Negation, Disjunction, and Choice Questions
摘要
In an article published in 1955, “Notes on Chinese grammar and logic”, Yuen Ren Chao gives one of the earliest discussions of logical expressions of Chinese. The article has many interesting and insightful remarks on expressions of logical notions in natural languages. This article has reflections on two of them. One concerns natural language expressions for negation; the other concerns expressions for disjunction and choice questions in various languages. In discussing the remarks, this article argues that Korean has a sentential negation device, which derives from a negative copula, and develops Chao’s analysis of Chinese choice interrogatives (the juxtaposition analysis) to extend it to English, Japanese, and Korean choice interrogatives.