Dynamic Questions: Evidence from M andarin Think–” X iang” (2023)

Abstract: This paper investigates the clausal embedding pattern of the Mandarin verb “xiang” (think) and reveals its internal anti-interrogative nature, with the possibility of “xiang Q” in certain cases. Through various stativity tests, I establish that the results are consistent with the generalization proposed by Özyıldız(2021), with “minor” deviations observed in the stativity of “xiang P” and the correlation with neg-raising. Additionally, I employ a semantic shift perspective to explain instances of neg-raising failure. Overall, this study sheds light on the unique characteristics of the verb “xiang” and contributes to a better cross-linguistic understanding of CP selection.

## introduction predicates are able to embed different types of clausal complements. for example, "think" usually selects the declarative clauses while "wonder" takes interrogative ones only. traditionally, this selection was attributed to syntactic factors, but since @xcite , it has been viewed as more of a semantic choice. a series of works have been devoted to revealing the role of semantic factors in complement selection including factivity and veridicality hypotheses @xcite , reductive approach (q-to-p reduction: @xcite @xcite , uniform approach (inquisitive semantics @xcite , a systematic review see @xcite and the stativity hypothesis @xcite . given most of the studies attended to english exclusively, the present investigation into mandarin aims to provide more cross-linguistic evidence to the issue. in mandarin, predicates taking cp can be classified as responsives (±wh), anti-rogatives (-wh), and rogatives (+wh) as in english. canonical examples are given below. among these predicates, "think" is particularly intricate in many ways. the english word "think" can have several counterparts in mandarin including "renwei", "juede", "ganjue", "yiwei", "xiang" and "sikao" 1 . despite a little nuance, all of them can be used to report thoughts. however, they differ in terms of their cp selection pattern. for example, "renwei" and "xiang" are canonically anti-rogative in bare form (4a,4b), while "sikao" is rogative (4c) 2 . there are mainly two goals of this paper. firstly, it seeks to provide empirical evidence and tests to examine the embedded question compatibility of "xiang". secondly, it aims to probe how much the stativity hypothesis accommodates this mandarin equivalent of think. the structure is organised as follows. §2 provides a brief overview of the various meaning entries of "xiang" in mandarin and explains how its meaning might be determined. §3 presents an analysis of the lexical selectional pattern of "xiang" foot_1 , while §4 and §5 examine how the stativity hypothesis can be applied to explain the occurrences of "xiang q" and how neg-raising is problematic in the case of "xiang". the interpretation of "xiang" is highly dependent on the its environment. some potential factors that can trigger the semantic shift include: (1) modals and aspect markers in the embedded clause 7 (2) the presence of negation (see §5), and (3) status as an imperative (6). however, the details of these triggers are beyond the scope of this paper 8 . in the following sections, i endeavor to control for these wh-word "zenme" (how), which seems to contradict with my claim that it is anti-rogative. i will explain it in §3, where i will present evidence of the question not being an embedded q. 8 presenting these factors is to make readers aware that there are more interactions happening than what is described in the paper. for readers who are interested, check @xcite and @xcite on mandarin aspects and @xcite on second person pronoun influence to get a flavor of the details. however, in terms of selection, it is still understudied. ta he zai exist na where (ne) (-ne) 'where is him?' b. ta he zai -prog gan do shenme what (ne) (-ne) however, in the case of responsives, which can have both matrix and embedding scope, dong claimed that as long as the matrix clause scope is available, the structure remains well-formed 12 . in summary, "wh-ne" construction can be utilised to test for whether an in-situ question is embedded or not. as (13) shows, the second person "xiang + q" passes the test, leading to a root question reading, indicating (13) at least has a reading as a matrix question, even though it looks on the surface like it embeds a question. it is important to highlight that the root question reading with "xiang" plus "wh-ne" is not valid in other persons (e.g., *adding "-ne" to 8a,8b), implying there possibly exists a person effect that does not exist in english, but unfortunately, this paper will not address what this effect could be foot_6 . a detailed "-ne" test result is shown as in ## acknowledgements i am grateful to kajsa djärv for introducing me to the topic and providing valuable guidance. i would also like to extend my thanks to the two anonymous reviewers whose comments were clear and encouraging. lastly, i thank my informants and the members of the guided research group for their insightful questions and native knowledge.