WH & SELF: ON CORRELATING WH-CONDITIONALS AND REFLEXIVE DOUBLING

Abstract

Chinese wh-conditionals hold a very special status in linguistic typology. Cheng and Huang (1996) argues that the construction can be properly analyzed by treating a pair of identical wh-expressions as syntactic variables unselectively bound by an implicit necessity operator. Over the years, this line of thinking has been challenged by various proposals based on the comparison with indefinites, correlatives, E-type pronouns and questions. This Insight article argues for the unselective binding approach to this particular type of donkey sentences by alluding to quantificational reflexive doubling. Our findings not only lend support to the idea that an operator-variable pair is built on a sentential scale in Chinese, but also call for a fine-grained syntax and semantics of the typological correlations between reflexives and wh-in-situ.