TSAI DYLAN

NTHU, Linguistics, Faculty Member

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Lau Tsai 2021 Attitudinal Applicative in Action

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John Benjamins Publishing Company

When people talk about reflexives, they often think of two arguments in an anaphoric or coargumen... more When people talk about reflexives, they often think of two arguments in an anaphoric or coargumental relationship. This paper sets out to show that reflexive adverbials also participate in such kind of relationship, but with a far greater range of interpretative possibilities closely associated with their syntactic distributions. The syntax-semantics correspondence strictly observes an inner-outer dichotomy of adverbials observed across languages, i.e., inner Self expresses comitativity, whereas outer Self express causality. Our finding thus lends a substantial support to the cartographic approach advocated by Rizzi (1997) and Cinque (1999). It is also argued that this behavior can be accommodated by a general theory of reflexivity along the line of Reinhart & Reuland (1993), given that a contrastive focus is introduced in accordance with the phase edges (Chomsky 2000, 2001). The "selfhood" can then be understood in a new light, not only in terms of the general theory of syntax-semantics mapping, but also in terms of the "topography" of adverbials, which is by and large determined by their morphological makeups in particular languages. Human beings model themselves on the earth. The earth models itself on the heaven. The heaven models itself on the Way. And the Way models itself on selfhood. (Lao Tze, Tao Te Ching

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A comparative study of how and why in Taiwan Southern Min and Mandarin Chinese

From looking into the same and different properties of how and why between Taiwan Southern Min an... more From looking into the same and different properties of how and why between Taiwan Southern Min and Mandarin Chinese, this paper aims to explain the post-verbal how construction with negative speaker attitude. Based on our observations and findings of the specific usages of sī and leh, we propose an analysis for the construction in question. According to our analysis, this construction is not a simple product of a single element, but a composition of sī and leh, which together generate the negative speaker attitude, and the verb with a post-verbal how, which produce a causal how reading.

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This is a contribution from New Explorations in Chinese Theoretical Syntax. Studies in honor of Yen

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Tsai 2021 On Applicative Why questions in Chinese

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Tsai 2022 Topicalization defined by syntax Chapter 28 Cambridge Handbook of Chinese Linguistics

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Tsai 2023 Embedding Force and Attitude

Syntactic constructions encoding illocutionary forces and speakers attitudes are often taken to b... more Syntactic constructions encoding illocutionary forces and speakers attitudes are often taken to be associated with the so-called main clause phenomena (cf. Ael- brecht, Haegeman and Nye 2012, 2014). As illustrated by the causal how-question (la), there is a strong flavour of disapproval/unexpectedness, and the instrumental reading is suppressed by the exclamatory intonation (cf. . By contrast, (lb, c) shows that, once the how-question is embedded, the disapproval reading is suppressed instead, and the interpretation is distinctively instrumental: 1 (disapproval, instrumental) b. I wonder how you could do this to him. (#disapproval, instrumental) c. No matter how you could do this to him, (#disapproval, instrumental) I ' m willing to forgive you. However, there are quite a few exceptions. As pointed out by Krifka ( ), an illo- cutionary act may be embedded as the argument of a force operator such as a verb of saying or a speech act adverbial. Interestingly enough, in a robust analytic lan- guage like Chinese, which lacks wh-movement and subject-AUX inversion, there is a more pronounced ' topography ' of functional elements along the clausal spine in the left periphery, which can be used to distinguish various layers of syntactic projections in relation to their semantics and pragmatics (cf. Cinque 1999, Cinque and Rizzi 2010, Tsai 2008, 2015a, b). The ' height of interpretation' can then be established to account for the distribution of certain subordinate clauses in terms (1) a. How could you do this to him?! 1 As noted by Richard Kayne and James Huang ( p.c.), some speakers of English do get a mirative interpretation with (lb). This construal can be attributed to another verb meaning of wonder 'to feel or express surprise' , which may well license a mirative complement. See the discussion of Chinese mirative how in Section 11.2.

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VERB RAISING, COVERT MODALS AND FLIP-FLOP CONSTRUCTIONS IN VIETNAMESE: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This paper pursues the issues surrounding Vietnamese flip-flop sentences in terms of verb raising... more This paper pursues the issues surrounding Vietnamese flip-flop sentences in terms of verb raising and covert modals from a comparative point of view. We show that verb movement in flip-flop constructions is found in both matrix and embedded environments where the presence of modality is attested. Evidence is presented to show the bi-clausal nature of the so-called "flip alternative" construction, as well as the rightward nature of V-to-M adjunction. We also draw cross-linguistic support from Thai data to substantiate our syntactic analyses on empirical grounds.

