Wu Chinese, a branch of Chinese spoken in southeast China, exhibits mandatory Object-Verb (OV) constructions that have sparked extensive debate over the years, particularly given that Chinese is predominantly a VO language. While some scholars attribute fronted objects to topicalization, others challenge this view, noting that preverbal objects do not consistently function as topics. This study offers a novel perspective on this atypical word order phenomenon, arguing that the variation in Wu Chinese is shaped by the overt representation of Quantifier Raising (QR), a covert syntactic operation proposed by May (1977, 1985) to account for scope ambiguity. Notably, constructions involving non-topical object fronting in Wu often feature quantifiers. Focusing on Shanghainese, a Northern Wu dialect, this study examines three categories of elements that trigger non-topical object fronting: determiners, aspectual markers, and focus adverbs. These elements are analyzed as determiner quantifiers, adverbial quantifiers, and alternative-based quantifiers, respectively. Furthermore, this study posits that Shanghainese exhibits scope rigidity, effectively ‘wearing its Logical Form on its sleeve’. In line with Fox & Johnson’s (2016) revision of QR, it is argued that the restrictive domain of quantificational expressions—not the entire Quantifier Phrase—must be fronted in this language. In conclusion, this research contends that the apparent deviation from the VO norm in Shanghainese stems from its scope transparency, which closely aligns its Logical Form with its surface syntactic structure. This unique property underscores the interplay between quantification and word order in Wu Chinese.
Keywords: quantification, Quantifier Raising, word order, Wu dialects of Chinese