B: ?Bing/*Dao/Ye bu zao Ie. Wo xiang haishi zaodian ban,?BING/*DAONE not early LE. I think better early-a-little move,

In this section, we will discuss the discourse function of another set of modalityadverbs: bing, dao and ye. They form a set because they share some commonsemantic characteristics. All of them can be roughly translated as 'on the contrary'and they often occur in a negative context. In other words, they are nearlysynonymous. Yet they are not interchangeable in terms of the modality they express.Chu (1991 :70) notes that while they share the epistemic modality meaning that thecontents of the proposition is contrary to expectation, they differ in their deonticmodality. Bing represents an objective statement; ye, a subjective opinion; and dao,a desirable eventlsituation.7 We cite some of his examples below:

lao zhu zai fushang mafan Gao Taitai, ye shi xinlialways stay at your-house trouble Gao Mrs., also be heart-in

bu an.not peace

'Not really. I would rather move a little early. I am afraid my stayingat your house has brought you too much trouble, Mrs. Gao.'

zhide bu chi wanfan.worth not eat dinner

In all of the examples in (20) - (23), there is a 'contrary to expectation'implication. But they differ in terms of deontic modality-i.e. the speaker's attitudetoward the eventlsituation.

In (20) above, any member of the set fits because, without any context, thesentence may be presented as an objective statement, a subjective opinion or adesirable situation. In the other examples, however, one is more appropriat~ thanthe other two because of what is provided elsewhere in the discourse. The speakerin (21) resents missing his/her dinner and doesn't like the game. That rules out theuse of dao for a desirable event or situation. Ye is questionable here, perhaps notpurely due to its subjectivity. We will discuss it in more detail a little later. Thatleaves the use of bing, which is for objective statement. In contrast to (21), thewriter of the passage in (22) obviously likes the game and therefore the selection ofdao for its desirability over the other two. The dialog in (23) is taken from a lessonin John DeFmacis' Intermediate Chinese. Speaker B, an American student in China,has stayed at the Gaos for a few days. He fmally fmds a room in a friend's house butMrs. Gao is trying to persuade him to stay longer by saying 'There's still timebefore school starts.' B cannot use dao because it would mean that it was desirablefor him to move soon. Bing, injecting an objective statement, would be tooimpersonal in this friendly conversation. Ye, expressing a personal opinion similarto the English expression 'I think', 'I am afraid' or 'I guess', is therefore the mostappropriate adverb in this context.

The illustrations above clearly show that the three adverbs in this set serve toexpress relations between clauses. Furthermore, these relations depend very heavilyon the contents of the propositions in the clauses.

Next, we cite a few more examples from other sources to either confirm orrevise Chu's (1991) formulation of the modality differences of the adverbs anddiscuss in some more detail some of the related issues of the adverb ye in this set.

(20) Dao Niuyue qu, zuo feiji bing/dao/ye bu gui.to New-York go, sit plane BING/DAONE not expensive'On the contrary, it isn't expensive to fly to New York.'

(a) Zhe kejian zhe shi zhidao de ren hen duo, baozhi bingthis indicate this matter know DE person very many, newspaper BING

(21) Weile kan neiwan Foda gen Tianda de lanqiusai, woin-order-to see that-evening Florida and Tennessee DE basketball-game, I

ba wanfan ye danwu Ie. Qishi, neichang bisai bing/*dao/?ye buBA dinner also miss Ie. in-fact, that-M game BING/*DAO/?YE not

'To see the Florida-Tennessee basketball game that night, I missed mydinner. In fact, that game wasn't worth missing a dinner.'

(22) Zuihou de bishu shi qishi bi liushiwu, Eyudui shule, zhen kexi.last DE score be 70 to 65, Gator-team lose-LE, real pity.

Buguo neichang qiusai *bing/dao/*ye bucuo, zhen zhide kan.but that-M game *BING/DAO/*YE not-bad, real worth watch

'The final score was 70 to 65. The Gators lost. What a pity. But the gamewas really good and worth watching.'

(The writer of this passage is a University of Florida student and the Gatoris the University's mascot.)

