The relationship between Chinese zhiyou ‘only’ and cai: a matter of morphosyntax

Journal of East Asian Linguistics (2023) 32:245–260 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09257-7 (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().,-volV) The relationship between Chinese zhiyou ‘only’ and cai: a matter of morphosyntax Daniel Hole1 Received: 30 March 2022 / Accepted: 15 March 2023 / Published online: 21 June 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 Abstract This short article pursues two goals. First, it critically reviews some results arrived at by Sun (2021), an article that discusses the interplay of Chinese zhiyou ‘only’ with an empty exclusive operator while denying any interesting interaction between zhiyou and the scalar particle cai (against the view defended by Hole, 2004, 2017). Second, it develops a featural account to analyze the morphosyntactic interaction between zhiyou and cai. In sum, the gist of Sun’s and Hole’s views complement each other. Keywords Bipartite analysis of focus · Scalarity · Chinese · A′-movement 1 Introduction Sun (2021) presents a bipartite analysis of Chinese monoclausal zhiyou ‘only’ sentences in the tradition of Bayer (1996), Kayne (1998), Wagner (2006), Quek & Hirsch (2017) and others. An example is given in (1).1 (1) Akiu [zhiyou niurou] cai chi ti Akiu only beef CAI eat ‘Akiu eats only beef.’ 1 The following abbreviations are used in glosses: CL—classifier, DE—modification marker, DOM— differential object marker, EXP—experiential aspect. & Daniel Hole 1 Institute of Linguistics, Universität Stuttgart, Keplerstraße 17, 70174 Stuttgart, Germany 123 246 D. Hole Zhiyou combines with XPs that are not (extended) verbal projections (here, the direct object niurou ‘beef’) and, according to this analysis, values features of an empty exclusiveness head by moving to, or through, its specifier. That’s why we find the direct object in preverbal position, and not in its canonical postverbal position. The lowest position of this exclusiveness head is the vP edge. Higher positions are possible as scopally needed. This analysis denies a close relationship between zhiyou and the particle cai. A strand of research assumes a spec-head relationship between these two elements (Hole 2004, 2017) claims that cai always goes hand in hand with a scalar interpretation of the zhiyou focus, where a scalar interpretation presupposes or conventionally implicates the assessment of the focus value as little or insignificant. At the same time, an order of counting as more or less insignificant is imposed on the set of alternatives. Hence, for Hole, zhiyou and cai participate in the marking of scalarity with ‘only’ foci in Chinese, where Sun (2021) has zhiyou and zero interact to express ‘only’ with vP-external (frequently moved) foci. Sun’s syntactic proposal, which is based on Quek and Hirsch (2017), is summarized in (2). Note that it depicts the structure before movement of the ‘only’focus (Sun 2021: 327). (2) [FocP [Foc′ Foc0[iONLY(), EPP] [vP/TP … [QP Q0[uONLY(+)] XPF ] … ] ] ] Foc0 is the empty exclusive operator. It has an interpretable, though unvalued, ONLY feature, and an EPP feature. The EPP feature triggers movement of the lower QP.2 QP, the zhiyou-phrase in Chinese, is headed by zhiyou/Q. Q bears an uninterpretable, though valued, ONLY feature. Its sister is the focus XP. After movement, QP is in Spec,Foc. In this position, it values the ONLY feature of Foc0. There’s a lot of variance in the literature when it comes to the term “scalarity”. I divide the empirical domain as follows. There is informational scalarity, a property of propositions to entail certain other propositions, and not entail certain others (Krifka 1995). If one says I ate only two apples this entails that I didn’t eat three apples, and it entails that I ate one apple. There is scalarity proper (Guerzoni 2003: 173), which presupposes or conventionally implicates that the prejacent focus counts as little. If I say I ate only salad, then, in most contexts, this will not just mean that I ate nothing but salad, but that to eat salad and no more counts as little on some contextually determined scale. Finally, there is a frequently overlooked component of evaluation as bad that may accompany the use of ‘only’ words and other elements (Hole 2015). If someone says He’s only a cadet, don’t marry him, then the speaker will, in most contexts, want to express that being no more than a cadet is not just little or insignificant, but also bad. As already mentioned, I am concerned with scalarity proper here, the assessment of a focus value as little or insignificant. Note that monotonocity has certain effects on scalarity that sometimes obscure the assessment as little. There is no problem with sentences like She owns only two T-shirts. Things are different with Only a golden bracelet will do. Here it seems that a golden bracelet counts as a lot, seemingly reversing the scales. 2 Sun (2021) doesn’t comment on this, but I assume that the EPP feature is needed to enforce feature valuation in a spec-head relationship, and not via Agree. 123 Chinese zhiyou ‘only’ and cai 247 However, I argue that this is still a case of normal scalarity proper: only as little as gold (and maybe platinum) will do, irrespective of the high value of gold. Because an anonymous reviewer felt confused by my use of the term scalarity, I would like to clarify the issue further by providing two pertinent examples (examples that were actually provided by the reviewer). Consider (3). (3) a. Zhiyou 18 sui-de qingshaonian neng lai canjia. only 18 CL:year.of.age-DE youngster can come participate ‘Only 18-year old youngsters can participate.’ b. Zhiyou 18 sui-de qingshaonian cai neng lai canjia. only 18 CL:year.of.age-DE youngster CAI can come participate ‘Only youngsters who are at least 18 years old can participate.’ (3a) excludes teenagers who are 17 or 19 years old. (3b) exludes teenagers who are younger than 18 and leaves it to context whether youngsters who are older than 18 may participate. (3b) necessarily involves scalarity, whereas (3a) needn’t. As mentioned above, Sun (2021) denies any interesting or morphosyntactic interaction between zhiyou and cai (cf. the obligatory use uf cai in (1)). This article takes issue with this and some other views as defended by Sun (2021). Specifically, I will demonstrate that the cai frequently co-occurring with zhiyou is not emphatic cai, as proposed by Sun (Sect. 2.1). Furthermore, I will show that cai defines a scope position that does have a presuppositional or conventional-implicature scalarity semantics as proposed by Hole (2015) (Sect. 2.2).3 Section 2.3 is devoted to describing the tradition leading from Hole (2015) to Quek and Hirsch (2017) and then to Sun (2021), thereby pinpointing the close parallels between Hole’s and Sun’s accounts. In Sect. 2.4, I discuss some problematic data which Sun (2021) uses to argue in favor of an A′-movement account for zhiyou foci. I don’t wish to deny the fact that A′-movement is involved, I would just like to insist on better data. Section 3 (...truncated)