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A NOTE ON WIDE SCOPE EFFECTS OF UNIVERSAL QUANTIFICATION IN CHINESE

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Chang & Tsai. 2001. Actor-sensitivity and Obligatory Control in Kavalan and Some Other Formosan Languages

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The Syntax of Wh-In-Situ

Since Huang's seminal work on comparative syntax, the research on the structure and properties of... more Since Huang's seminal work on comparative syntax, the research on the structure and properties of in-situ wh-expressions has come a long way. This article distinguishes four types of wh-constructions in terms of Q(uestion)-operator binding and the morpho-syntactic makeup of individual languages. It is pointed out that building a wh-dependency in a language without wh-movement is driven by interpretive needs, and that it can be achieved through covert movement in Logical Form, unselective binding, Q-particle raising, or invisible operator movement in core syntax. In particular, an operator-variable pair can be built on a sentential scale in a robust analytic language such as Chinese. As a result, the quantificational dependency is established not through movement, but through (unselective) binding, which licensing strategy is correlated to the extensive usage of indefinite/polarity wh's across the board. In addition, various factors contributing to the asymmetries of wh-construals are laid out to account for an assortment of locality effects observed across languages, including argument vs. adjunct, referential vs. nonreferential, noun vs. adverb, D-linked vs. non-D-linked, phrase vs. feature, and sentential vs. verbal. Furthermore, the notion of "operator-in-situ" has become a prominent feature in the recent literature to characterize a class of wh-adverbials, which not only take a sentential scope, but also express eventuality causation according to their "height of interpretation." The usage typically involves why-and how come-like expressions, sometimes bordering on the speaker-oriented construals in the top layer of the left periphery. The role-playing nature of wh-in-situ thus leads to a deeper understanding of the inner working of UG, as to how the convergence of a quantificational dependency can be ensured for a particular operator-variable pair in a particular language.

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WH & SELF: ON CORRELATING WH-CONDITIONALS AND REFLEXIVE DOUBLING

Chinese wh-conditionals hold a very special status in linguistic typology. Cheng and Huang (1996)... more Chinese wh-conditionals hold a very special status in linguistic typology. Cheng and Huang (1996) argues that the construction can be properly analyzed by treating a pair of identical wh-expressions as syntactic variables unselectively bound by an implicit necessity operator. Over the years, this line of thinking has been challenged by various proposals based on the comparison with indefinites, correlatives, E-type pronouns and questions. This Insight article argues for the unselective binding approach to this particular type of donkey sentences by alluding to quantificational reflexive doubling. Our findings not only lend support to the idea that an operator-variable pair is built on a sentential scale in Chinese, but also call for a fine-grained syntax and semantics of the typological correlations between reflexives and wh-in-situ.

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Cartography and licensing of wh-adjuncts: a cross-linguistic perspective

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2008

This article has two major foci. The first concerns the 'cartography' of structural placement of ... more This article has two major foci. The first concerns the 'cartography' of structural placement of wh-adjuncts how and why, a somewhat elusive and murky issue in modern syntactic research. The non-trivial character of this issue becomes clear once it is realized that each of these items encodes more than one lexical entry in some languages, and, furthermore, different lexical entries display different syntactic distribution. One goal is then to characterize the syntactic distribution of how and why controlling for their different cross-linguistic varieties. Once the "cartographical" issue is clarified, a number of novel questions arise concerning the mode of licensing of different varieties of how and why. This brings us to the second, theoretical, focus of the paper: a proper mechanism for licensing wh-in situ, and, in a broader sense, wh-items lower than CP. On the basis of diverse cross-linguistic material, we provide a number of arguments strengthening the Unselective Binding approach to licensing wh-in situ and show how potential challenges can be met in a revealing and explanatory manner.

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The Cartography of Chinese Syntax

The Cartography of Chinese Syntax, 2015

Preface Chapter 1 A Tale of Two Peripheries: Evidence from Chinese Adverbials, Light Verbs, Appli... more Preface Chapter 1 A Tale of Two Peripheries: Evidence from Chinese Adverbials, Light Verbs, Applicatives and Object Fronting Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai Chapter 2 The even-construction and the Low Periphery in Mandarin Chinese Linda Badan & Francesca Del Gobbo Chapter 3 On the Fine Structure of the Left Periphery: The positions of Topic and Focus in Cantonese Candice Chi-Hang Cheung Chapter 4 Adjunct Wh-Words in Left Periphery Sze-Wing Tang Chapter 5 Locating Wh-Intervention Effects at CP Barry Chung-Yu Yang Chapter 6 The Left Peripheral Renjia and Layers of CP in Chinese Chen-Sheng Luther Liu Chapter 7 The Fine structure of Spatial PPs in Mandarin Chinese Hsiao-Hung Iris Wu Index

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