Unifying Universal and Existential wh’s in Mandarin

Abstract

The paper aims at a unified account of Mandarin non-interrogative wh’s that have both universal and existential uses. Wh’s are argued to uniformly denote existentials obligatorily triggering alternatives, exhaustifying different types of alternatives strengthens the existential into either universal or existential free choice items corresponding to the two uses of wh’s, as is in the framework of Chierchia 2013b . Distribution and interpretation of the two types of wh’s follow from their interaction with an even-like particle dou and competition between the two.