On The Intervention Effects Of Questions In Mandarin Chinese

The intervention effect of interrogative wh-words is always a much debated topic formany linguists. Ever since Beck (1996) proposes the theory of LF movement analysis,pointing out that the intervention effects occurs because there is an element interveningbetween the LF movement of an in-situ wh-word，this phenomenon has been accounted fromvarious perspectives: syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. Most researchers (Beck1996,Tomioka2007) center on the intervention effects in German, Japanese and Korean. In thispaper, we attempt to study the intervention effects of questions in Mandarin Chinese fromthree aspects:(1) Do the class of interveners, which were provided by Beck (2006), induceintervention effects in Mandarin Chinese or not?(2) What causes the intervention effects ofwh-questions?(3) Where else could interveners induce intervention effects, besides inwh-questions? Why can they be eliminated/weakened?According to Beck (2006), there is a natural class of interveners in German, includingquantifiers, focus markers, quantificational adverbs and negative words. Based on Tsai’s(1999) classification of wh-words: wh-adverbs and wh-nominals, whether these intervenerswould intervene the interpretation of wh-words will be examined. Apart from the study ofwh-questions, alternative questions and A-not-A questions will be observed as well. Based onthe descriptive facts, we find out that:(1) The class of interveners provided by Beck (2006) could create intervention effectsin Mandarin. Quantifiers, quantificational adverbs and negative words will induceintervention effects only when they precede wh-adverbs. It is a weak intervention effect.While focus markers induce strong intervention effects when a focus phrase introduced by afocus marker precedes wh-adverbs or wh-nominals. It is a strong intervention effect.(2) The fact that quantifiers cannot be topicalized causes the weak intervention effects.Wh-adverbs cannot be bound by operators as they are base-generated in C[Q]. Focus markersintervene the Agree operation between C[Q]and the in-situ wh-word, which induce the strongintervention effects. What’s more, focus markers, quantificational adverbs and negative wordsbehave differently in inducing intervention effects as a result of their semantic and pragmaticdistinction.(3) Besides in wh-questions, interveners also induce intervention effects in alternativequestions and A-not-A questions. The same analysis applied to wh-questions can also explainthe intervention effects of alternative questions and A-not-A questions. Meanwhile, it showsthat these three kinds of questions have a common feature. Intervention effects can be eliminated/weakened result from the change of the information structure of sentence.The study of intervention effects of questions can deepen our understanding of questions.It also distinguishes focus sensitive operators from a new perspective.