Expounding the anaphoric definite use of bare object NPs in Chinese

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the behavior of anaphoric definite use of bare object nouns/NPs in Mandarin Chinese (MC). Much of the previous literature tried to re-characterize this puzzle: why bare NP objects do not allow an anaphoric definite interpretation. Especially, Jenks’ (2018) main generalization in keeping with Schwarz (2009) is that bare NPs in Chinese are weak definites, whereas demonstrative-NPs are strong/anaphoric definites. More recently, Dayal and Jiang (2020) argue against Jenks’ generalization based on the newly-reported empirical claims. Their suggestion is that the demonstrative in Chinese is an ordinary demonstrative, whereas bare NPs play a role both as a weak and as a strong definite. In this paper, building on Huang (2018), our novel claim is that bare NP objects are subject to positional/size restrictions on their interpretational construal. Under the sub-categorization of overt definites as anaphoric and exophoric, we show that null arguments of anaphoric definite construal correspond to overt bare NPs of such construal, whereas null arguments of exophoric definite construal correspond to overt pronouns or demonstrative-preceded NPs of such construal.