(23) A: Li shangxue hai zaozhe ne!from go-to-school still early-ZHE NE'There's still quite some time before school starts!'

fei luan zai.not random publish

'This indicates that this matter is known to many people and thenewspaper(s) didn't publish it without any basis.'

(b) Kanqilai, fandongpai de yangzi shi kepaide, danshi shijishang binglook-start, reactionaries DE look be frightening, but in-fact BING

meiyou shenme liliang.not-have much power

(a) Gao Ba yi xiang, sui shuo ba bu ding, dao ye shi yitiaoGao Ba one think, though say hold not certain, DAO also be a-M

menlu .way .

'Gao Ba thought that it might just as well be a good way though he/shewasn't sure how to handle it. ...'

(b) Dui wo de piping wo gandao meiyou shenme, dao shi tixingletoward me DE criticism I feel not-have much, DAO be remind-LE

wo: jinhou yao JlaJm gaizao ZIJI.me: from-now-on must accelerate re-educate self

'I don't mind the criticism against me. On the contrary, it reminds me thatfrom now on I must speed up my own re-education. '

(a) Ni ye tai bu keqi Ie.you YE too not polite LE'(I think) you are quite impolite.'

(b) Ni ye dei tiliangtiliang bie ren me!you YE should consider-consider other person ME'You should be a little more considerate of other people.'

(c) Zhe shi ye zhihao you ta Ie.this matter YE only by him/her LE'As to this matter, I think, there is no other way except leaving it tohim/her.'

In (24), the clauses with bing represent objective observations that are contraryto some assumptions. The assumption in (a) is: The newspaper(s) published thenews without any basis; the one in (b) is: Reactionaries are frightening andpowerful. In other words, what bing says is: Somebody/Some people might thinkX, but from my objective observation they are incorrect in thinking X. Moreover,we also fmd that the traditional claim is correct that this adverb always occurs in anegative statement. In (25), the clauses with dao represent statements that arecontrary to some assumptions but are desirable at the same time. In (a) theassumption is: Gao Ba can't handle 'it'. On the contrary, this 'it' might turn out tobe something desirable. In (b) the assumption is: Criticism is unpleasant. It,however, turns out to be something constructive to the speaker; it reminds him/herof his/her need for speeding up re-education. Therefore, what dao says here is:Somebody/Some people think X is undesirable, but it turns out to be desirable.

The ye in (26) is said to express a mild tone. Lu & Ma (1984:35) offers anexplanation: 'Ye 's ability for expressing a mild tone stems from its basic functionof indicating leitong [i.e. "categorial similarity", such as expressed in English bytoo, also, similarly, etc.]. Its presence in an expression of blame or complaint thusimplies that the person mentioned is not alone. This certainly reduces the bruntnessof the blame or complaint.' While we are not completely convinced of theirreasoning, we do fmd that the tone-softening effect of ye is a genuine one. It is notonly available in expressions of blame and complaint, as Lu and Ma claim; but italso works in other kinds of expressions. For example, the use of ye in (23) and(26.c) above, neither of which is a blame or complaint, also softens the tone quitea bit. We thus would like to offer some explanation from another perspective. But,fIrst let's look at a few more examples from Beida (1982:455-456).

(27.a) Nide hua ziran you Ii, wo ye bu shi bu dong.your speech naturally reasonable, I YE not be not understand

Pianpian wo jiu yige guinu, jiao wo zhenme shede?unfortunately I only one daughter, let me how willing-to-part-with

'What you said is, of course, reasonable and it isn't that I don't understand.But, unfortunately, as I only have one daughter, how can I part with her?'

b) Ta ye ming zhidao shenqing tiqian chuyuan, bu huihe/she YE clear know apply early release-from-hospital, not will

dedao pizhun, danshi ta haishi zai yici tichu shenqing.get approval, but he/she still again once submit application

Finally, the reason why the passage in (21) above does not accept ye asappropriate may also be explained on the ground that there it could entail a tone-softening interpretation. Obviously, there isn't such a need in (21).

Now, we are ready to give a graphic representation for the discourse functionsof the adverbs bing, dao andye. For notational explanations, see end of last section.

