( [ dōu [ bù ] ] and [ dōu [ bù xǐhuān ] ] ), and there is no ambiguity.
On the other hand, the two negative responses can diﬀer in meaning for the MA-question,
because of the ambiguous scope of dōu: with a response of “bù xǐhuān”, the negator bù is under
the scope of dou ( [ dōu [ bù xǐhuān ] ] ), just like it would for a-not-a . However, with a responseof “bù”, it is bù that takes scope over everything else: [bù [ dōu xǐhuān ] ], which could be roughly
translated as “not all (of them) like” (versus “all (of them do) not like”).
Secondly, while not mentioned in any previous accounts that I’m aware of, I suggest a diﬀerence
in information structure between the two types of questions, and that focus or topic of a MAquestion is not immediately known on the syntactic level if the question is a plain, unmarked
sentence such as (22):(22) 张三喜欢李四 吗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān Lisì ma?
Zhangsan like
Lisi MA‘Does Zhangsan like Lisi?’

Using the sentence in (22), we can have at least three diﬀerent interpretations, if based solely
on the syntax:(23) a. [张三]F喜欢李四 吗？
[zhāngsān]F xǐhuān Lisì ma?
Zhangsan like
Lisi MA‘Is it Zhangsan (and not anyone else) who likes Lisi?’

b. 张三
李四 吗？
[喜欢]F
zhāngsān [xǐhuān ]F Lisì ma?
Zhangsan like
Lisi MA‘Is it that Zhangsan likes Lisi?’

18
c. 张三
喜欢
[李四]F 吗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān [Lisì]F ma?
Zhangsan like
Lisi
MA
‘Is it Lisi whom Zhangsan likes?’

It could be argued that the verb-focused interpretation — that is, focus being on xǐhuān —could be the default one, likely arising from it being the head of the sentence, but it does not
exclude the possibility of the focus being diﬀerent without any change in syntax. This is likely
because the scope of mā is the entire sentence and not speciﬁc constituents. Should focus berequired, the asker will need to either rely on prosodic clues such as intonation or stress, or employ
syntactic tools such as topic markers like 是 shì, in order to bring the elements into focus:(24) a. 是 张三喜欢李四 吗？
Shì zhāngsān xǐhuān Lisì ma?
SHI Zhangsan like
Lisi MA‘Is it Zhangsan (and not anyone else) who likes Lisi?’

b. 张三
是 喜欢
李四 吗？
zhāngsān shì xǐhuān Lisì ma?
Zhangsan SHI like
Lisi MA‘Is it that Zhangsan likes Lisi?’

c. 张三
喜欢
的 是 李四 吗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān dè shì Lisì ma?
Zhangsan like
DE SHI Lisi MA‘Is it Lisi whom Zhangsan likes?’

In a-not-a questions, however, there is no ambiguity in focus — the a-not-a structure isalways the constituent in focus — and as such the answer would therefore be directly in responseto the a-not-a question.
In a multi-verb or modal+verb construction, the a-not-a structure cannot be applied to thesecond (or non-ﬁrst) verb, since the a-not-a structure, when used as an interrogative, is generally
not permitted to be part of an embedded clause. As such, focus cannot be shifted to other verbs
by means of applying a-not-a mechanisms to it.
(25) a. 张三
喜欢
不
喜欢
看书？
zhāngsān xǐhuān bù xǐhuān kànshū?
Zhangsan like
NOT like
read?
‘Does Zhangsan like to read?’19b. * 张三
喜欢
看 (书) 不看书zhāngsān xǐhuān kàn(shū) bù kànshū?
Zhangsan likeread
NOT read‘Does Zhangsan like to read?’

Thirdly, they are pragmatically diﬀerent. Liing (2014) sees MA-questions as a type of conﬁrmation question, where the asker’s already-expressed stance is either conﬁrmed or denied, while
a-not-a questions are just yes/no questions and neutral. She adds that MA-questions and anot-a questions are generally viewed to be the same only because when in use, they typicallyreceive the same answer. This, however, does not mean the two question types are interchangeable.
Similarly, Yuan and Hara (2013) proposed that MA-questions are simple questions, while anot-a questions have the additional assertion of ignorance on the asker’s part. They suggested
that MA-questions can be neutral or biased (towards assertion p, but never to ¬p), whereas anot-a questions can only be neutral. This was based on Gunlogson (2004)’s “biased context”
concept: when assertion p is explicitly/publicly indicated whereas ¬p is not, then the context isbiased towards p. Therefore, since MA-questions make only one visible (public) proposal (p), they
can be biased towards p, while a-not-a questions, with both p and ¬p being asserted, remains
neutral.
However, I believe there are counter-examples for MA-questions where the non-asserted ¬pcould be the intended/biased proposal. Imagine a scenario where our protagonist Zhangsan wasgiven a certain task, in which his competence is doubted. In such a case, the doubter might ask
the following to another person:(26) 张三
会
跳舞 吗？
zhāngsān hùi
tiàowǔ mā?
Zhangsan know/can dance MA?
‘Does Zhangsan (really) know how to dance?’

In this scenario, the person could be posing the question in mild disbelief or even mockery,and thus the question could instead be biased to assertion ¬p, that the subject Zhangsan does not
actually know how to dance. In other words, while MA-questions do not overtly indicate ¬p, they
can still be biased towards that, given the right context.
In such a use, this variant bears close resemblance to the Cantonese question type that is marked
with the SFP me1, which is biased towards ¬p (Hara, 2014). The examples in (27) demonstrates
this, with the asker’s assumption in brackets.

