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e, shenme can be used as an interrogative, and it is usually used in aquestion sentence. However, as Wu Yaqing has observed, the construction “mei (V)shenme” can express the interrogative mood only under very strict conditions(negation and wh-word 375). In this paper, we do not concern its usage as aninterrogative, and only distinguish universal negation and partial negation infollowing paragraphs.Chinese construction “mei (V) shenme” has the semantics of universal negationand partial negation. The universal negation expresses the meaning of “mei (V) renhe”‘totally not’ (Y. H. Li; J. W. Lin; D. Wang; A.J. Huang); partial negation is not equalto that. For example, (3) can express both the meaning of universal negation andpartial negation as show in (3ⅰ) and (3ⅱ).
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1.2 Previous Studies on Partial Negation of “Mei (V) shenme”
Traditional Chinese grammar has noticed the specialty of “Mei (V) shenme”construction. Some scholars held that it is because shenme has softened the tone of thenegative sentence and triggers a different meaning (Zhu 89; L. Wang 233), which iswhat we called partial negation.Back to recent studies of shenme, as lots of scholars have analyzed it as aNegative Polarity Item, partial negation has been ignored for a while. Only a fewstudies try to figure out this problem. And these scholars put forward their points fromdifferent perspectives of syntax, formal semantics and traditional semantic ways(Hole 203-9; D. Wang 1-38; Cui 1; Shi 396; A. J. Huang 1-39). Next, we are going tointroduce their explanations one by one and point out their advantages anddisadvantages at the same time.Hole compares the construction “mei (V) shenme” with “shenme … dou/ye”, andconcludes that the reason for partial negation of the former construction comes fromthe special syntactic position of shenme, as it occurs after the verb in the sentence.The advantage of the study lies in that it has noticed partial negation. While it ignoresthat “mei (V) shenme” has two different meanings: partial negation and universalnegation; and if the reason owes to the special syntactic position of shenme, then itcannot explain why “mei (V) renhe” doesn’t have such kind of meaning since renhealso occurs after the verb in this phrases. (203-9, qtd. in A.J. Huang 10-2)Wang Dong also notices the phenomena that the construction “mei/bu + VP +shenme + NP” will trigger ambiguity between partial negation and universal negation.First, Wang points out that traditional grammar could not give a reasonableexplanation to this; then, he put forward a new conception – quantification in negation.He tries to explore the meaning of shenme under the frame of formal linguistic. Underhis explanation, interrogative pronouns share a common semantic feature: they canquantify the things mentioned in the sentence, which is called quantification in hispaper. So shenme also has this ability. In the construction “mei/bu + VP + shenme +NP”, there is a quantification in negation in it. (11-32).
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Chapter Three Properties and Cancellation of PartialNegation........27
3.1 Properties of Partial Negation.......27
3.1.1 Double Clauses.........27
3.1.2 Garden-path Utterances.......30
3.2 Cancellation of Partial Negation..............32
Chapter Four Partial Negation: a Metalinguistic Account.....38
4.1 Triggering Partial Negation of “Mei (V) shenme”..........38
4.1.1 Feature of “Mei (V) sh