Wang, Yu (2021) Generic pronouns in Mandarin Chinese. PhD thesis, University of York.
Abstract
Although genericity is a widely and extensively explored phenomenon cross-linguistically over the past few decades, there are comparatively fewer studies on generic pronouns, among which the nature and behaviour of generic pronouns in Mandarin Chinese awaits more attention. There are three types of generic pronoun in Chinese, based on Holmberg and Phimsawat’s (2015) definition of such pronouns. These are: the inclusive generic pronoun ren ‘one’ or ni ‘you’, referring to people in general including the speaker, the addressee and others; the quasi-inclusive generic pronoun women ‘we’, referring to people in a restricted period or region, including the speaker and associates without the addressee or others; and the exclusive generic pronoun tamen ‘they’ referring to certain group of others in a restricted time period or geographical region, excluding the speaker, the addressee or both sides’ associates. Chinese generic pronouns may be overt or covert, including the forms above, as well as pro and PRO. Ren has different interpretations ranging over kind, inclusive generic, and referential ones. I propose a dual operator system for my analysis (cf. Dobrovie-Sorin, 2001), with one generic operator binding DPs and the other binding event variables. Each of the two generic operators competes in principle with existential, universal or other quantificational element of a similar type. My goal is to clarify the interpretations of the different pronouns according to their linguistic and contextual environments. As Chinese is a language without agreement and inflection, contextual information is very important in restricting the interpretation(s) of DPs. The (c)overtness of the generic pronouns mainly depends on contextual factors and cannot simply be derived from their syntactic phi-features (as was proposed for Thai by Holmberg and Phimsawat (2015)). Through this research, I aim to provide an overview of the interpretation and distribution of generic pronouns in Mandarin Chinese at the interface of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. I hope to fill the gap in the studies of Chinese genericity, and further contribute to the investigation of pronouns among pro-drop languages.
Metadata
Supervisors: | Sells, Peter |
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Awarding institution: | University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Language and Linguistic Science (York) |
Identification Number/EthosID: | uk.bl.ethos.846643 |
Depositing User: | Ms Yu Wang |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jan 2022 18:47 |
Last Modified: | 21 Feb 2022 10:53 |
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