'He/She clearly knew that application for early discharge from the hospitalwould not be approved, but he/she submitted another application anyway.'

c) Renjiagou suiran bu suan yige da cunzhuang,ye you ersanshihuRenjiagou though not count a-M big village, YE have 20-to-30-M

renjia, guangjing guode hai bu cuo.household, situation pass-DE still not bad

'Though Renjiagou is not a big village, it has between 20 and 30 familiesand they are doing pretty well.'

The instances ofye in (a) and (b) above are said to soften the tone, but the one in(c) is regarded as indicating wutiaojian 'non-conditional (supposition)', which isa specific function among many general ones of ye in connecting complexsentences. The general connecting functions are listed as: tiaojian 'condition',yuanyin 'cause', mudi 'purpose', jiashe 'presupposition', rangbu 'concession',zhuanzhe 'shift (of viewpoint)', etc. It naturally makes one wonder how, besides thebasic 'categorial similarity' meaning, ye can perform so many different functions,which cover a wide range of traditional rhetorical relations between clauses.

If we closely examine all the examples given in Beida (1982) and Lu & Ma(1984) under the heading of 'Connection in Complex Sentences', we can easily fmdthat the rhetorical relations do not derive from the presence of ye; they rather comefrom the semantic contents of the clauses being connected. Nevertheless, all theexamples share one thing in common: the notion of 'subjective opinion that iscontrary to some assumption', which is exactly whatye adds to each of them. In(27.c), for instance, ye says: Renjiagou being a small village would usually entailthat there are very few families there, but I AM TELLING YOU that on thecontrary there are quite a number of them. Likewise, in (27.a), the ye indicates:What you said is certainly reasonable and, though you might assume that I wouldnot understand it, I THINK I do .... In (27.b), the ye is a little more complicatedbecause the assumption is not obvious until the next statement. That is, his/hersubmission of an application for early discharge from the hospital usually suggeststhat the person does not anticipate disapproval. The ye here then says: Contrary tothe usual assumption that the person doesn't know the application will be rejected,LET ME TELL YOU he/she actually knows it very well. Note the capitalizedportions in the interpretations above. They all represent 'subjective opinion'. Theidea of 'subjective opinion' in conjunction with 'contrary to (your) assumption'naturally gives rise to something similar to 'I beg to differ with (you)'. This, I think[This parenthetical I think would be a ye in Mandarin!], is a more principledexplanation for why the adverb ye can be used to soften the tone.

Assumption -ye-> Contrary to assumption as subjective opinion, whichmay entail I BEG TO DISAGREE

It is obvious that the members share the epistemic modality of 'contrary toassumption' but differ in their deontic modality-i.e. the speaker's attitude towardthe contents of the statement. In one case, there is also some entailment involved.Their high frequency of cooccurrence with negation seems to be a consequence ofthe intrinsic nature of contrariness to a previous assumption.

The three adverbs are grouped in a set for their common denominator of indicatingthat the statement is a repetition of, or a further step from, a previousevent/situation. They are often translatable as 'again'. Just like the other sets, themembers of this set are not interchangeable in most contexts. Two facts about youand zai have been well recognized in grammatical studies: (i) In addition to the'again' interpretation, you refers to a past event while zai refers to a future one, and(ii) When you is used without reference to time, it points out the event asundesirable while zai is neutral (see Chu, 1983 :58). Beyond those, however, thereis a lot more that has remained unexplored about the set until very recently. We willfirst look at their basic semantic differences in their adverbial capacity and thendiscuss their linking functions in discourse.

Observe the following sentences:

(29.a) Wo cai he Ie sanping pijiu, xiang *hai/*you/zai he (yidian).I only drink-LE 3-bottle beer, think *HAI/*YOU/ZAI drink (a-little)'I have had just three beers and want to drink (some) more.'

b) Wo cai hele sanping pijiu, hai/*you/?zai xiang he (yidian).I only drink-LE 3-bottle beer, HAI/*YOU/?ZAI think drink (a little)'I have had just three beers and would like to drink (some) more.'

c) Wo gangcai hele sanping pijiu Ie, xianzai hai/you/*zai xianga-while-ago drink-LE 3-bottle beer LE, now HAI/YOU/*ZAI think

he.drink

'I just had three beers a while ago and now feel like to drink more/again.'(Probably, I shouldn't.)

