The syntactic and pragmatic properties of a-not-a question in Chinese (original) (raw)

This thesis looks at the syntactic structure and pragmatic functions of A-not-A questions in spoken Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, and in written Chinese. The data analysed in this study comes from three films produced in Hong Kong which have audio in Cantonese and Mandarin, plus Chinese and English subtitles. Four patterns of A-not-A questions are attested in my sample: A-not-A forms, A-not-AB forms, a-not-AB forms, a-not-A forms, where 'A' stands for the full form of the predicate, 'a' stands for the first syllable of a disyllabic predicate and 'B' stands for the complement. For all instances of disyllabic verbs (or adjectives, or adverbs) only the first syllable is pronounced in the affirmative and the full verb (or adjective, or adverb) in the negative counterpart. The patterns attested in this study can be captured in the modular approach proposed by J. Huang (2010) and R. Huang (2010).The forms of A-not-AB and a-not-AB questions are derived from a full...