20(27) a. 张三识做 咩?
Zeong1saan1 sik1 zou6 me1?
Zhangsanknow do ME?
‘Does Zhangsan know how to do it? (It seems to me he does not know how)’

b. 张三
唔 识
做 咩?
Zeong1saan1 m4 sik1 zou6 me1?
Zhangsannot know do ME?
‘Does Zhangsan not know how to do it? (It seems to me he does know how)’

2.3

Existing HPSG-based accounts

Apart from zhong [|], there are at least two other HPSG-based grammars of Mandarin Chinese, namely the Mandarin Grammar Online (ManGO) (Yang, 2007) and the Mandarin Chinese
Grammar (MCG) (Zhang et al., 2011), each with varying coverage of Mandarin Chinese. As ofwriting, none of these grammars — including zhong [|] — have coverage of the a-not-a structure. There are also no HPSG-based account of a-not-a questions outside of these grammars.
As such, the present paper seeks to ﬁll this area both in the HPSG literature as well as in thecomputational grammars.

21

3 Purpose and Scope
My purpose for this project is two-fold: Primarily, it is to derive a formal HPSG and MRS
account of the a-not-a structure. Secondarily, it is to begin an implementation of said account into
the zhong [|] grammar developed by the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.
Within the timeframe of this project, the implementation will only be in the preliminary stages,
and the state of the implementation will be noted in a later section. During the course of theimplementation, limitations with the current grammatical system were also encountered. These
will be noted, and proposed changes will be stated wherever possible.
The literature reviewed thus far has indicated several rules and constraints of the a-not-a
structure, all of which will ideally need to be accounted for in order to have an extensive coverageof the phenomenon. However, in order to tame the scope for this paper, not all of these will belooked into and accounted for.
Firstly, only the a-not-a forms with 不 bù as not will be covered, swo a-not-a forms with
没 méi as not will not be dealt with. Secondly, this paper will limit itself to the following mostbasic and common instances of a-not-a :• Basic A-not-A– The basic pattern, with a fully reduplicated.
• Basic A-not-A (contracted)– The partially reduplicated pattern, where only the ﬁrst character is reduplicated.
• VP-not-VP / AB-not-AB– Where B represents the object of a verb being used as A.
• AB-not-A• A-not-AB
I will also describe in brief these other patterns of a-not-a :• VV-compound as A element• VP-neg22
In addition, the present analysis will also include the restrictions imposed on the a-not-a
structure in terms of where and when it can and cannot occur, as well as the elements which canbe used in conjunction with it.
To further reduce the scope for the present paper, the analysis as well as the implementation
for the zhong [|] grammar will attempt to cover only simple sentences and questions that contain
only a single clause. Therefore, sentences with more complex structures such as embedded clauses
and relative clauses — as well as the restrictions they impose — will not be implemented at thecurrent stage.
Finally, although it has been shown in the previous sections that the a-not-a structure can beused in a non-interrogative sentence, similar to how WH-words can be embedded in a declarative
sentence, such a usage arguably behaves in a slightly diﬀerent way, with its own sets of constraints— particularly in the semantics. As such, for the sake of scope, this paper will only focus on theinterrogative and non-embedded usage of a-not-a .

23

4 HPSG Account
4.1

Brief Introduction to HPSG and MRSThis paper makes use of the Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) and Minimal
Recursion Semantics (MRS) frameworks (Pollard and Sag, 1994; Copestake et al., 2005) to describe
the a-not-a question structure and implement that as part of the zhong [|] Chinese grammar.
In a nutshell, HPSG is a formalism that consists of structured representations of grammaticalcategories (realised as typed feature structures), and is motivated by a constraint-based descriptive
approach. Its structured, modular and uniform approach makes it an ideal framework for computational grammars. It is highly lexicalised, and its constraints comprise several parts, including
a lexicon made up of basic words, lexical entries that build up derived words, as well as othergrammatical rules and principles. In these aspects, it is similar to the Government and Binding(GB) theory, wherein the use of detailed lexical entries and grammatical principles determines
structure. However, the notion of transformation is absent in the HPSG formalism, and it relies
on structure sharing instead of movement to relate attributes between structures, therefore making
it non-derivational. (Pollard and Sag, 1994; Levine and Meurers, 2006)
The MRS framework provides the semantic formalism used in conjunction with HPSG (orother typed feature structure formalisms), and was designed as a computational semantic framework built for parsing and generation. Like HPSG, the semantic representations in the MRS
framework can be expressed easily using typed feature structures. It makes use of a ﬂat semantic
structure that eases representation of transfer rules (between languages), while still maintaining
scoping information where required, hence making it an attractive tool for ﬁelds such as MachineTranslation. (Copestake et al., 2005)

4.2

Groundwork

4.2.1

A-not-A as coordinate structure?

In an earlier section, I covered the analysis by Huang (1991) and McCawley (1994) which disputethe direct derivation of a-not-a from the coordinate disjunctive a haishi not-a. Instead, theyclaim that it is a distinct disjunctive question type. The diﬀerences between the two question types
were later brought by Liing (2014) to mean that a-not-a questions are not, in reality, disjunctive
questions to begin with, but are yes-no questions making a single proposition.
Could it then be that the a-not-a structure is not even a coordinate structure at all? Huang(1991)’s mention of the apparent violation of the Directionality Constraint by a-not-a suggests

24that it diﬀers somewhat from standard coordinate structures. McCawley (1994)’s examples about
the non-interchangeability of the supposed coordinates (the a elements) in a-not-a lend further
support to the idea that the structure might not be an actual coordinate structure, since in mostcoordinated structures, the coordinated elements are interchangeable, at least on the syntactic
level. Liing (2014)’s suggestion that a-not-a questions are yes-no questions further strengthens
this, as it highlights that underlying the structure is only one proposition.

