The relationship between Chinese zhiyou ‘only’ and cai : a matter of morphosyntax

Abstract

This short article pursues two goals. First, it critically reviews some results arrived at by Sun (2021), an article that discusses the interplay of Chinese zhiyou ‘only’ with an empty exclusive operator while denying any interesting interaction between zhiyou and the scalar particle cai (against the view defended by Hole, 2004, 2017). Second, it develops a featural account to analyze the morphosyntactic interaction between zhiyou and cai . In sum, the gist of Sun’s and Hole’s views complement each other.