The syntax and semantics of bare conditionals in Chinese

Abstract

This paper investigates a Chinese construction that Cheng & Huang (1996) term the "bare conditional". Previous analyses have treated this construction as involving unselective binding. I argue against such an approach, and propose that the matching requirement observed in Chinese bare conditionals is derived through sideward movement (Hornstein & Nunes 2002, Nunes 2004). I show that this analysis can provide a principled account for the parallelism constraint and the apparent violation of vacuous binding reported in recent studies (Pan & Jiang, forthcoming, Leung 2006). Adopting Caponigro's (2003, 2004) semantic analysis of plain free relatives to bare conditionals in Chinese, I also show that it can nicely accommodate the universal reading as well as the quantificational variability effect.