4.2.2

Character/Syllable List

The implementation of the a-not-a structure necessitates the comparison of the a elements
to ensure they are identical. To do so in our grammar will require that the lexical rules be able to“see” the characters or syllables of each lexical entry. As such, in addition to the existing features ofa lexical entry, this analysis introduces two new features, wchar and fchar. These are the wholeword (all characters) and the ﬁrst character, respectively. It also introduces a length feature,
which has two possible values: one and more-than-one, for a word which has one character or
multiple characters, respectively.
Both of these features are implemented as part of the head, and wchar is identical to thestem (which is the orthographical representation of the lexical item), while fchar includes only
the ﬁrst character. These are illustrated with the following example lexical entries for the verbs
叫 jiào “to call” and 喜欢 xǐhuān “to like”:

word


STEM


(28) 
FCHARWCHARLENGTH

word


STEM


(29) 
FCHARWCHARLENGTH⟩
1 ‘叫’ 




‘叫’


1


one
⟨





1 ‘喜欢’




‘喜’


1


more-than-one⟨⟩

In (28), we have a single-character word jiào “to call”. As described, its wchar value is linked
to the stem value, as they are identical. This being a single-character word, its fchar does not
diﬀer from wchar, and its length value is one. In (29), we have a multi-character word xǐhuān
“to like”. As with the previous word, the wchar and stem are identical. This time, fchar is not
the same as wchar and its length value is more-than-one.

25
The roles of each of these features will be detailed in the §4.2 on the basic form.

4.2.3

The Headedness of A-not-A

In the existing accounts covered, the head of the a-not-a structure is one of the a elements,
and the generation of the a-not-a structure begins from this head, with reduplication, elisionand negation applied to it or its copy. However, whether that be a1 or a2 diﬀers from analysis toanalysis, depending on where the analysis determines this “starting point” to be. This, of course,
poses a problem.
The presence of two semantically identical elements (even if only partially reduplicated) makes
it diﬃcult to convincingly determine which of the two should be the head.
A possibility is there actually being two heads belonging to two separate predicates that isjoined by a non-overt/unseen conjunction, as is typical of a coordinate structure. However, as
discussed in an earlier section, there is some reason to believe the a-not-a is not a coordinating
structure, or one which is suﬃciently diﬀerent from the typical coordinating structure.
On the other extreme is the possibility that the a-not-a structure could be non-headed,making it similar to proposed analyses for serial-verb constructions (see Mueller and Lipenkova(2009) for more). But unlike serial-verb constructions where the two or more verbs involved are
diﬀerent, the a elements in a-not-a constructions are identical or near-identical, one essentiallya copy of the other. This suggests the presence of a single head, with the other being “vestigial”
to the other. The idea of a non-headed structure is, of course, also slightly uncomfortable, taking
into account the “head-driven” nature of HPSG.
Based on what we know about the a-not-a structure, a1 can be elided to have only its ﬁrst
character remaining. Such a form is usually unable to stand on its own outside of a-not-a orother reduplicative sequences, making it a bound or even “parasitic” form. On the other hand, thea2 element must preserve its integrity and cannot be separated or decomposed further, making
it a better candidate to be the head. However, despite this, the bound form is apparent only on
the morphological level; on the syntactic and semantic level both a elements are still the same,so this admittedly is not a strong case. Of course, for purely arbitrary and aesthetic reasons, thecompleteness of a2 would still be an attractive candidate as the head.
The seemingly “monolithic” nature of a-not-a — that is, nothing can apparently come between
the structure — makes it diﬃcult to apply headedness tests that requires mechanisms such as
movement or modiﬁcation of the individual components. This monolithic structure could also lend
support to the idea that the a-not-a structure could be a single, “morphological word” that is asingle predicate. In this case, whether a1 or a2 is the head might actually be unimportant, because

26
the head is simply the entire a-not-a morpho-word itself.
In a previous section, I brought up Liing (2014)’s claim that a-not-a questions are not disjunctive questions but are instead yes/no questions. In other words, there is only one proposition (p),whose truth value is determined by the responses “yes” or “no”. In this way, Liing’s account also
adds credence to the notion of a single predicate upon which the truth value is solely determined.
The lack of a deﬁnitive answer (at the moment) for this suggests the possibility of two diﬀerent
ways to approach the a-not-a structure, particularly in the area of parsing. I have elected tomainly focus on the non-monolithic approach, in order to have a better account of the mechanics
behind the a-not-a structure. I will, however, still brieﬂy mention the “monolithic” approach ina later section.
Nonetheless, as the non-monolithic approach requires one of the a elements to be the head, it
was decided to choose one of these — a1 — to be the head.

4.3 Basic A-not-A / Basic Form
The basic form is one where the a elements are reduplicated in full. As described in the
introduction section, the a element can be a verb, adjective or preposition. In this present account,
only words are treated as a elements of the basic form. Their phrasal equivalents — namely verb
phrases — are treated as a separate type (See the section on vp-not-vp for more details)
For computational eﬃciency, the non-changing element not of all a-not-a was decided to be
used as a single “point of origin” which selects the appropriate a elements. This is opposed to amuch more intensive (and by extension tedious) approach of having a a-not-a -speciﬁc lexical
entry for every word that then points to a lexical rule. Additionally, it does not appear to bepossible under the present system to indicate a speciﬁc word (such as 不 bù) to participate in aphrase, unless a feature (akin to BU=true) is assigned speciﬁcally for that word which we can thenuse as a constraint.
With that, a general lexical rule for this variant of bù is created, as illustrated in (30). As with
the normal negator, this not element is derived from the basic-scopal-adverb-lex.

