Diversity of intervention effects: Unifying three Mandarin Chinese dou constructions

Abstract

I propose a novel and principled way to combine Hamblin/Kratzer-Shimoyama style question semantics and Rooth's focus semantics and show that it provides a unified semantic account of the seemingly idiosyncratic ordering restrictions in three Mandarin constructions with the preverbal focus-sensitive particle dou, in terms of various intervention effects.