d) Wo gangcai hele sanping pijiu Ie, xianzai *hai/you/*zaia-while-ago drink-LE 3-bottle beer LE, now *HAIIYOU/*ZAI

xiang he Ie.think drink LE

'I just had three beers a while ago and now feel like to drink, again.' (I amsurprised myself because I have changed my mind.)

e) Ni yijing hele sanping pijiu Ie, zenme hai/you/*zai xiang he?you already drink-LE 3-bottle beer LE, how HAIIYOU/*ZAI think drink'You have already had three beers and you want to drink more/again?'(Probably, you shouldn't.)

t) Ni YIJmg hele sanping pijiu Ie, zenme *hai/you/*zai xiangyou already drink-LE 3-bottle beer LE, how *HAIIYOU/*ZAI think

he Ie.drink LE

'You have already had three beers and you want to drink again?' (Howcome you changed your mind?)

From the examples above, two observations can be made. (i) Zai is not favoredin front ofthe state verb xiang 'intend, want'. (Other state verbs like yao 'want' andhui 'will be' also apply. That means, zai can only have event verbs in its domain ofmodification.) (ii) Both hai and you express some attitude on the part of thespeaker, as in (c), (d), (e) and (t).

The observation above jointly suggest that while both hai and you are deonticmodality adverbs, zai is not-it only expresses that the event is a repetition of a

(30) Ni cai hele sanping, *hai/*you/zai he yidian.you only drink-LE 3-bottle, *HAI/*YOU/ZAI drink a-little'You have had only three; drink some more.'

where a piece of advice is given with the speaker trying to be as neutral in his/herattitude as possible.

On the other hand, hai and you as modality adverbs can be further distinguishedbetween them. It is easily noticeable that they may sometimes occur in the sameenvironment, as in (c) and (e); but other times they cannot, as in (b), (d) and (t). Weobserve here that hai seems to stress the continuation of an event and you seems tostress the repeated occurrences of two identical events. This crucially explains whyhai is appropriate in (b) where the continuation of drinking beer is stressed and thatyou is appropriate in (d) and (t), where the repetition of drinking beer is stressed.Furthermore, where either of them can occur, (c) and (e) can be interpreted eitheras the continuation of the same event with the adverb hai or as the repeatedoccurrences of two identical events with the adverb you. This fact is reflected in ourtranslation by the alternative form 'more/again'.

As we mentioned above, you has been recognized as a modality adverb toexpress undesirability. In fact, it has to be heavily stressed in order to function inthis capacity. Hai seems to have the same function with a heavy stress. Ifso, theycorrespond very well to the stressed again and more in the English translations.

Now, we turn to the difference between hai and you in terms of their discoursefunction.

Chen (1993:50-51) distinguishes between you and hai in the following way:

You is used when clauses to be connected are of equal rank AND theirconjoining relation needs to be strengthened ....Hai is used when clauses tobe connected carry light-heavy distinction. The discourse context helps judgewhich clause is considered heavier.

(31) Ta jianjian lao Ie, you shi gukulingdingde yige ren, zai laihe gradually old LE, YOU be poor-alone-DE one-M person, again old

xiaqu you zenme ban ne?go-on then how do NE

'He/She is becoming old gradually; moreover, he/she is all alone anduncared-for. What is going to happen when he/she becomes even older?'

(32) Gu Taitai gaosu wo, Lu Xiansheng jing zai buzhi fangjian Ie,Gu Mrs. tell me, Lu Mr. unexpectedly PROG decorate room LE,

hai tianle yichuang dahong si mian de beiwo.HAl add-LE a-M big-red silk cover DE quilt

'Mrs. Gu told me that surprisingly Mr. Lu started decorating his bedroom,and furthermore, he bought a brand-new quilt with a bright-red silkcovering.'

The clauses connected by you and hai appear in bold above.In (31), the two clauses together tell the whole story about the old person's

helplessness. In other words, the description will not be complete without one or theother. They actually complement and reinforce each other. It thus seems that whatChen claims as 'needs strengthening' is actually the components of a whole story.It may be more positively stated that you serves to connect two clauses thatstrengthen each other in their descriptive or narrative force. This connectivefunction gives rise to such expressions as (33), where you is used twice.

