Revisiting donkey anaphora in Mandarin Chinese: A reply to Pan and Jiang (2015)

In their article published in this journal, Pan and Jiang (2015) challenge the claims and proposals made in Cheng and Huang (1996) concerning both the distributional patterns and interpretive strategies for donkey anaphora in Mandarin conditional. They claim that all three types of conditionals ( rú...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 2020-12, Vol.7 (2), p.167-186
Main Authors: Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen, Huang, C. -T. James
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anaphora
Mandarin
Pronouns
Wh phrases
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Summary:In their article published in this journal, Pan and Jiang (2015) challenge the claims and proposals made in Cheng and Huang (1996) concerning both the distributional patterns and interpretive strategies for donkey anaphora in Mandarin conditional. They claim that all three types of conditionals ( rúguǒ-, dōu- and bare conditionals) allow either a wh -phrase or a pronoun in the consequent clause, and that both the wh -phrase and the pronoun may be either unselectively bound or interpreted by the E-type strategy. We show that, except for an observation already mentioned and accommodated in Cheng and Huang’s (1996) analysis of rúguǒ -conditionals, their distributional claims are incorrect. It is also shown that the interpretative flexibility they propose is untenable, as it leaves a number of otherwise well-predicted properties unaccounted for.
ISSN:2213-8706
2213-8714
DOI:10.1075/ijchl.19020.che