Speaker: Yimei Xiang (Rutgers University)
Title: Function alternations of the Mandarin particle ye: from ‘also’ to ‘even’
Time: Thursday, March 12, 12:30pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: The Mandarin adverb ye exhibits both a simple additive use (‘also’) and a scalar additive use (‘even’). This alternation is unlikely to be accidental: across genetically and typologically diverse languages, additive markers frequently extend to scalar interpretations. Why does additivity so often give rise to scalarity, rather than to some other meaning component? Mandarin offers a particularly revealing testing ground for this question, as the ‘even’ use of ye overlaps with that of another multifunctional adverb, dou, which displays a distributor–’even’ alternation.
Building on Heim’s (1982, 1983, 1992) model of dynamic semantics, I propose a unified analysis of the two uses of ye. I argue that in both cases ye presupposes Vacuity of Anti-Exclusion (VAE). This condition derives focus-sensitivity and additivity, and—when exclusion is defined in terms of likelihood—scalarity as well. On this view, the scalarity presupposition of ‘even’ ye is not an independent lexical requirement, but a natural consequence of how exclusion is parametrized.
This account clarifies both the parallels and the contrasts between ye and dou in scalar environments. I argue that the ‘also’–’even’ alternation of ye parallels the distributor–’even’ alternation of dou. Both particles can associate with minimizers, a possibility licensed by their shared scalar inference. At the same time, their difference in additivity yields distinct evaluative flavors as well as different distributional patterns in concessive constructions.
Finally, the talk revisits the “independence” requirement of additive expressions. I argue that independence emerges from the interaction between the VAE requirement and constraints on the QUD. This analysis also accounts for cases in which apparent violations of independence do not result in deviance.