On the Meaning of Shenme ‘what’ in Chinese Bare Conditionals and its Implications for Carlson’s Semantics of Bare Plurals

On the Meaning of Shenme 'what' in Chinese Bare Conditionals and its Implications for Carlson's Semantics of Bare Plurals Jo-wang Lin Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C. Email :j owang@cc.nctu.edustw Abstract This paper shows that the semantics of shenme 'what' exhibits a double quantification phenomenon in Chinese bare conditionals. I show that such double quantification can be nicely accounted for if one adopts Carlosn's semantics of bare plurals and verb meanings as well as the assumption that shenme 'what' may denote kinds of things as bare plurals do. 1. Introduction In this paper, I am going to examine the differences between shei 'who' an shenme 'what' in what Cheng and Huang (1996) refer to as "bare conditionals". In such constructions, the conditional and consequent clauses each contain a wh-phrase of the same form and the choice of value for the second wh-phrase varies with the choice of value for the first wh-phrase. This construction is illustrated in (1). (1) Shei xian lai, shei xian chi who first come who first eat `If x comes first, x eats first./Whoever comes first eats first.' I will show that the semantics of shenme 'what' and shei 'who' in such constructions differ with respect to how they refer. When the two wh-phrases in pair in bare conditionals involve shei `who', they must refer to the same person as in (1); but when the wh-phrases in pair involve shenme 'what, they may refer to the same object as in (2) or they may refer to a different object but of the same kind as in (3). (2) Wo zheli de dongxi, ni yao shenme, jiu na shenme I here Gen thing you want what� then take what `As for my things here, if you want x, then you can take x.' (3) a. Ni dapo shenme, jiu de qu mai shenme (lai pei) you break what then must go buy what to compensate Lit. 'If you break what, then you must go to buy what for compensation.' b. Gege you shenme, wo jiu ye yao you shenme brother have what� I then also want have what Lit. 'If my brother have what, then I also want to have what.' (2) does not need comments; (3) is worth some more remarks. Imagine a situation where a person breaks a bowl and is asked to compensate for it. In this case, if (3a) is to be true, the person who broke the bowl has to buy a new bowl which is different from the original one for compensation. The meaning of shenme 'what' in (3a) can be compared with the meaning of it in (4). (4) If you break a bowl, then you have to buy it for compensation. Unlike (3a), for (4) to be true, what you have to buy for compensation is the original bowl, which is broken. The contrast between (3a) and (4) is similar to the contrast between (5) and (4), that is, between it and …

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