Posted: February 25th, 2016

Chinese and English both have interrogative pronouns.

Chinese and English both have interrogative pronouns. For this exercise, we focus on
‘what’ and ‘什么/什麼’ in English and Chinese respectively. What is interesting is that
both forms can have uses that are different from the standard use of an interrogative
pronoun.

Tasks:
1) Find out at least 3 different uses other than the standard interrogative use;
2) Collect examples from each language illustrating these different uses;
3) Examples must come from conversation, written texts, or dialogues from TV shows or
films;
4) Provide sources of examples.

Checklist before you submit your homework (scoring rubric):
1) Independent work (no plagiarism, copying from other sources, etc.): 10
2) Identify the three different types of uses other than the regular use: 40
3) Gather real examples from different sources: 30
4) Describe sources of examples: 10
5) Overall exposition: 10