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Article published In: International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 7:2 (2020) ► pp.167–186

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Revisiting donkey anaphora in Mandarin Chinese

A reply to Pan, H., & Jiang, Y. (2015). The bound variable hierarchy and donkey anaphora in Mandarin Chinese. International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 21:159–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar

 | Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
 | Harvard University
Published online: 10 December 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.19020.che
Abstract
In their article published in this journal, Pan, H., & Jiang, Y. (2015). The bound variable hierarchy and donkey anaphora in Mandarin Chinese. International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 21:159–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar challenge the claims and proposals made in Cheng, L. L.-S., & Huang, C.-T. J. (1996). Two types of donkey sentences. Natural Language Semantics 41:121–163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar concerning both the distributional patterns and interpretive strategies for donkey anaphora in Mandarin conditional. They claim that all three types of conditionals (rúguǒ-, dōu- and bare conditionals) allow either a wh-phrase or a pronoun in the consequent clause, and that both the wh-phrase and the pronoun may be either unselectively bound or interpreted by the E-type strategy. We show that, except for an observation already mentioned and accommodated in Cheng, L. L.-S., & Huang, C.-T. J. (1996). Two types of donkey sentences. Natural Language Semantics 41:121–163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar analysis of rúguǒ-conditionals, their distributional claims are incorrect. It is also shown that the interpretative flexibility they propose is untenable, as it leaves a number of otherwise well-predicted properties unaccounted for.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The distributional patterns
    • 2.1 Cheng and Huang (1996)
    • 2.2 Pan and Jiang (2015)
  • 3.Dissecting P&J’s patterns
    • 3.1 Rúguǒ-conditionals
    • 3.2 Dōu-conditionals
    • 3.3Bare conditionals
  • 4.Interpreting wh-phrases and pronouns
    • 4.1Interpreting wh-phrases
    • 4.2Interpreting pronouns
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (17)
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2023. Another Look at Chinese Donkey Sentences: A Reply to Cheng and Huang (2020). In Dynamics in Logic and Language [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13524], ► pp. 25 ff. DOI logo
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2021. Donkey pronouns in child Mandarin: Insights into the ∃/∀ dichotomy. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6:1 DOI logo
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