Partition by Exhaustification and polar questions in Vietnamese

VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, 2017

Clause as a grammatical category has been at the centre of attention throughout most of the history of linguistics in Vietnam and has caused a lot of troubles for analysis and interpretation. Great efforts have been made to shed light on this matter. There is, however, no consensus among Vietnamese linguists on clause analysis and interpretation because each of them seems to work on clause analysis in a variety of approaches using different frameworks. In this paper, we aim at investigating some major contemporary approaches to the analysis of the Vietnamese simple clause with our critical appraisals of each approach toprovide readers with an overview of Vietnamese clause studies. The study reveals that at present structuralapproaches influenced by European and American structuralists such as Saussure and Bloomfeld, andfunctional approaches influenced by Dik’s functional grammar and Halliday’s systemic functional grammarseem to be the dominant grammatical models for the analysis of th...

Korean polar alternative questions (Korean PAQs). The syntactic properties of polar alternative questions have not been fully discussed in the literature; this work seeks to address that gap. The thesis has two main components. First, I provide an initial detailed investigation into the syntactic structure of Korean polar alternative questions (Korean PAQs), also called A-not-A questions, such as ciwu-nun ca-ni an ca-ni? 'Is Jiwoo sleeping or not?' I argue that Korean PAQs consist syntactically of a single clause. In this respect, Korean PAQs are distinct from both alternative questions and polar questions.

The aim of this thesis is two-fold: to develop an articulated Vietnamese clause structure in two syntactic domains: VP-external and VP-internal in the spirit of generative grammar, and to see how this functional architecture is supported empirically from the perspective of second language acquisition. To address theoretical issues, on the one hand, it brings together interesting semantic and syntactic contrasts of aspectual morphemes in Vietnamese, i.e., the distributional and interpretative independence of Vietnamese tense and aspect as well as the way they interact with other syntactic phenomenon such as negation, quantification and definiteness. On the other hand, it reveals to what extent the mechanisms that Vietnamese recruits to encode aspect are different from those employed in Indo- European languages and other areally-related languages, especially including Chinese. Based on a detailed semantic-syntactic investigation of Vietnamese aspect, the thesis sets out the properties that need to be acquired by Chinese learners. It distinguishes between those properties which are acquirable without difficulties and those that are ‘problematic’ in order to verify the proposed Vietnamese functional clause. It also sets out to validate some recent hypotheses in the realm of second language acquisition. The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 1 systematically reviews a set of semantic and syntactic studies on aspect that are relevant to the discussion. Chapter 2 lays out previous research on Vietnamese tense and aspect as points of departure for my proposals. Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to an analysis of how tense and aspect are realized in Vietnamese both pre- and post-verbally. Chapter 5 provides a brief comparison between Vietnamese and Chinese aspectual systems, focusing on the particular properties investigated in the following chapter. Chapter 6 presents a set of experiments examining Chinese learners’ acquisition of Vietnamese aspect-related constructions, these shed light on current generativist hypotheses about second language acquisition.

