With respect to the relatedness of donkey sentences and bare conditionals, some argue that the two constructions are related (Cheng & Huang 1996, Pan & Jiang 1997) while some deny the relatedness (Wang 2007). In an English donkey sentence like (1), two approaches are employed to explain the donkey pronoun it, which is anaphoric to a donkey.
(1) Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it. (Geurts 2002:129) The first approach considers it to be an E-type pronoun where “E” stands for
“existential,” meaning the pronoun it expresses an existential property of the antecedent a
donkey, yielding a meaning that at least one of the donkeys (but not necessarily all the
donkeys) owned by a farmer is beaten by him.
The other approach is the unselective binding approach, which indicates the existence of an implicit operator (called the necessity operator, NEC) that unselectively binds two anaphoric nouns (it and a donkey). This operator serves as a binder and licenser that not only binds the two variables in the sentence and also licenses a quantificational force for the variables, as can be seen in (2).
(2) NEC [x, y] [farmer(x) and donkey(y) and own(x, y) beat(x, y)]
(Pan & Jiang 1997:9)1 Hence, under this approach, for (1), both the pronoun it and the antecedent a donkey are bound by the operator (NEC), which is the quantifier every that gives quantificational force of the variables. Therefore, the operator binding results in ambiguity in readings: an existential reading (i.e., for a farmer who has a donkey, there exists at least one donkey that is beaten by him) and a universal reading (i.e., for a farmer who has a donkey, all of the donkeys are beaten by him).
The above two approaches to donkey sentences have been argued by Cheng & Huang (1996) to account for conditionals in Mandarin Chinese. To them, bare conditionals are one
group of conditionals interpreted through the unselective binding approach, and other
1 The formula is taken from Pan & Jiang (1997:9) but with slight changes to fit in sentence (1).
conditionals are the other group2 interpreted through the E-type pronoun approach. The approaches are selected through whether or not there is a wh-word in the consequent clause of a conditional sentence. For bare conditionals, which are by principle that no overt elements like ruguo ‘if’ or dou ‘all’ appear in the clauses, they can only take a wh-word in the consequent clause anaphoric to the wh-word in the antecedent clause, as illustrated below:
(3) Ni xihuan shei, wo jiu piping shei/ *ta/ *[e]/ *na-ge-ren.
Based on this fact of bare conditionals, Cheng & Huang argue that they can be analyzed by the unselective binding approach since the two wh-words in the antecedent and the consequent clauses are both bound by the necessity operator. With the adoption of the unselective binding approach, the readings of bare conditionals are proposed to be universal
2 The two paradigms are bare conditionals as one group and ruguo- and dou-conditionals as the other group.
Bare conditionals can only take a wh-word in the consequent clause, while ruguo- and dou-conditionals can allow either an overt or covert pronoun in the consequent clause but not a wh-word, as shown in (i) and (ii):
(i) Ruguo ni kandao shei, qing jiao *shei/ ta/ [e]/ na-ge-ren It is proposed by Cheng & Huang that the two types of conditionals are in complementary distribution where bare conditionals adopt the unselective binding to interpret their references while the other two conditionals take the E-type pronoun approach. Nevertheless, the researcher does not find it ungrammatical with the use of wh-words in the consequent clause, and hence, is not convinced of this dichotomy.
readings. Accordingly, they believe that since the approaches adopted to analyze donkey sentences are also available to analyze bare conditionals, the two constructions are related.
Following Cheng & Huang (1996), Pan & Jiang (1997) also deem bare conditionals to be one type of donkey sentences3. To them, like donkey sentences, bare conditionals exhibit anaphoric properties. In addition, the approaches to analyzing donkey sentences can be taken to analyze bare conditionals as well. Hence, Cheng & Huang and Pan & Jiang believe that the two constructions are related.
However, Wang (2007) disagrees with the idea of the relatedness of donkey sentences and bare conditionals. It is proposed by Wang that a bare conditional is actually one kind of relative clause sentences with identical wh-words anaphoric to each other where the first clause takes the role of a relative clause and the second clause is a matrix clause, as in (4), extracted from Wang (2007:71):
(4) a. Sheme pianyi, ta mai sheme.
what cheap he(she) buy what b. Pianyi de dongxi ta dou mai.
cheap DE thing he(she) all buy
‘He(She) buys anything that is cheap.’
3 Although Pan & Jiang (1997) also state that conditionals are related to donkey sentences, they argue that both bare conditionals and ruguo- and dou-conditionals can take either overt pronouns or wh-words in the consequent clause, and the two approaches can both be adopted to analyze the conditionals. Hence, they claim that there is no such a complementary distribution of conditionals that Cheng & Huang (1996) have proposed.
According to Pan & Jiang, the adoption of different approaches renders different readings of conditionals. The E-type pronoun approach imposes the sentence an indication that there is only one individual or entity to make the proposition tenable, while the unselective binding approach offers a universal reading. The following are readings for “Shei xian lai, shei/ta xian chi” adopted with the unselective binding approach, as stated in (i), and with the E-type pronoun approach, as in (ii), both of which are taken from Pan & Jiang (1997:13).
(i) NEC [x] [come(x) first] [eat (x) first] (universal reading)
(ii) a. NEC [x, s] [come(x) first in s] [eat(x) first in s] (existential reading) b. NEC [s] [Ǝx come(x) first in s] [eat(he/ she) first in s] (existential reading)
In (4a), the first wh-word sheme ‘what’ is considered to be a relative pronoun while the second behaves like the head of the relative clause. Examples (4a) and (4b) denote the same meaning, “He will buy anything that is cheap.”
In addition, Wang argues that only the first wh-word helps to trigger a universal reading (i.e., sheme pianyi ‘anything cheap’) while the second is only a component anaphoric to the first one (i.e., the head sheme ‘what’ anaphoric to sheme pianyi). The differences between the two wh-words can also be found phonetically. It is claimed that only the first wh-word can be stressed in the sentence whereas the second clause often occurs with dou ‘all’ as shown in (4b).
All in all, of these three previous studies, two of them have argued in favor of the relatedness of donkey sentences and bare conditionals (Cheng & Huang 1996, Pan & Jiang 1997), and the other has argued against such an analysis (Wang 2007). Hence, the present study attempts to find out whether or not the two constructions are related by investigating the readings of these sentences.