Wei - Tien Dylan Tsai On applicative l / My - questions in Chinese 1 Introduction It is generally observed across languages that why - questions are formed by merging the relevant w / i - expression high up in the left periphery ( cf. Rizzi 1990 , 2001 , Starke 2001 , Ko 2005 , 2006 , Stepanov & Tsai 2008 , Tsai 2008 , Shlonsky 8c Soare 2011 , Jedrzejowski 2014 , Endo 2015 , Miyagawa 2017 , among others ) . This paper investigates a class of postverbal wh ’ s in Chinese which give unexpected why - construals with a touch of “ whining ” force ( also cf. Tsai 2011 ; Pan 2014 ; Yang 2015 , among others ), as shown by the Mandarin example ( la ) : [ Mandarin whining what ] ( 1 ) a. ni ku shenme you cry what 55 frit ! ‘ What the heck are you crying for? ! ( You shouldn ’ t be crying. ) * b. li si teh khau antsuann ! [ TSM whining how ] you be Prg cry how fk * m 55 & « ?! ‘ How the heck are you crying? ! ( You shouldn ’ t be crying. ) ’ c. ni zenme zai ku?! you how Prg cry fr JfcJS ft 55 ?! ‘ How come you are crying ? ! ’ d . li antsuann teh khau ?! you how Prg cry ft SIB m 55 ?! ‘ How come you are crying ?! ’ [ Mandarin how come ] [ TSM how come ] Acknowledgments : An early version of this paper was presented in the International Conference on the Grammatical Representation of Tense and Speech Acts ( Hanoi , January 2020 ) and the 19th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar ( Seoul , August 2017 ) . I am grateful to the audience there for sharing their insights and criticisms . Also special thanks to Gabi Soare for her help and suggestions. The research leading to this article is funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan ( MOST 109 - 2410- H - 007 - 065 - MY2 and NSC 101 - 2410 - H - 007 - 055 - MY2 ) . https: / / doi . org / 10.1515 / 9783110675160 - 007