27




a-not-a-adv-lex


[


MODIFIABLE– HEAD+ POSTHEAD







+vjrp










⟨  MODIFIABLE







 COMPS COMPS







 SUBJ




 CAT



ASPECT(30) 








+vjrp









⟨  MODIFIABLE






 MOD

 COMPS








 SUBJ







ASPECT






SF
ques



 CONTASPECT
non-aspect









 


 
 
2 –
⟩
 
 
3
 
 
 
 
4
 


5 non-aspect










2 ⟩





3 






4 




5






]

In the above feature structure, mod is the a1 element while comps is the a2 element. Both thehead types are indicated as +vjrp, which restricts the a elements to be verbs (v), adjectives (j),adverbs (r) or prepositions (p). A constraint of [ modifiable −] prevents modiﬁers from acting
on it. As both a elements share the same subject and complement(s), their subj and comps andaspect values are indicated to be identical. Additionally, they are also both not modiﬁable.
With the above, and using a simple sentence as an example, it creates the following Minimal
Recursion Semantics representation in (31):4(31) Example Sentence:
张三
喜欢
不
喜欢
狗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
Zhangsan like
NOT like
dog?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’
4

In this paper, I use labels like “LIKER” and “LIKED” for ease of understanding. The computational grammar
uses generic labels like ARG0, ARG1, etc, to represent the same things.

28




SF

ques







 INDEX 2 
ASPECT
imperfective





 RELN 喜欢
RELN name





  INDEX 2 RELS  NAME ‘张三’ , 
 LIKER 1
INDEX 1

LIKED 5











 RELN 喜欢 RELN



不





 INDEX 2
 RELN 狗 ,  INDEX
, 

3
, 







 LIKER 1
 INDEX 5
 NEGATED 4
LIKED 5The MRS representation in (31) illustrates the semantic relations between the elements in thesimple sentence. Both the a elements are indicated to have the same subject (the liker), as wellas the same object (the item being liked), since they are semantically identical. The index of
the entire sentence is identical to the index of the a1 element, as it was decided for it to be thehead of the sentence (see §4.2.3 for a discussion on this). The sf (sentential force) feature has avalue of ques, which indicates that it is an interrogative. This feature also serves as a constraintthat prevents sentence-ﬁnal particles such as lè and mā from co-occurring with it (see §2.1.3 for abrief account of SFPs and a-not-a questions).
This general lexical type will serve as the parent from which two other types — for the basic
form and the contracted form — will be derived. As such, we shall have the following typehierarchy:
a-not-a-adv-lex

a-not-a-basic-adv-lex a-not-a-contracted-adv-lex
With that in place, let us proceed to the sub-type for the basic form. As the a-not-a-basicadv-lex is a sub-type of the general lexical entry, it inherits all its properties. For the basic formof the a-not-a structure, a few additional features will be required. For simplicity, (32) indicates
only these additional features:a-not-a-basic-adv-lex







 COMPS(32)  SYNSEM






 MOD





⟨
WCHAR

BOUND
⟨
WCHAR

BOUND


⟩


1
 


−



⟩



1

 


−

As described in earlier sections, the basic form of the a-not-a structure requires that both aelements (a1 and a2 ) be identical. As such, in (32), the wchar of both the mod (a1 ) and comps

29(a2 ) are constraint to be identical. A further constraint restricts the a element to be non-boundforms. These forms are single characters of a multi-character word, and they cannot exist outsideof structures like a-not-a (§4.4.1 covers more of this).
With the above constraints added, it is able to predict the following:(33) a. 张三
喜欢
不
喜欢
狗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
Zhangsan like
NOT like
dog?
‘Does Zhangsan like or not like dogs?’

b. [Non-identical A elements]
喜欢
狗？
* 张三
讨厌 不
zhāngsān tǎoyàn bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
dog?
Zhangsan hate NOT like
‘Does Zhangsan hate or not like dogs?’

c. [Bound forms being used]
* 张三
喜 不
喜 狗？
zhāngsān xǐ bù xǐ gǒu ?
Zhangsan XI NOT XI dog?
‘Does Zhangsan like or not like dogs?’

The above analysis will also give rise to a tree structure similar to (34), taking (33a) as theexample sentence:
(34)

S

NP
zhāngsānZhangsanVP
A-NOT-A
A1

NOT-Axǐhuān Adv
A2likebù xǐhuān
not
like

NP
gǒu
dog

30

4.4

A-not-A contracted / Contracted Form

The a-not-a contracted, or the contracted form, is a variant of the basic form, andcan be applied when the a element is a multi-character word. This form sees the contraction of
the ﬁrst a element a1 such that only the ﬁrst character (fchar) is retained, with the rest deleted.
This was illustrated earlier in (1c) and (2b), duplicated here as (35a) and (35b):
喜 不
喜欢
狗？
(35) a. 张三zhāngsān xǐ bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
Zhangsan like NOT like
dogs
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs or not like dogs?’

b. 张三
健
不 健康？
zhāngsān jiànbù jiànkāng
Zhangsan healthy not healthy‘Is Zhangsan healthy or not healthy?’

