A Study On The Partial Negation Of "Mei(V)Shenme" Construction In Mandarin Chinese

The construction “mei(V) shenme” in Mandarin Chinese can trigger two different meanings when shenme is used as a non-interrogative pronoun: universal negation, which is equal to “mei(V) renhe” ‘not…any’; partial negation, which is equal to “a little”. As to the reason for partial negation, there are quite less studies on it and scholars have different opinions. Based on Horn’s theory of metalinguistic negation and Levinson’s I-principle, the thesis aims to study the reason for the construction’s partial negation and some issues closely related to partial negation.According to Horn’s study, negation which cancels the conversational implicature belongs to metalinguitic negation(history of negation 382-92). Adjectives expressing large quantities like “da” ‘big’, “nan” ‘difficult’, “duo” ‘many’, “hao”‘good’, “teshu” ‘special’ etc. usually modify its following noun phrases in the construction “mei(V) shenme”. As they occur frequently, even if they are deleted by the speaker who aims to observe the I-principle, the listener can still infer the meaning.According to Xu Shenghuan’s definition of stereotypical relations(conversational implicature 32), the meaning with these adjectives is treated as stereotypical relations or conversational implicature of the construction “mei(V) shenme”. Negation here can cancel this conversational implicature. What’s more, partial negation sentences and metalinguistic negation sentences share properties, so the construction “mei(V)shenme” expressing partial negation is a phenomenon of metalinguistic negation.Based on previous studies, the thesis tries to answer the following questions: can adverb dou cancel partial negation? Is shenme the only interrogative pronoun to trigger partial negation? Does partial negation be constrained by sentential aspect?The findings are: first, there are two kinds of adverb dou: universal quantification adverb and adverb of mood; if “shenme” and its modified NP are quantified by dou,we only get universal negation; if other parts of the sentence are quantified by dou,partial negation remains. And if the construction including adverb of mood dou, we also get both of the two meanings; second, shenme is not the only interrogative pronoun which can trigger partial negation; under certain context, other interrogativepronouns, like “shui” ‘who’, “nali” ‘where’ etc. can also trigger it; at last, the thesis proposes that partial negation does not only generate in sentences with perfect aspect.Combining semantics and pragmatics, the thesis analyzes the partial negation of“mei(V) shenme” construction in Mandarin Chinese from the perspective of metalinguistic negation and answers some questions closely related to partial negation.