Mandarin has a special construction widely known as a ‘wh-conditional’, in which both the antecedent clause and the consequent clause are wh-clauses. Wh-conditionals are of interest to linguists because the wh-expressions in a wh-conditional must co-refer. How to make sense of the fusion of a conditional and two wh-clauses, as well as the nature of the co-reference relation, have been long-standing issues. Two competing approaches have been advanced to shed light on wh-conditionals: the indefinite approach (Cheng and Huang in Nat. Lang. Semant. 4(2):121–163, 1996; Chierchia in J. East Asian Linguist. 9: 1–54, 2000; a.o.), which treats wh-expressions as indefinites that exhibit dynamic potentials, and the question-categorial approach (Xiang in Interpreting questions with non-exhaustive answers, Ph.D. thesis, 2016; Xiang in Linguist. Philos., 2020a; Liu in Varities of alternatives, Ph.D. thesis, 2016; Liu in Varieties of alternatives: Focus particles and wh-expressions in Mandarin, 2017), which treats wh-clauses as questions denoting functions of various types (or categories). Both approaches face nontrivial challenges, but at the same time have unique advantages each. The goal of this paper is to devise an alternative approach that borrows insights from these two approaches but avoids their shortcomings. On the one hand, the proposed analysis treats wh-clauses as questions. On the other hand, it recognizes the dynamic potential of interrogative wh-expressions, i.e., their ability to introduce discourse referents. A wh-conditional is analyzed as quantification over the values of these discourse referents, which creates the impression of co-reference of the wh-expressions involved (via unselective binding). To the extent that the present analysis is on the right track, it extends the application of the dynamic potential of wh-expressions beyond anaphora.

普通话有一个被广泛称为“ wh-条件”的特殊结构，其中先行从句和后果从句都是wh-从句。Wh 条件句对语言学家很感兴趣，因为wh 条件句中的wh表达式必须共同指代。如何理解一个条件句和两个wh子句的融合，以及共指关系的性质，一直是一个长期存在的问题。已经提出了两种相互竞争的方法来阐明wh 条件：不定式方法（Cheng 和 Huang 在 Nat. Lang. Semant. 4(2):121–163, 1996; Chierchia 在 J. East Asian Linguist. 9: 1 –54, 2000; ao)，它处理wh- 表现出动态潜力的不定式表达，以及问题分类方法（Xiang in Interpreting questions with non-exhaustive answers, Ph.D. thesis, 2016;Xiang in Linguist. Philos., 2020a; Liu in Varities of optionals, Ph.D. 。.D论文，2016;刘在替代的品种：聚焦粒子和WH -expressions普通话，2017年），它对待WH -clauses作为问题表示各种类型的（或类别）的功能。这两种方法都面临着重大挑战，但同时又各自具有独特的优势。本文的目标是设计一种替代方法，借用这两种方法的见解但避免它们的缺点。一方面，建议的分析处理wh-子句作为问题。另一方面，它认识到疑问句wh表达式的动态潜力，即它们引入话语所指对象的能力。甲WH -conditional被分析为定量过这些话语所指对象，它创建的共同参考的印象值WH涉及-expressions（通过非选择性的结合）。就目前的分析在正确的轨道上而言，它扩展了wh表达式的动态潜力的应用超越了回指。