The Semantics of Dou(都)and Quantification in Mandarin Chinese
This article discusses the characteristic phenomena of Chinese quantificational adverb dou(都),the ensuing theoretical questions,possible solutions,and their respective implication on the study of quantification in Chinese.It further proposes that the insights gained from the investigation of dou may be extended to semantically similar expressions in other languages.What is special in the study of quantification in Chinese is the starring role of dou.The GQT framework was first applied to dou to test its explanatory power,and was in turn challenged by dou's diverse uses(in particular its subjective use)and the compositional difficulty caused by dou's co-occurrence with semantically similar expressions.To solve the puzzles of dou,more theoretical concepts(e.g.,focus semantics,plural semantics)are added to the tool kit to make explicit the semantic restriction on its domain and scope;while other analyses propose to split universality from its semantics.The different approaches to dou and the studies of other quantificational expressions in Chinese with dou as the benchmark drive the study of quantification to the phrase of diversity.The co-occurrence of dou with other universal expressions further makes the division of labor among quantifiers a central issue,which sparks the discussion on the internal composition of quantifiers in Chinese.Whether dou is a universal quantifier draws heated debate among semanticians interested in Chinese.Comparatively,the quantificational approach to dou has a wider coverage of data than the non-quantificational approaches.Beyond the debates,we need to question further the connection between universal quantification and other non-quantificational concepts,such as exhaustification and scalarity.Only by bridging the quantificational and non-quantificational approaches can we discern the mechanism of encoding quantification in natural language.It can be said that the study of Chinese quantifiers begins with dou,is refined by dou,and is connected by dou.If we can grasp the semantics of dou,we will be able to gain insight into the overall system of quantification in Chinese.From a cross-linguistic perspective,it may not be possible to find a single constituent in other languages that completely corresponds to dou,but departing from the research on dou,we may further explore partially similar expressions in other languages(e.g.,Japanese mo),which can illuminate the relation between quantification and other semantic concepts and further our understanding of the cognitive bases of natural language quantification.
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