This talk focuses the possible readings of wh-in-situ in Chinese in different contexts. Mandarin data will be systematically compared with Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. We will show how the interrogative Q-reading and the existential $-reading associated with a wh-word are formally licensed in different types of contexts. Importantly, different languages dispose different strategies to license wh-words in each specific licensing context: morphological strategies, syntactic strategies and prosodic strategies. However, these licensing mechanisms do not have the same status; namely, the morphological licensing is always in priority whereas prosodic licensing is only activated as a last resort when morphological or syntactic strategies are unavailable.

Bio:

Victor Junnan Pan is a professor of theoretical linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Junior Member of Institut Universitaire de France. He received Doctoral Supervision and Research Excellence Award from the French government and was a member of National Council for Universities pointed by the French Ministry for Higher Education. Prof. Pan’s research covers Chinese syntax, French syntax, syntax-semantic-discourse interfaces, etc. and the topics he investigated include interrogatives, quantification, left-periphery, cartography, resumptivity, different types of A’-dependencies and the latest development of the Minimalist Program. Prof. Pan has published journal articles, book chapters and five research monographs both in French and in English including Resumptivity in Mandarin Chinese: A Minimalist Account (Mouton De Gruyter, 2016) and Architecture of The Periphery in Chinese: Cartography and Minimalism (Routledge, 2019). Prof. Pan also serves as anonymous reviewer for numerous prestigious international journals including Linguistic Inquiry,Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, The Linguistic Review and Linguistics.

Website: http://ling.cuhk.edu.hk/people/victor/

Date: 18 Mar 2021
Time: 3:30 pm via Zoom

https://hku.zoom.us/j/93635672746?pwd=SlRNM1VPUFhydW9KbUxlQmNpb3hDdz09

Meeting ID: 936 3567 2746

Password: 213943