| Negative polarity items refer to the expressions which tend to appear in the context created by negative propositions.The typical NPIs in Mandarin Chinese include renhe,wh-phrase,minimizers and so on.This study will explore the Chinese NPI-minimizers with respect to their syntactic distributions,licensing conditions and semantic interpretation based on some related theories concerning NPIs.Finally,this thesis will discuss how NPI-minimizers behave in cross-linguistic contexts with respect to syntax and semantics so that we can find the similarities and differences of them through cross-linguistic comparison.This thesis analyzes two types of minimizers: one is numeral phrase(yi+CL.+N ‘one+CL.+N’)denoting a minimal amount and quantities,the other is adverbs(sihao ‘the slightest’ and yidian ‘one.dot’)which refer to a minimal degree.NPI-minimizers tend to occur in the negative context in which there is an overt negator in the surface structure or implicit negator in the logical form.When they appear in the negative sentences,NPI-minimizers with existential reading need to be c-commanded by negative operator and be in the immediate scope of negative operator;when NPI-minimizers with universal reading need to appear outside the scope of negation,they are double licensed by operator DOU and negation.In this way,they can be still in the semantic scope of negation.In addition,If NPI-minimizers appear in downward entailing contexts with negative implicature,they are licensed by negative implicature indirectly,but they are still in the immediate scope of negative operator in the logical form.What’s more,this study also explores the reason why Chinese NPI-minimizers are sensitive to the negative context.The implicit EVEN triggers minimizers’ sensitivity to the negative context.Finally,this thesis explores how NPI-minimizers behave in Japanese,Korean,Hindi and Dutch with respect to syntactic distribution and we find that NPI-minimizers cross-linguistically show variation as to syntactic distributions.However,what NPI-minimizers have in common is that they all have scalar meaning and emphatic meaning.Scalar meaning is yielded by EVEN component in NPI-minimizers,which is implicitly or explicitly encoded in NPI-minimizers.NPI-minimizers in different languages bear focal prominence.Normally,emphatic intonation is an indicator of focus feature.Therefore,they have emphatic meaning. |
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