Identity and definiteness in Chinese wh-conditionals

Previous studies of Chinese wh-conditionals leave several issues unresolved, including (i) definiteness effects; (ii) apparent violations of the novelty condition and (iii) accounting for the range of readings of Chinese whconditionals. We attempt to resolve some of these issues by analysing whindefinites as unique indefinites and wh-conditionals as special instances of topic-comment structures (i.e. wh-conditionals are topic-comment structures with an identity relation). Chinese wh-conditionals can refer to either a single situation or multiple situations, leading to either a definite interpretation or a generic interpretation respectively.15 page(s