On the Quantification of Events in Dou _a() Construction

Abstract.

In the existing literature, the three aspects of the quantificational adverb dou _a—the objects of quantification, the properties of quantification and the means by which dou _a quantifies—are still controversial issues. Therefore in this paper we first try to define quantify and construct a quantification system. This quantification system consists of three primary elements including quantified scope, quantifying unit, quantity value, as well as two basic quantifying ways including cumulative sum (forward quantification) and distributive division (reverse quantification), in addition to four main results including singular, plural, total quantity and partial quantity. On this basis, we define the quantified object of dou _a as the eventualities expressed by the given sentence; we also redefine dou _a’s properties of quantification as distributive universality. Then we divide the quantification construction of dou _a into four parts: distributive domain, distributive index, distributive operator and distributive share. Through investigating the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of these four parts, as well as the distributive dependency relations between these four parts, we explained how dou _a quantifies eventualities.

This article uses this concept “Event” in the wide sense, i.e. what happens in a certain time and place about a thing, how the state of a thing/things is/are being, which property a thing/things has/have, which relationship it has between different things, how many/much the quantity of thing/s is/are, and so on(see Zhan Weidong 2013: 114). Perhaps the concept eventuality of neo-Davidsonian is more suitable,see also Higginbotham(1985、2000)and Parsons(1990、2000)