A Typology Study Of Disjunctive-negative Questions

In the first section of the thesis, several subtypes of positive-and-negative question in Mandarin Chinese are discussed. We analysis the syntactic position of the structure"X-Neg-X"in positive-and-negative question. According to the structure and the meaning, we analysis the differences of semantic and pragmatic function of positive-and-negative question.In the second part, we describe the distribution of positive-and-negative question in minority languages in China. In Tibeto-Burman, positive-and-negative question present as the structure"OVP-neg-OVP", which always has an omission structure"OVP-neg-VP". And at the same time, some languages in Tibeto-Burman also use verb reduplicating questions. In Kam-Tai and Miao-Yao languages, the structure of"VP-Neg-VP"is widely used. Furthermore, some other abbreviated forms, like"VP-Neg-V","V-Neg-VP", and"VP-Neg"are also found. They show us the phenomenon of out of sequence and overlapped. In Altaic family, these structures are rare. This is because one can use other methods to express yes-no question, like question particles at the end of sentences, verbal morphology, which may exclude positive-and-negative questions.We divide Chinese minority languages into two groups - languages in the north and languages in the south. Southern minority languages borrow the structure of positive-and-negative question from southern dialects, while northern minority languages are also influenced by the neighboring Chinese dialects.At last, we discuss many omission structure of"VO-Neg-VO", and tries to find the origin of omission. According to the different importance of ingredients in the structure, we present a hierarchy in the structure of positive-and-negative question. The concluding part generalizes the main idea of this thesis and points out some issues to be further studied.