2011

In this thesis I examine a variety of linguistic elements which involve "alternative" semantic values-a class arguably including focus, interrogatives, inde nites, and disjunctions-and the connections between these elements. This study focusses on the analysis of such elements in Sinhala, with comparison to Malayalam, Tlingit, and Japanese. The central part of the study concerns the proper syntactic and semantic analysis of Q[uestion]particles (including Sinhala d@, Malayalam-oo, Japanese ka), which, in many languages, appear not only in interrogatives, but also in the formation of inde nites, disjunctions, and relative clauses. This set of contexts is syntactically-heterogeneous, and so syntax does not o er an explanation for the appearance of Q-particles in this particular set of environments. I propose that these contexts can be united in terms of semantics, as all involving some element which denotes a set of "alternatives". Both wh-words and disjunctions can be analysed as creating Hamblin-type sets of "alternatives". Q-particles can be treated as uniformly denoting variables over choice functions which apply to the aforementioned Hamblin-type sets, thus "restoring" the derivation to normal Montagovian semantics. The treatment of Q-particles as uniformly denoting variables over choice functions provides an explanation for why these particles appear in just this set of contexts: they all include an element with Hamblin-type semantics. However, we also nd variation in the use of Q-particles; including, in some languages, the appearance of multiple morphologically-distinct Q-particles in di erent syntactic contexts. Such variation can be handled largely by positing that Q-particles may vary in their formal syntactic feature speci cations, determining which syntactic contexts they are licensed in. The uni ed analysis of Q-particles as denoting variables over choice functions also raises various questions about the proper analysis of interrogatives, inde nites, and disjunctions, including issues concerning the nature of the semantics of wh-words and the syntactic structure of disjunction. As well, I observe that inde nites involving Q-particles have a crosslinguistic tendency to be epistemic inde nites, i.e. inde nites which explicitly signal ignorance of details regarding who or what satis es the existential claim. I provide an account of such inde nites which draws on the analysis of Q-particles as variables over choice functions. These pragmatic "signals of vii Chung; Charles LaWarre; Jenna Chi (co-author); Erin Rusaw (hoster of Minecraft servers); Daniel

The Linguistic Review, 2022

Contrary to the conventional three-way distinction of questions: polar questions, disjunctive questions, and wh-questions, we argue for a more revealing two-way distinction of polar versus constituent questions, the latter with two subtypes: disjunctive and wh-questions. Following Bhatt, Rajesh & Veneeta Dayal. 2020. Polar question particles: Hindi-Urdu kya. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 38. 1115–1144 proposal that polar questions denote singleton sets of propositions and the standard view that disjunctive and wh-questions denote sets with multiple propositions, we further characterize this dichotomy pragmatically as confirmation-seeking (CS) and information-seeking (IS), i.e., polar questions seek confirmation of the proposition put forth, while constituent questions seek information specifically targeted by the interrogative constituent. This dichotomy is formally detected in Mandarin Chinese via the question particle ma versus ne, dichotomy of fragment questions, adverb na...

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1993

In this chapter, I will compare three different theories of questions: the Quantificational theory (Huang 1982a, b), the Unselective Binding theory (Cheng 1991, Tsai 1999) and the Alternative Semantics theory (Shimoyama 2001 and 2006, Kratzer 2006). My discussion is based upon two influential theories of Mandarin wh-questions, i.e. Tsai’s (1999) Lexical Courtesy Hypothesis and Cheng’s (1991) Clausal Typing Hypothesis. First, I will show that the Lexical Courtesy Hypothesis favors a more economical theory of wh-in-situ and this is achieved in the new Alternative Semantics theory. On the other hand, the Alternative Semantics theory predicts that question particles are not semantically necessary. I argue that the particle –ne is not a question particle at all, which leads to the rejection of the Clausal Typing Hypothesis. Second, I provide new data on the focus intonation of wh-phrases in Mandarin in light of recent cross-linguistic research on the focusation of wh-phrases in many different languages. Based upon the focus properties of wh-phrases, I argue that the scope of wh-phrases in Mandarin questions is marked by their phonological prominence and such phonological properties of wh-pronouns reflect different derivation histories. I also give phonetic evidence based upon an experiment carried out specifically to test the claim of phonological prominence as a scope marking strategy. Thirdly, I discuss some typological implications of my proposals in light of Bruening’s (2004) typological investigations on wh-indefinites.

