The Patterns and Mechanisms of Reasoning in Conditionals with Num+Cl+N in Chinese
This paper investigates the patterns and mechanisms of reasoning in conditionals with Num+Cl+N in Chinese.Conditionals with Num+Cl+N are sentences like Sānge nǚrén yītái xì(三个女人-台戏)and Sānge chòu píjidng,dǐng ge Zhūgē Liàng(三个臭皮匠,顶个诸葛亮).With constituents indicating quantity of things as the condition for the completion of related events,such sentences have complex reasoning patterns and mechanisms.This paper firstly analyzes the semantic feature of conditionals with Num+Cl+N,pointing out that such conditionals express universal quantification just as non-conditional universal sentences do,but show certain peculiarities in reasoning due to their involving collective events.As a subtype of universal quantification,conditionals with Num+Cl+N have left downward reasoning,which is the same as all other universal sentences.Left downward reasoning can be fulfilled by replacing the N in Num+Cl+N with its subset N,but not by replacing the Num with a different number.The paper then argues that the impossibility of changing the Num is an influence of the collective meaning of the sentence.Since the Num indicates the number of individuals that participate in the event as a whole agent,the replacement of the number doesn't bring out the inclusion relation between the set of original agents and the new one.However,what contradicts the prediction is that the Num in conditionals with Num+Cl+N can be changed to a larger one without any influence on the truth value of the sentence.The reasoning mechanism lying behind such a reasoning is scalar entailment,which is licensed by the conditionals expressing degrees of completion of events and thus involving a pragmatic scalar in it.The scale of degree of difficulty of completing events is a multi-dimensional semantic scale,comprising the condition and the outcome.When the number in condition becomes larger,it means the whole agent participating in the event is composed of more individuals and can make the completion of the event easier.Thus when the event with a smaller number of individuals as an agent group can be done,so can the event with more individuals as an agent group.With the two reasoning patterns and two underlying reasoning mechanisms,conditionals with Num+Cl+N exhibit more complexity than non-conditionals.The paper finally observes another kind of sentences with Num+Cl+N expressing supply of things,pointing out that although sentences also have Num+Cl+N in both subject and object position,they cannot be confused with conditionals with Num+Cl+N since the formers focus on the"enough"meaning and thus have different reasoning.
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