Open AccessDeriving short answers from Hamblin sets: A case study of Mandarin wh-conditionals
Author(s) -
Haoze Li
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
proceedings from semantics and linguistic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2163-5951
pISSN - 2163-5943
DOI - 10.3765/salt.v29i0.4604
Subject(s) - denotation (semiotics) , mandarin chinese , set (abstract data type) , linguistics , mathematics , philosophy , computer science , semiotics , programming language
A short answer to a wh-question cannot be directly derived from the latter’s Hamblin–Karttunen denotation, which is a set of propositions. However, I argue that such a derivation is possible when the Hamblin-Karttunen denotation is dynamicized. In particular, wh-expressions have dynamic discourse contributions in the sense of introducing discourse referents (drefs), as evidenced by cross-sentential binding. Drefs introduced by wh-expressions not only provide a way to model short answers to wh-questions, but are also useful for modeling a non-canonical wh-construction known as wh-conditionals in Mandarin.