Our previous implementation for the basic form will be inadequate for such cases, as thewhole strings (wchar) for a1 and a2 are not identical in the contracted form. A diﬀerent
lexical rule — also a sub-type of and inheriting from the parent — will need to be created. This
lexical rule is implemented as a-not-a-contracted-adv-lex:a-not-a-contracted-adv-lex
 COMPS(36) 
 SYNSEM





MOD

⟨[
⟨[

FCHAR
LENGTHWCHAR
LENGTH


]⟩

1


more-than-one

]⟩

1

one

As illustrated above, the fchar of the comps (a2 ) is constraint to be identical to the wcharof the single-character mod (a1 ). The additional constraint of the length on the complement(a2 ) element prevents this rule from also being used to parse basic a-not-a structures, such that
it will parse sentence (37a) but not (37b), which is supposed to be handled by the lexical rule forthe basic form.
(37) a. 张三健
不 健康？
zhāngsān jiànbù jiànkāng
Zhangsan healthy not healthy‘Is Zhangsan healthy or not healthy?’

b. 张三
高 不
高？
zhāngsān gāo bù gāo?
Zhangsan tall NOT tall
‘Is Zhangsan tall?’

31
4.4.1

Single-character entries for bound forms

In addition to the new lexical rule, these single-character forms will also require their own
entries in the lexicon (if they do not already exist), to allow the parser to identify them. These
forms, however, always exist as part of the multi-character word, and cannot occur separated or
independently outside of certain structures (such as the reduplicative adverbs formed from adjectives, as well with a-not-a ). These are therefore considered bound forms, and are consequently
given the constraint of [ bound + ]. As an example, (38a) shows the full (or normal) unboundform of the verb xǐhuān and (38b) shows its corresponding bound form.
(38) a. [Unbound/Normal Lexical Entry]: 
喜欢 _v


 STEM CHAR





PRED

⟨

⟩
‘喜欢’

1



FCHAR


 WCHARLENGTH‘_ 喜欢 _v_rel’








‘喜’



1


more-than-one b. [Bound Form Lexical Entry]: 喜 _v STEM BOUND CHAR





PRED

⟨
1

⟩
‘喜’

+


FCHAR


 WCHARLENGTH‘_ 喜欢 _v_rel’










‘喜’ 



1


one 



The relation between the bound forms and the unbound (full) forms are indicated in pred,whose value is equivalent to that of the full form’s. This is essential as there are other multicharacter Chinese words with the same ﬁrst character, and constraining the pred will preventthese from being used with the wrong unbound forms.
In (39a) and (39b), I use 说话 shuōhuà “to speak” and 说笑 shuōxiào “to joke” to illustrate this.
Both of these multi-character words have the same ﬁrst character, 说 shuō, but each of them will
still have their own single-character entries for the bound form. Their bound forms have almost
the same features, except pred, which semantically links them to their full forms.

32



 说 _v
⟨
⟩
说话 _v


⟨
⟩

STEM
1 ‘说’STEM 1 ‘说话’










BOUND +
FCHAR ‘说’(39) a. 
FCHAR ‘说’ 
CHAR WCHAR 1










WCHAR

CHAR 
1





LENGTH
more-than-one
LENGTH one 
PRED ‘_ 说话 _v_rel’
PRED ‘_ 说话 _v_rel’ 说 _v

⟨
⟩
说笑 _v


⟨
⟩
STEM


1
‘说’


STEM 1 ‘说笑’BOUND +








FCHAR ‘说’



b. 


FCHAR ‘说’ CHAR WCHAR 1








WCHAR
CHAR 

1





LENGTH more-than-one 
LENGTH one 
PRED ‘_ 说笑 _v_rel’
PRED ‘_ 说笑 _v_rel’

33

4.5

VP-not-VP

As the name of the structure suggests, verbs or verb phrases are the a elements.

4.5.1

AB-not-AB

A basic sub-type of this structure is the ab-not-ab or vo-not-vo structure, where the elementb is the object (direct, indirect or both) of the verb a. This was illustrated in Example (1a), andhas been duplicated here as (40):(40) 张三
喜欢 狗 不喜欢 狗？
zhāngsān xîhuān gôu bu xîhuān gôu?
Zhangsan likedogs NOT like
dogs
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs or not like dogs?’

As opposed to the previous two sections for the basic form and contracted form, theobjects of either a1 or a2 form a verb-phrase before they are selected by not, instead of only theverb being selected. This diﬀerence is illustrated in the example below. (41a) represents the basic
form, while (41b) represents the tree for the ab-not-ab form.
(41) a.

S

张三
ZhangsanVP
VP
喜欢 不 喜欢xǐhuān bù xǐhuān
like NOT like

NP
狗
gǒu
dog

34
b.

S

张三
Zhangsan

VP

VP
喜欢狗
xǐhuān gǒu
like dog

AdvP
Adv

VP

不
bù
NOT

VP
喜欢狗
xǐhuān gǒu
like dog

The lexical rule for the ab-not-ab-adv-lex is largely similar to the general a-not-a rule introduced in §4.2, except that the a elements are speciﬁed to be phrases instead of words, and thatthe head of these a elements can only be verbs. Also, the subject must not be ﬁlled, to blockphrases where the subject is included as part of a1 . The below illustrates only the parts diﬀerent
from the general form (however, this lexical rule is not a sub-type, unlike the rules for the basic
and contracted form):
ab-not-ab-adv-lex







⟩
⟨
phrase








COMPS HEAD verb 












SUBJ
1
(42)  SYMSEM ⟨ phrase
⟩



 




 
HEAD verb

MOD




⟨
[
]
⟩




SUBJ 1

Notice that while the above rule states that the verb must be the same (based on the wchar),there is no similar constraint on the object (the b element). This, unfortunately, is a limitation of
the current system, and there is currently no mechanism that can ensure the object be the same,as these information, being non-head, are not automatically passed-up to the mother node. Thisis essential for the ab-not-ab implementation to be parsed successfully. However, the passing up
of such elements remains unrecommended or disallowed in the present formalism. In other words,
the present account remains incomplete until a change in the formalism/framework is done.

