ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 investigates the semantics of de in (shi) … de, aiming to address three questions, namely: (i) What is the function of de? (ii) How to account for the temporal and aspectual puzzles associated with de? (iii) What are the rules guiding the transformation between [V de O] and [V O de]? I separated de in (shi) … de into two types: cleft focus de and verum focus de. For the cleft-focus de, its core function is to mark the perfectivity, more specifically, the situation time is within the topic time of the event and is before the utterance time. Cleft-focus de sometimes allows the [V de O] and [V O de] variation. Verum focus de, on the other hand, does not allow the variation between [V de O] and [V O de]. It does not impose any temporal and aspectual constraint on the event it focuses on either. Just like verum shi, it is a VERUM operator with the basic function of encoding the speaker’s certainty of the proposition. But different from verum shi, de has a presupposition that requires the QUD to be about the truth value of the prejacent of de.
