A Study On The Scope Of The Negative Sentences With Universal Quantifiers In English And Chinese

This thesis researches the relative scope of universal quantifier and negation in quantificational negative sentence,which is a typical manifestation of the displacement of language.Most of the previous researches are from the perspective of language acquisition,and this thesis studies it from the nature of language.Interaction between universal quantifier and negation generates scope ambiguity.Due to the differences in the hierarchical structure of English and Chinese,the manifestation of this interaction is different.Based on some corpus,this thesis demonstrates that from syntax and semantics.And mainly focuses on two questions:(1)What are the manifestations and interpretation paths of the scope interaction in quantificational negative sentences?(2)What are the constraints of the interpretation in quantificational negative sentences?Under relative scope principle and feature-checking,this thesis finds that:(1)The scope ambiguity in the English quantificational negative sentence is not caused by A-movement reconstruction.In English quantificational negative sentence,when the universal quantifier is in the subject position,not all such sentences have scope ambiguity.For example,when the negative word is in the subordinate clause,it is used as the component negation that modifies the universal quantifier,and the blocking effect of the head word preventing the negative word from crossing the clause,therefore,there is no scope ambiguity.(2)The syntactic isomorphism principle in Chinese cannot explain all the scope ambiguity,and relative scope also exists in Chinese.In the Chinese negative sentence with dou,the interaction between dou and the negation makes the sentence have two interpretations.Meanwhile,factors such as the syntactic position and semantic features of quantifiers,different interpretation principles of scope,and lexical properties of predicates all play an important role in the interpretation of relative scope.Under Minimalist Program,this thesis has carried out a research on the scope ambiguity,and further explains that the scope issue is an important entry point for exploring the differences and commonalities of human languages,which is of great significance for revealing the nature and development of human language.