35
4.5.2

More complex VP-NOT-VP structures

As verb phrases are the a elements in this structure, signiﬁcantly more complex structures
can be used on either side of not, so long as they are permitted as verb phrases in Mandarin
Chinese. The complexity of the VP usually arises from the length of the NP within, which canbe an arbitrarily long, lacking an actual upper bound, as it can contain a large number of smaller
conjoined elements.
We see an example of this vp-not-vp structure below:(43) 张三
喜欢吃 便宜 的 面
不喜欢吃 便宜 的 面？
zhāngsān xǐhuān chī piányí dè miàn bù xǐhuān chī piányí dè miànZhangsan likeeat cheap DE noodles NOT likeeat cheap DE noodles‘Does Zhangsan like to eat cheap noodles?’Here, however, is an area where actual acceptability versus grammaticality can be at odds.
While in theory the VP can be very complex, such a structure would have been deemed troublesome
by native speakers, even the much simpler VO-not-VO structure5 , if only because there is a limit
to how much information can be manipulated at once by the human mind. As such, in cases of
the above, such sentences will almost-always be simpliﬁed to the either the basic form — where
the object is elided — or the contracted form — where the object and any non-ﬁrst characterof the verb is elided — as described in §4.4.
(44) [Reduced to Basic Form]张三喜欢不喜欢 吃 便宜 的 面？
zhāngsān xǐhuān bù xîhuān chī piányí dè miàn?
Zhangsan like
NOT like
eat cheap DE noodles‘Does Zhangsan like to eat cheap noodles?’(45) [Reduced to Contracted Form]
张三
喜 不
喜欢
吃 便宜 的 面？
zhāngsān xǐ bù xǐhuān chī piányí dè miàn?
Zhangsan like NOT likeeat cheap DE noodles‘Does Zhangsan like to eat cheap noodles?’5Interestingly, Liu (2010) appears to dispute the validity of the vo-not-vo structure in his analysis, as hisanalysis only moves the verb or part of it, and forbids the movement of the internal argument/object. I will,
however, remain with the more general acceptance of vo-not-vo in this paper.

36

4.6

Other Variants

4.6.1

VV-compounds

VV compounds, or resultative compounds, are a type compound verb in Chinese where
the event represented by the ﬁrst verb (v1 ) in the compound and the event or state represented
by the second verb (v2 ) in the compound have a causal relation. (See Li (1990) for more details.)
VV compounds, like normal verbs, can also be a elements in a-not-a questions. As withnormal two-character words, the non-ﬁrst character can optionally be deleted:
你？
气死
不
气 (死)
(46) 张三
ni?
bù qì-sǐzhāngsān qì-(sǐ)
zhangsan anger(-die) NOT anger-die you?
‘Does Zhangsan anger you to death?’

While a-not-a was believed to be neutral, it is possible to have a certain bias, as the above
two sentences can also be translated to “Doesn’t Zhangsan anger you?”, a likely rhetorical question
which demonstrates a pre-disposition of the asker towards agreement/a yes answer. While thisis might be apparent in ordinary v-not-v, the possibility of bias-ness appears to be stronger in
vv-not-vv. This could be because of the presence of the resultative v2 , which can suggest a
pre-determined conclusion that strengthens the possibility of bias.6

4.6.2

VP-negThe VP-neg structure, also known as the negative particle questions, is a sub-type of a-not-aquestions. It takes the following forms:(47) a. 张三买 书不?
zhāngsān mai shū bù?
Zhangsan buy books NOT?
‘Is Zhangsan buying books?’b. 张三吃饭 了 没（有）？
zhāngsān chīfàn lè méi(you)?
Zhangsan eat
LE NOT?
‘Has Zhangsan eaten?’
6This also raises a question on whether diﬀerent VV compounds used in a-not-a can cause diﬀerent degrees ofbias (or not at all). It is, however, out of the scope of this paper.

37This particular structure is thus named because of the negator ends the sentence, and is usedsimilarly to a sentence-ending particle. With a-not-a as a basis, it appears that such a structure
elides a2 , resembling what could be termed the a-not structure. However, is it really a derivationof the a-not-a structure?
The VP-neg structure has caused some debate among linguists. In an analysis of this structure,
Huang (2008) provides an overview of the literature pertaining to it, and noted the divided opinions
among linguists. Some, as he noted, see it as simply an ellipsed form of the a-not-a structure,
while others see the not element as a type of question particle, not dis-similar to 吗 mā. Huang
himself was in favour of the view that it is a derivation of the a-not-a structure and proposed a
Cheng et al. (1996), as well as Gasde (2001) claim that historically, the VP-neg structure could
not have been a derivation of the a-not-a structure, because it is an older structure than thelatter, having existed since the Classical Chinese era while a-not-a had only entered use during
the Sui and Tang Dynasty. Therefore, as Gasde explained, it was more likely an independent,
distinct structure. While not disputing this, Huang (2008) believes that in Modern Chinese, thisalternation has become much simpler and “fairly free”, and that this structure in Modern Chinese
might in reality be diﬀerent from that of Classical Chinese’s. The examples below are extracted
from Huang (2008), which he used to demonstrate the diﬀerence. The (a) parts are the questions,while (b) are the replies:(48) Modern Chinese:a. 你 去 不?
nǐ qù bù?
you go NOT?
‘Will you go or not?’