It is true for every languages that there are four types of sentences: statements, questions, imperatives and exclamations. However, the construction of these four types in one language is quite different from another. Among these types of sentences, questions (interrogative sentences) tend to cause Vietnamese students the most problems while studying English. They usually make a lot of mistakes when forming English questions. Therefore, it is necessary to compare and contrast the structures of questions in these two languages so that teachers can help their students minimize the chance of making mistakes (Akhmetzyanova & Gilemshina, 2017; Carreira-Perpiñán & Hinton, 2005; Tieleman, 2008). Hence, the main purpose of this essay is to provide the readers with a better understanding of the construction of English and Vietnamese questions as well as to point out the similarities and differences of the structures of questions in these two languages. In addition, teachers can also draw some ideas for teaching English in the future (Atkinson & Gray, 2005; Hong, 2008; Stefanowitsch, 2008; Vu, 2015). This paper includes four main parts. In the first part, you can find the definitions of questions from some famous Vietnamese and foreign linguists. The second part will tell you how many types of questions are there in English and in Vietnamese. The third part is the contrastive analysis of the structures of English and Vietnamese questions. The final part is about teaching implication, which will give teachers some suggestions for teaching English questions better. Introduction We can see that linguists from all over the world are absolutely together on the main function of questions-asking for information. In addition to this function, may linguists believe that questions are also used for other communicative purposes (Aru et al., 2012; Atkinson & Gray, 2005; Ferrari & Ferrari, 2019; Vu, 2008, 2011). In the book "Oxford guide to English grammar", Eastwood (2002) mentioned that we use questions not only to ask for information but also for "requests, suggestions, offers etc" (p. 25). Professor Cao Xuan Hao (1991) also reckoned that the aim of a question may be "to contradict, to assert, to express doubts, to challenge, to argue, etc" (p. 95). Similarly, Le Quang Thiem (2004) divided questions into two categories based on their purposes: questions to ask (which seek for information and require real answers) and questions for other communicative purposes (such as greeting and showing sympathy) (p. 223). In conclusion, we can summarize linguists' different conceptions of questions as follows: Questions are the kind of sentences that uses interrogative words or intonation to express what the speakers haven't known or understood yet and require the answers from the hearers. Moreover, questions can also be used for other communicative purposes apart from asking for information. However, this essay will focus only on questions which serve the function of seeking for information. From now on, the term "questions" stands for this kind of questions only. Types of questions in English and Vietnamese Linguists of the two languages have quite different ways of classifying questions. Firstly, how many types of questions are there in English? In the book "A University Grammar of English", Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) only introduced two kinds of questions : Wh questions and Yes-No questions (p. 23). Master (1996) added two more types: tag questions and echo questions (p. 136). (Al-Zankawi, 2018; Kim, 2017; Lim, 2010; Lundmark & Lundmark, 2015; Vu, 2011) also thought that Wh questions and Yes-No questions are the two main kinds of English questions, but they used the term "polar" to refer to the Yes-No type and "non-polar" to refer to the Wh type, and they considered alternative questions, which consist of "two polar interrogatives joined by or" , as one more type of English questions (p. 180). As to Vietnamese, there are also many ways to classify questions. Diep Quang Ban (1989) divided Vietnamese questions into four groups: questions that have interrogative pronouns, alternative questions, declarative questions and specialized copulative questions. Both Hoang Trong Phien (1980) and Vo Dai Quang (2000) simply categorized Vietnamese questions just into two types: alternative questions and non-alternative questions. After considering all the works related to this issue, Le Quang Thiem (2004) came up with a general classification for English and Vietnamese questions (p. 228):

Linguistics, 2020

The goal of the present study is to identify a novel paradigm of epistemic modal operator derived from disjunction. Our main data involves an inquisitive disjunction marker nka in Korean, the presence of which enhances a speaker’s epistemic uncertainty and forms a modalized question. We show how nka contributes the modal effects in question within a theory of nonveridicality. In particular, we propose that the prerequisite of nka are non-homogenous nonveridical states that are partitioned in equipoised epistemic spaces because of the absence in ranking between them. The distinct notions of disjunction, question, and possibility modals can thus be systematically captured under the framework of nonveridical equilibrium. The current analysis offers important insights into the relationship between the classes of nonveridical and modal ingredients involved in inquisitive disjunction: First, Korean facts importantly reveal that modalized questions do not form a uniform class with regular ...

1975