Situating MandarinWh-indefinites in the Typology of Modal Indefinites

This paper discusses the non-interrogative existential construal of Mandarin wh-items.Different from previous works that mainly focus on distribution of these items (Li, 1992; Lin, 1998; Xie, 2007), the paper emphasizes their interpretation.A wh-indefinite is shown to trigger distinct modal inferences in different contexts.By making comparisons with Spanish algún(Alonso-Ovalle & Menéndez-Benito, 2010), the paper situates Mandarin wh-indefinites in the typology of modal indefinites across languages.