Dōuas a wide scope universal quantifier*

Abstract

Abstract May (1977, 1985) argues that the rule of Quantifier Raising (QR), which is an instance of Move 8 is operative at the level of Logic Form (LF) in English. Based on the assumption that QR is operative at the level of S‐Structure (SS) in Chinese and that the lexical item dōu is relevant to the application of QR at SS in Chinese (Gao 1989, 1990), this paper, by demonstrating a set of properties of dōu, aims to argue that dōu is a wide scope universal quantifier. The paper intends to demonstrate that a quantifier which co‐occurs with dōu is unambiguous and always has wide scope; that a wh‐question word becomes a universal quantifier if it co‐occurs with dou and again it always has wide scope; that dōu forces an NP or a QP in the object position to move preverbally and thus forces it to have wide scope interpretation; and that even an existential quantifier or an ordinary noun or noun phrase will have universal presupposition if it appears with dōu. The significance of the argument that dōu is a wide s...