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Distributivity in Chinese and its Implications

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Abstract

This paper gives an analysis of the Chinese distributivity marker dou 'all', which can occur not only with definite plural NPs but also with NPs whose determiner is a quantifier word such as mei 'every' or dabufen-de 'most'. Besides normal distributive predicates, it can also occur with certain types of collective predicates. The difficulties of giving a compositional interpretation to constructions of these kinds are discussed in detail. I show that we can solve those difficulties if we treat dou as a generalized distributivity marker in the sense of Schwarzschild (1991, 1996), which distributes over the members of a plurality cover. Apart from the above topic, which is more narrowly a semantics topic, this paper also discusses some syntax-semantics interface issues related to the distribution of dou's associates.

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  1. Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Chiao Tung University, 1001, Ta Hsue Rd., Hsinchu, 30050, Taiwan

    Jo-wang Lin

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  1. Jo-wang Lin
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Lin, Jw. Distributivity in Chinese and its Implications. Natural Language Semantics 6, 201–243 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008299031574

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