Contrastive topic, z hiyou , and cai -conditionals

It is well known that the Mandarin preverbal scalar particle cai , when occurring in a conditional construction ( cai -conditional), expresses a necessary condition (the truth of the antecedent proposition is necessary for the truth of the consequent proposition). However, there are several puzzles about cai -conditionals, including whether cai itself contributes to the necessity semantics and how to best analyze the co-occurrence of cai and the exclusive-like expression zhiyou ‘only’ in the antecedent clause. This paper advances a semantic account according to which the conditional cai represents a special exhaustivity operator that is sensitive to contrastive topic instead of focus. This operator asserts its prejacent conditional and the exclusion of subquestions which have a positive answer, except the one already answered positively by cai ’s prejacent. Zhiyou is then analyzed as an operator presupposing scalar highness. This paper shows how this proposal captures a question-under-discussion requirement of cai -conditionals and the co-occurrence between cai and zhiyou .