Logical Relations in Chinese and the Theory of Grammar

The nature of Logical Form is studied through an examination of the syntax and semantics of a range of constructions in Chinese that pertain to scope phenomena, anaphora, and the syntax of empty categories. At the descriptive level, we provide an extensive account of Chinese quantificational sentences, wh questions, A-not-A questions and cleft sentences. Several aspectS-of anaphora are also discu~sed. At the theoretical level, we consider what the observed facts would mean for an optimal theory of Universal Grammar (UG) and linguistic typology. An important intuition captured in traditional treatments of scope phenomena is that the surface order among quantifiers corresponds directly to their scope order in LF. A direct formulation of this idea as a principle f)f scope assignment, however, has been fouild to be in-