A sentence-medial clause-typing intoneme in Mandarin A-NOT-A questions

A sentence-medial intoneme is argued to be responsible for typing Mandarin A-NOT-A questions. In narrow syntax, it is merged higher than deontic modals and lower than Tense; after spell-out, it is realized phonetically as a high-low intonation starting from the left edge of the ANOT-A predicate. This proposal is supported by a sentence-medial segmental particle in Chinese dialects, which further corroborates the Intonation-Particle Hypothesis by showing that typing particles in non-sentence-final positions are also variants of intonations. Besides, the Mandarin nuclear stress rule derives two prosodic features of A-NOT-A questions: No intonational breaks within the A-NOT-A predicate and de-stressing of the negation word. The two features follow from the requirement that only one intonation is allowed in the nuclear stress domain and instantiate interaction among different stresses. 摘要: 普通话正反问的句中位置存在一个标句调素，在狭义句法阶段合并于 一个低于时态中心语、高于义务模态词的位置，拼出之后则在语音上 以正反问谓语的左边界为起点、实现为前高后低的句调模式。这一假 设得到了汉语方言事实的支持，表明除了句末语气词，句中标句词也 是句调素的另一种变体，从而进一步支持了“语调-语气词变体假说”。 此外，正反问的韵律模式还有两个关键特征：肯定、否定部分之间不 能停顿；否定词不能重读。上述两个特征都是普通话的“核重-语调定 律”所致，即核心重音范域内不容两个语调。这说明不同类型的重音 之间存在互动效应。