b. 不
去。
bù qù
NOT go‘(I will) not go.’(49) Classical Chinese
a. 知
可
否?
zhī ké
fǒu?
know possible NOT?
‘Do(es) (someone/you) know whether it is possible or not?’38
b. * 否可。
fǒu ké
NOT possible‘(It is) not possible.’In the above, Huang (2008) showed that while the negator in VP-neg of Modern Chinese
can negate a following predicate, the negator of the Classical Chinese equivalent cannot, and this
supports the claim that the Classical Chinese and Modern Chinese question types are diﬀerent
from each other.
Despite the diﬀerence that Huang (2008) brought up, it could have been due more to thediﬀerence between the words 否 fǒu and 不 bù themselves (like the environment in which they canor cannot occur), rather than their syntactic functions in the above two examples. The diﬀerence
illustrated in (48) and (49) works under the assumption that fǒu is a negator, rather than just aword that expresses a negative meaning.
Even if it is a negator, it should not be assumed to behave similarly to bù. For example, asimilar negator-like word like 非 fēi can also not be used to negate everything (Contrast 非寻常 fēi
xúncháng/不寻常 bù xúncháng “not normal” [both] with 不知道 bù zhīdào “not know” / * 非知道
fēi zhīdào). Following this, it could also be reasoned that the sentence-ﬁnal bù could be diﬀerent
from the negator bù, appearing only identical on the surface. Still, such comparisons and debates
are out of the scope of this paper.
From the computational grammar point of view, treating the negator in this structure as asentence-ﬁnal question particle or as a question marker does indeed simplify the analysis, since
it can make use of existing analyses and accounts for such particles. Regardless, this structure
requires further investigation in future accounts and, once again, it is not in the scope of thispaper.

4.7 The “monolithic” approach
The abovementioned approach has its set of pros and cons. As it is based more on the syntactic
structure of the a-not-a structure and how it is built-up, it provides a clearer account of themechanics behind the formation of the structure. However, it might not be as accurate in termsof the semantics, as the single-predicate analysis cannot be satisfactorily accounted for.
An alternate approach to the analysis and parsing of the a-not-a structure is by treating thestructure as a single morphological word, and therefore approach it from the lexicon. In such acase, most words that are permitted to be part of a-not-a will also have a-not-a versions as
lexical entries. As such, each word will have three copies: 1) the normal word, 2) the a-not-a

39
basic form and 3) the a-not-a contracted, which can easily be generated programmatically.
Such a treatment has its own advantages and disadvantages. As a whole, it can be moresemantically accurate as it will allow the representation of a single predicate. Also, it increases
the computational eﬃciency of the parsing, as it reduces the number of combinations (or “edges”)
the parser has to form out of the possible elements and constituents. For example, in “A B C D
E F”, there are six atomic elements which the parser will attempt to combine to form AB, BC,
CD, DE, EF, and these will be further combined based on the lexical and phrasal rules deﬁned.
The lexicon approach treats a-not-a structures as a single, atomic element, and thus reduces thenumber of elements that needs to be combined, forming something like “A B CDE F”, which only
needs to create “AB, BCDE, CDEF” in the initial combination. Furthermore, this removes theambiguity that can arise regarding the variant of negator that is involved, if the parser initiallysees the not-a constituent as a negated phrase with a standard negator (instead of being a partof the a-not-a structure), thus reducing the number of “false positivies” in the parsing.
However, this implementation will inevitably lead to a very large lexicon, since, as mentioned
earlier, we will need a-not-a versions of the words.7 Secondly, it does not provide much information on the syntactic aspects of the a-not-a structure, such as its formation, in the grammar
itself, since the a-not-a phrases will essentially be added manually or with a script, both of which
are performed outside the grammar’s environment. Thirdly, such an analysis will not be able toaccount for ab-not-ab without producing an even larger lexicon that contains all the possible ab
combinations.
Neither system at the moment provides reliable parsing of the ab-not-ab (or vp-not-vp)
structure. To reiterate, the ﬁrst method currently has no mechanism that permits the “checking”
of the b elements — the object or the complement of the head verb — to ensure they are identical.
Therefore, the account provided for it is only an “idealised” one which at present cannot be
performed in the grammatical system.
In the second method, as explained earlier, the lexicon would have to be uncomfortably large tocater for the various possible complements/objects that can exist for the ab-not-ab or vp-not-vp
structure, thus making it unfeasible.

7

In a way, this might not be as big a problem as imagined, as the lexicon can be generated programmatically,
assuming there is no issue with ﬁlesizes.

40

5 Implementation
This section deals with further details of the implementation of the a-not-a phenomenon into
the zhong [|] Chinese computational grammar.

5.1 The ZHONG [|] grammar
zhong [|] is a HPSG/MRS-based (Pollard and Sag, 1994; Copestake et al., 2005) computational grammar developed by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. It is basedoﬀ the Mandarin Grammar Online (ManGO) computational grammar (Yang, 2007), although its
coverage also includes other Chinese languages such as Cantonese and Min.

5.2 Preliminary Implementation
As laid down in the §3 on the purpose and scope of this paper, the implementation of thegrammar into the zhong [|] has begun on the preliminary level, and it can at present alreadyparse the basic and contracted forms of the a-not-a structure, albeit currently on a rudimentarylevel with simple sentences. To illustrate, here are some screenshots of sample parses, based on
the following simple sentences in (50):(50) a. 张三
喜欢
不
喜欢
狗？
zhāngsān xǐhuān bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
Zhangsan like
NOT like
dog?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

b. 张三
喜 不
喜欢
狗？
zhāngsān xi bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
Zhangsan xi- NOT likedog?
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’

(51)

41
In addition to being able to parse basic a-not-a sentences, it also correctly rejects ungrammatical in a-not-a sentences, such as when a1 and a2 are diﬀerent from each other.
Although the limitations of the current system means we cannot at present check that the belements in the ab-not-ab structure are identical, it is nonetheless able to parse an ab-notab sentence and provide a satisfactory tree structure, albeit still parsing it if the b elements are
diﬀerent:
喜欢
狗 不
喜欢
狗？
(52) 张三
zhāngsān xǐhuān gǒu bù xǐhuān gǒu ?
dog NOT likedog?
Zhangsan like
‘Does Zhangsan like dogs?’(53)
The above screenshots are just one of many possible parses that the current grammar generates forthe sentences. For example, for the sentence in (50a), there are at least eight parse trees generated
by the computational grammar:(54)
Not all of these are, however, desirable nor correct. As such, further work will be done to add
the necessary constraints to reduce the number of parse trees.

