Discourse-oriented Distributivity in Mandarin Chinese

This paper discovers the phenomenon that in Mandarin Chinese when plurals are under focus of zhiyou ‘only’ or lian ‘even’, a distributive reading is derived by default. It is argued that this type of distributivity is not syntax marked, but is discourse-oriented, which shows linguistic effects of economic structuring sets of focus-introduced alternatives (Rooth, 1985, 1992). The proposal successfully predicts the following phenomena that are ignored in literature: i) the subject suffixed with the group marker men under focus can get a collective reading ii) the plural subject led by the contrastive focus marker shi can get a collective reading.