Wu Hongchen
School of Modern Languages, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 9;14:1128616. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128616. eCollection 2023.
Mandarin Chinese is claimed to be a scope-rigid language, as its doubly-quantified simple transitive sentences are unambiguous with surface scope only and no inverse scope available. However, it has been debated whether Mandarin Chinese allows inverse scope in some syntactic environments other than simple transitives. This paper investigates whether scope rigidity as a property of the grammar of Mandarin prevents scope ambiguity in different syntactic environments and what factors influence scope interpretations. Using a Truth-Value Judgment task, we tested the judgments of 98 Mandarin Chinese native speakers on transitive sentences containing both a subject and object quantifier under adverbial clauses. The results show that inverse scope reading is considered available for doubly-quantified transitives under adverbial clauses, although there are intra-participant variances. The results challenge the well-established approaches to quantifier scope in Mandarin and call for rethinking the long-standing dichotomy view of quantifier scope in languages. We also found bimodal distribution on the acceptance of inverse scope readings, suggesting that there may be two different populations of native speakers with two different grammars. In addition, we also observed other factors that may affect scope behaviors, including clause type, presence of aspect marker, verb type, and numbers.
普通话被认为是一种辖域严格的语言，因为其双重量化的简单及物句子仅在表面辖域上是明确的，不存在反向辖域。然而，普通话在简单及物句之外的某些句法环境中是否允许反向辖域一直存在争议。本文研究普通话语法中的辖域严格性是否会在不同句法环境中防止辖域歧义，以及哪些因素会影响辖域解释。我们使用真值判断任务，测试了98名以普通话为母语的人对状语从句下包含主语和宾语量词的及物句子的判断。结果表明，尽管存在个体差异，但状语从句下双重量化的及物动词被认为可以有反向辖域解读。这些结果挑战了普通话中关于量词辖域的既定研究方法，并呼吁重新思考语言中量词辖域的长期二分法观点。我们还发现了反向辖域解读接受度的双峰分布，这表明可能存在两类具有不同语法的母语者群体。此外，我们还观察到了其他可能影响辖域行为的因素，包括从句类型、体标记的存在、动词类型和数量。
