CHAPTER 3 TOWARD A SOLUTION
3.2 Structural Requirements on Wh-words
3.2.3 Minimality
In section 3.1, I adopt Cheng’s (1994) analysis to deal with the distribution of existential wh-words in TSM and make revisions in the analyses of the licensers. It has been mentioned that bô ‘NEG-have’ serves as the licenser for existential wh-words. In (40a) and (40b) below, however, not only the existential but also the interrogative reading is attained. The phenomenon is natural since two licensers co-exist: negation and the null interrogative particle.
(40) a. I bô kah-ì siáⁿ-mi̍h./? (TSM) (s)he NEG-have like what
‘(S)he doesn’t like anything.’
‘What doesn’t (s)he like?’
b. I bô chia̍h siáⁿ-mi̍h./? (TSM) (s)he NEG-have eat what
‘(S)he does not eat anything.’
‘What does (s)he not eat?’
In (40a) and (40b), the wh-word siáⁿ-mi̍h ‘what’ is in the domain of negation and bound by the VP existential closure. Alternatively, it can also be licensed by a null interrogative particle. The availability of both existential and interrogative readings is thus explained.
The two readings, however, will not always be available in the following constructions9:
9 There are some examples in which the interrogative reading is lost. For example,
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(41) Góa bô kā i kóng lí chia̍h siáⁿ. (TSM) I NEG-have KA (s)he tell you eat what
‘I did not tell him/her what you ate.’
In (41), the existential reading is lost. Only the interrogative reading remains. The verb kóng ‘tell’ takes an interrogative complement. The interrogative reading is thus derived. The other licenser bô ‘NEG-have’ sits outside of the embedded clause. When the licenser of the interrogative wh-word sits in the local CP, the linking of the
existential licenser with the wh-word is blocked.
If the licenser of the interrogative wh-word does not exist in the local CP, the existential licenser outside of the local CP can license the wh-word siáⁿ-mi̍h ‘what’
again. Example (42) attests to the claim.
(42) Góa bô kìm-chí i chia̍h siáⁿ-mi̍h mi̍h-kiāⁿ. (TSM) I NEG-have forbid (s)he eat what thing
‘I forbid him/her to eat any food.’
As mentioned in 3.2.2, since the verb kìm-chí ‘forbid’ is not what licenses the wh-word siáⁿ-mi̍h ‘what’, the negation bô ‘NEG-have’ is the only licenser in (42).
(iii) I bô m̄ chia̍h siáⁿ. (TSM) (s)he NEG-have NEG eat what
‘It’s not the fact that (s)he doesn’t want to eat anything.’
In such a case, the sentence is considered a metalanguage, since the negation bô ‘NEG-have’ negates the proposition m̄ chia̍h siáⁿ ‘NEG eat what’ instead of the negation m̄.
As it turns out, Lin’s (2004) analysis of negations in TSM needs revisions. In her analysis, the volitional m̄ combines with a modal, which could be beh ‘what’ or something else abstract as mentioned in (16). Nevertheless, II. shows that two negations can co-exist in TSM.
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There are some cases in which the existential reading cannot be derived even if non-factive verbs exist.
(43) I kioh-sī /ioh siáng bé chheh? (TSM) (s)he assume/guess who buy book
‘Who does (s)he assume/guess buy books?’
In (43), the wh-word siáng ‘who’ is interpreted as interrogative even if the
nonveridicality derived by the non-factive verb exists. Here, Cheng’s (1994) analysis comes into play. As mentioned in chapter 2, an existential wh-word needs both a licenser and a binder. The licensers kioh-sī/ioh ‘assume/guess’ license the wh-word siáng ‘who’, but siáng ‘who’ is outside of the existential closure, which applies to VP only. Therefore, the existential reading is not attainable.
From (43), we discover that the existential readings are not always attainable even if the existential licensers exist. Li (1992) also points out that the contrast
between the obligatoriness of a +QOP to be linked with a wh-word and the optionality of a –QOP to be linked with a wh-word exist. That is, the closer operator can be neglected only if it is a –QOP. In her analysis, a +QOP represents the Question morpheme, which renders a wh-word interrogative while a –QOP includes the licensers or operators that license an existential wh-word.
There exists yet another construction involving negation in TSM: V ū/bô
‘have/NEG-have’ NP. It has been shown that the negation bô ‘NEG-have’ does not form a constituent with the following phrase in (44) (Huang 2003 & Wang 2008).
Rather, bô ‘NEG-have’ and its affirmative counterpart ū ‘have’ are more like a resultative verbal complement of their preceding verb. Examples of bô ‘NEG-have’
and ū ‘have’ are given below:
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(44)
a.
Kéng-chhat lia̍h ū/bô lâng. (TSM) police catch have/NEG-have people‘Police can/cannot arrest people.
b. Chóng-thóng khòaⁿ ū/bô tio̍h chúi-bó. (TSM) president see have/NEG-have arrive jellyfish
‘President can/cannot see jellyfish.’
When the wh-word siáⁿ-mi̍h ‘what’ is put into the construction V ū/bô
‘have/NEG-have’, both the existential and interrogative readings remain.
(45)
a.
Kéng-chhat lia̍h bô siáⁿ-mi̍h lâng./? (TSM) police catch NEG-have what people‘Police cannot arrest any people.
‘Who can police not arrest?’
b. Chóng-thóng khòaⁿ bô tio̍h siáⁿ-mi̍h./? (TSM) president see NEG-have arrive what
‘President does not see anything.’
‘What does president not see?’
Given the fact that the licenser bô ‘NEG-have’ c-commands the wh-word siáⁿ-mi̍h
‘what’, the attainment of existential reading is natural. On the other hand, the interrogative reading of wh-word siáⁿ-mi̍h ‘what’ is derived by the null wh-question-particle.
As for the part of speech of bô ‘NEG-have’, if m̄ heads its own projection NegP, the NP siáⁿ-mi̍h lâng cannot receive Case from the following verb, which is an empty head.
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(46)
Example (46) demonstrates why the current assumption cannot work since siáⁿ-mi̍h lâng ‘any people’ does not receive a Case from the empty verb and the Case filter is violated. Following Li’s (1995) spirit, I assume that accusative Case in TSM is assigned rightward. In this case, bô ‘NEG-have’ is like a verb in this case. In example (47) below, the case assigner bô ‘NEG-have’ and the NP siáⁿ-mi̍h lâng ‘any people’
are adjacent to each other. Only when the adjacency requirement is met will the case be assigned.
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(47)
Under the structure of (47), the negation bô ‘NEG-have’ serves as a verb as opposed to the combination of negation m̄ and the modal ū ‘have’.
The evidence of bô ‘NEG-have’ as a verb in the structure of V ū/bô ‘have/NEG-have’ NP comes from the fact that it can be followed by an NP in some cases:
(48) a. I chhōe bô tóng-chèng. (TSM) (s)he find NEG-have party card
‘(S)he cannot find party card.’
b. *I m̄ tóng-chèng. (TSM) (s)he NEG party card
‘(S)he doesn’t have party card.’ (Intended reading)
On the other hand, in (48b), the other negation m̄ cannot precede an NP.
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