Restrictions on the rhetorical use of shenme-shihou sentences in Mandarin Chinese

Unlike earlier studies addressing rhetorical questions in which wh-arguments appear, this work investigates the restrictions imposed on the rhetorical use of Mandarin sentences containing the wh-adjunct, shenme-shihou ‘what-time.’ Sometimes, sentences that contain this wh-phrase can be used as rhetorical questions carrying the refutatory force, while at other times they cannot. I propose to account for this phenomenon by examining the interaction between shenme-shihou ‘what-time,’ modals and the sentence-final particle le, arguing that sentences in which shenme-shihou ‘what-time’ appears can be interpreted as rhetorical questions only when (a) shenme-shihou is a wh-adverb adjoining to a maximal projection that denotes a change of state or expresses an inchoative reading, and (b) the wh-phrase shenme-shihou is not deeply embedded within two bounding nodes. As long as these two conditions are satisfied, a rhetorical interpretation of a shenme-shihou ‘what-time’ sentence can surface. This study not only helps us better understand the mechanism underlying both the interrogative and rhetorical uses of shenme-shihou ‘what-time’ sentences, but also shows that syntax plays an important role in constructing rhetorical questions in Mandarin Chinese.