Title of Dissertation: SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS OF QUANTIFICATION IN CHINESE

Following the spirit of Hornstein (1995), this thesis explores the possibility of eliminating entire LF A’-movement. The standard LF-movement analysis of wh-in-situ is shown to be neither conceptually desirable nor empirically adequate. Wh-in-situ are bound in situ by the abstract Q-operator via unselective quantification. A wh-adverb like weishenme (why) is subject to Q-licensing because it denotes a set of proposition and, therefore, cannot be unselectively bound. Its island effects result from the fact that this licensing must be clause-bounded. Rhetorical wh-questions (RWQ) in a wh-in-situ language are subject to unselective quantification of the same sort, but with their whs being bound by the abstract negation operator. This binding can be blocked by an intervening scope-bearing element, however. To overcome this, a wh must raise overtly, a clear indication that there is no QR as a process in Universal Grammar. In addition, this thesis investigates the correlation of overt movement with quantification. For the first time it observes that whs in Chinese can move in the overt syntax and, unlike wh-movement in English, this movement display