TOPIC-FOCUS STRUCTURE AND QUANTIFICATION OF DOU 'ALL'
Joonho Shin
This paper examines a type of 'dou' quantification found in wh-questions such as 'ta dou mai le shenme?' ‘What are all the things that he bought?’ This type is different from the well-known 'dou' quantification in that the leftness condition cannot be applied to the former. I propose that the former type of quantification is subject to the topic-focus structure rather than to the syntactic structure, which means that the domain of the quantification is determined in relation to ‘old’ and ‘new’ information of a sentence. Sentences including 'dou' can be divided into topic and focus, and each part is mapped onto the restrictor and the nuclear scope in a tripartite structure of 'dou' quantification. This analysis accounts for the reason why a list answer is appropriate to questions with 'dou', why wh-words in the questions cannot be quantity expressions, and why wh-words should either have a plural interpretation or take the plural form. This analysis also explains the distribution of 'dou,' i.e., dou should c-command a focused phrase. Finally, I point out that the analysis can extend to declaratives which are rare but still observable, and that the two types of 'dou' quantification can arise simultaneously.
Key words: topic-focus structure, dou, quantification, wh-question