42

5.3

Test-suite

5.3.1

Sentences

A test-suite of 107 a-not-a sentences8 was created and used as part of the implementation,in order to assess the parse coverage of grammar implementation, based on its ability to parse avariety of a-not-a sentences. At present, the test-suite contains 43 grammatical as well as 64
ungrammatical sentences, which is used to assess the parser’s ability to both parse grammaticalsentences as well as reject ungrammatical ones.
These sentences and their respective grammaticality judgements come from native sources, aswell as from the literature investigated earlier. As much as possible, I made use of the existinglexical items in the lexicon, without the need to include new items, and sentences sourced fromthe literature were modiﬁed accordingly to ﬁt into this requirement wherever possible.
I have also included sentences which fall outside the scope of the present study. These are,therefore, not expected to be parse-able by the implementation in the present study. However, as
the a-not-a structure will continue to be worked on after the conclusion of this present analysis,
it is expected (or at least hoped) that these sentences will eventually be accounted for by thegrammar implementation.

5.3.2

CoverageA preliminary run of the present account through the test-suite was performed, with the following results:
Grammatical Ungrammatical
(55)

Items

43 / 10764 / 107

Parses

26 / 43

22 / 64

As shown, the parser is able to parse — with the most updated account — 26 out of 43 (∼60%)
grammatical sentences, as well as reject 22 of the 64 (∼34%) ungrammatical sentences. These
successful parses are mostly similar to the ones in (50a), (50b) and (52). These numbers appear tobe satisfactory for a preliminary test. However, despite the coverage, it does not guarantee thateach sentence has a valid parse, nor that each sentence has only one parse — some of them might
have more than one parse tree, which might not be desirable. Again, ongoing work will increase
the number of parses while improving the accuracy.
8

Due to space concerns as well as the possibility of the test-suite ﬁle and its sentences being changed during
development, the sentences are not included in this paper. To view the latest, actual test-suite ﬁle — as plain text
— kindly visit https://github.com/nonochnein/testsuite-anota/blob/master/A-not-A_testsuite.txt

43
Additionally, as the test-suite is diagnostic in nature, it contains sentences which are created or
selected from various literature sources, and are therefore “curated” in a sense. While an increasein coverage is a goal, it does not necessarily reﬂect how it might perform should it be used on“real-world” sentences. As such, a companion test will be to perform the parses on corpora, andthis will be performed in the future.

5.4

Generation

Apart from parsing sentences, the zhong [|] grammar is also able to generate sentences basedon a particular phenomenon of interest. An early attempt at generation for the a-not-a structure
was performed using the current implementation, and the grammar was able to generate grammatically correct sentences and not produce sentences which violate the rules for the a-not-a
structure. Note that this generation is done based on a basic sentence template, and more complex sentences could lead to over-generation. As with the rest of the implementation stage, further
attempts will be made as the grammar implementation increases in complexity and accuracy.

44

6 Limitations and Ongoing Investigation
As part of ongoing eﬀorts made on the development of the zhong [|] grammar, coverage ofthe analysis and implementation of the a-not-a structure will continue to be expanded after theconclusion of this paper. This includes the a-méi-a forms of the structure, as well as the analysis
and coverage of sentences of increased complexity. It is also expected that the non-interrogative
variant of the a-not-a structure will be accounted for and implemented. The accuracy of theparses will also be improved as development continues, and the number of (wrong) parses will be
reduced as work is done to improve accuracy. Also, while the current account is being implemented,
there is also a possibility that the “monolithic” approach (see §4.7) will be explored further.
Also, as previously mentioned, a proper account of the ab-not-ab structure remains out of thereach of the present analysis and system, and might remain so unless certain fundamental changes
are permitted, such as the ability to concatenate and pass up strings of the daughter nodes. As
this change concerns the fundamentals of the computational grammar as well as the nature of
HPSG itself, further discussion with the HPSG linguists and developers will be required to comeup with a consensus.
The assessment of parse coverage will also be extended to that of the various Chinese corpora, such as the NTU Multilingual Corpus (NTUMC) (Tan and Bond, 2012), the Penn Chinese
Treebank (Xue et al., 2005), among others. Unlike the controlled, curated nature of the test-suite
sentences, corpora sentences are more reﬂective of actual usage, and as such provide a more diverse
assessment of the coverage (or lack thereof) in the current and future implementations. Given thewriting-based nature of such corpora, it is believed that the number of a-not-a sentences could
be relatively low, as a-not-a questions are used signiﬁcantly more in spoken language. As such,corpora which contain more spoken discourse — such as those from text messages, Twitter or Sina
Weibo — would also be useful.

7 Conclusion
In this paper, I have looked at the various accounts of the a-not-a structure in Mandarin
Chinese, as well as provide an HPSG and MRS account of this structure. At the same time, thegroundwork and implementation for the integration of the structure into the zhong [|]grammar
has also been performed.
The analysis of the a-not-a structure has also brought to fore some of the limitations of
the present system. The inability to properly account for ab-not-ab at present is indeed an
unfortunate setback, but this could be changed in the future.

45

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