TY - JOUR AU - Crain, Stephen AU - Luo, Qiong-Peng PY - 2019/05/06 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Identity and Definiteness in Chinese wh-Conditionals JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 15 IS - 0 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/370 SP - 165-180 AB - <p>Previous studies of Chinese <em>wh</em>-conditionals leaveseveral issues unresolved, including (i) definiteness effects; (ii) apparent violations of the novelty condition and (iii) accounting for the range of readings of Chinese <em>wh-</em>conditionals. We attempt to resolve some of these issues by analysing <em>wh-</em>indefinites as <em>unique</em> indefinites and <em>wh</em>-conditionals as special instances of topic-comment structures (i.e. <em>wh</em>-conditionals are topic-comment structures with an identity relation). Chinese <em>wh</em>-conditionals can refer to either a single situation or multiple situations, leading to either a definite interpretation or a generic interpretation respectively.</p> ER -