Semantics of Chinese Questions: An Interface Approach

Semantics of Chinese Questions is the first major study of Chinese questions, especially wh-questions, within the framework of Alternative Semantics.

It takes an interface approach to study the syntax, semantics, and phonology of questions and proposes a phonological scope-marking strategy in Chinese questions, based upon experimental data. It also incorporates historical linguistic data regarding the grammaticalization of sentence-final particles such as -ne and -ma to study the formal diachronic semantics of questions. Primarily suitable for scholars in the field of Chinese linguistics, this book makes new theoretical contributions to the study of questions.