{"id":13483,"date":"2020-06-08T06:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T10:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=13483"},"modified":"2020-06-07T21:59:29","modified_gmt":"2020-06-08T01:59:29","slug":"linglunch-6-11-boer-fu-mit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2020\/06\/08\/linglunch-6-11-boer-fu-mit\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Talk Series 6\/11 - Boer Fu (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Speaker: <\/strong> Boer Fu (MIT)<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Title: <\/strong>Negative Yes\/No Questions in Mandarin<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Time: <\/strong>Thursday, June 11th, 12:30pm - 2pm<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<br class=\"\" \/><br clear='none'\/>\n<strong>Abstract: <\/strong>An utterance in the shape of a negative yes\/no question in Mandarin Chinese can have 4 different readings, depending on its prosody.<\/p>\n<p>(1) zhe bu shi burudongwu ma<\/p>\n<p>this neg is mammal ma<\/p>\n<p>Reading A: \u0093Isn\u0092t it a mammal?\u0094 Biased question reading<\/p>\n<p>Reading B: \u0093It\u0092s not a mammal?\u0094 Surprised question reading<\/p>\n<p>Reading C: \u0093It\u0092s a mammal. (It&#8217;s obvious.)\u0094 Rhetorical &#8220;question&#8221; reading<\/p>\n<p>Reading D: \u0093It\u0092s not a mammal. (It\u0092s obvious.)\u0094 ?Negative obvious statement<\/p>\n<p>Two prosodic cues disambiguate between the 4 readings, boundary tone and focus. Readings A &amp; B have a high boundary tone, and are thus real questions. Whereas readings C &amp; D have a low boundary tone, are are thus assertions. Readings A &amp; C place the focus on the content word &#8220;mammal&#8221;, while readings B &amp; D place it on negation. I argue that the difference in focus placement corresponds to a scoping difference of negation. Negation can occupy two syntactic positions in Mandarin (Xiang 2013). Focused negation is lower, while unfocused negation is higher. In the real question readings A &amp; B, the relative position of negation and the VERUM operator (Romero &amp; Han 2004) determines which preposition (p or \u00acp) is being double-checked, just like preposed negative yes\/no questions in English. In the assertion readings C &amp; D, negation scopes relative to a mystery obviousness operator, which leads to two opposite assertions, p and \u00acp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Boer Fu (MIT) Title: Negative Yes\/No Questions in Mandarin Time: Thursday, June 11th, 12:30pm - 2pm Abstract: An utterance in the shape of a negative yes\/no question in Mandarin Chinese can have 4 different readings, depending on its prosody. (1) zhe bu shi burudongwu ma this neg is mammal ma Reading A: \u0093Isn\u0092t it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13487,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13483\/revisions\/13487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}