Research Scholar
Xin Wang, Department of Linguistics
Elizabeth Hume, Faculty advisor
Biography
Xin Wang is an associate professor of linguistics and applied linguistics at the Department of English, Beijing Language and Culture University, China. She is mainly engaged in the study of semantics and pragmatics of natural languages. She is now conducting researches as a visiting scholar at the Department of Linguistics with the sponsorship of Chinese Scholarship Council.
About the Research
“Lian…dou” (连…都) constructions have been a hot topic in linguistics in China over the last few decades. Traditional studies have concerned themselves with the part of speech of “lian” and “dou”, the structural description of the constructions in which they occur and the pre-theoretical enunciation of their meaning (Song 1981；Yin 1982；Zhu 1982；Cui 1984；Zhou 1990). There have also been pragmatic analyses of the presuppositions, conversational implicatures, and inferences of “lian…dou” constructions such as Cui (1993). Among the few attempts to provide a rigorous description and explanation of the constructions is the one done by Fang and Fan (2002). They give a lattice-theoretical treatment of the semantics of the constructions.
A study of “lian…dou” constructions in connection with focus phenomena is found in The Study of Chinese from the Perspective of Functional Grammar by Zhang and Fang (1996: 80-81), which argues for “lian…dou” as a marker of focus introducing “a contrastive topic which forms an extreme on some measurement”. Unfortunately, they do not pursue the study and leave us a regretfully parsimonious and inadequate exposition of “lian…dou” constructions. It also testifies to the judgment that the study of focus attracts less attention from Chinese linguists than the study of topic (Xu & Pan 2005: i). This research is the first endeavor to provide a formal pragmatic analysis of “lian…dou” constructions within the framework of alternative semantics initiated and elaborated by Rooth (1985, 1992, 1996).
The research project first defines the focus-positioning operator “lian…dou” and introduces the concept of hierarchical contrastive alternatives. Then, it establishes the compatibility relation between the status hierarchy of individuals and the possibility hierarchy of propositions and puts forward the localized relevance principle concerning the possibility hierarchy of propositions. It also elaborates on the mechanism to identify presuppositions and derive conversational implicatures from “lian…dou” constructions. It ends with a demonstration of the explanatory power of the analysis.