(33) Zhege nianqing ren you congming you nenggan.this-M young person YOU intelligent YOU capable'This young person is both intelligent and resourceful.'

In (32), the event of decorating the bedroom presented in the first of the clausesconnected by hai is a general event while the one presented in the secondclause-buying a bright-red quilt -is a specific instance of the general event. Theweight of each of the events, however, is hard to determine in the passage. Chen(1993 :61) follows it up by presenting the rest of the discourse, as in (34).

(34) Wo bian wen ta dao: 'Shi bu shi you xixun Ie, Lu Xiansheng?'I then ask him say: 'be not be have good-tiding LE, Lu Mr.?''So, I asked him, "Are you going to get married, Mr. LuT"

Here, the speaker infers from the bright-red quilt Mr. Lu bought that he is gettingmarried. It, therefore, seems to Chen that the second clause connected by hai in (32)serves to develop the conversation and thus carries more weight than the first one,which suggests very little about Mr. Lu's impending marriage. It might be true thatthe weighting of clauses for this purpose has to be done on the basis of a followin~context. If so, it should then be equally possible to substitute ye or you for the haiin (32) without changing the thrust of the sentence, when there is nothing following.In fact, it is not quite possible to do so:

(32') ...jing zai buzhi fangjian Ie, ?ye/?you tianle yichuang dahong si mian debeiwo.

Aye in (32') would simply put the two events on a par without commenting on therelationship between them. A you would indicate that the two events complementeach other and that one would not be complete without the other. It thus seems thatwhat is termed as light-heavy [order] of the clauses must be something else. Bylooking through all the examples that Chen provides in her study, we find that thesecond clause in such a pair is usually a further elaboration on the first. Anelaboration is here interpreted as 'providing detail', 'illustrating with specifics','stating further development', etc. It can usually be described as 'something (even)more X than what is in the first clause'.

We cite a few more passages from Beida (1982:226) to support our point.

(35.a) Ta wen tade jiating qingkuang, wen tade chushenhe ask her family situation, ask her personal-background

jingli, hai wenle yixie ta xiangbudao de sixiangexperience, HAl ask-LE several she cannot-think-ofDE ideology

he jianjie.and viewpoint

'He asked her about family, personal background and work experiencesand, furthermore, he asked about ideology and viewpoints, which shedidn't expect (him to ask).'

b) Geren yu jiti bijiaoqilai, geren shi miaoxiaoindividual and collective-body compare-start, individual be tiny

de. Danshi, hai dei jiashang yiju: renhe geren de gongzuoDE. but, HAl must add a-sentence: any individual DE work

huo laodong dou shi zai zhengge shehuizhuyi jianshe shiye zhongor labor all be at whole socialism construction task in

jin yifen liliang.contribute a-share duty

'Compared to the collective society, the individual is very insignificant.But, one must add: The work or labor of any individual is just a share ofhis/her contribution to the task of socialist construction.'

In both passages, hai indicates that the present clause is a further elaboration on thepreceding one(s). In (35.a), the second clause connected by hai narrates the eventof his aski..'lgher about ideology and viewpoints in an interview, which is generallyconsidered a step further than asking about one's family, personal background and

(work) experiences in the preceding clauses. In (35.b), the second clause adds afurther, more detailed description of the relationship between the individual and thecollective society than what has already been described in the first clause.

In all the instances, there is an implicit or assumed attitude on the part ofspeaker/writer about what is in the first clause. The second clause then expresses aheightened or more intense feeling about the same situation/event. And it is thisfeature of further elaboration that makes it possible for hai to pair with chule ...yiwai'besides .. .', budan/bujin/buguang 'not only', and such similar connectives.

Now we turn to you for another look by examining a few more passages fromChen (1992):

(36.a) You ren conglai bu mai shu, mei xingqi dao tushuguanjiesome person ever not buy book, every week to library borrow

yipi shu huilai, kanwanle, zai qu huan biede. Youa-batch book return, look-finish-LE, again go change other. have

dushu zhi Ie, er buyong hua qian,reading pass pleasure, on-the-other-hand no-need spend money,

you meiyou cang shu zhi lei, jie chuqu bu huan.YOU not-have store book pass trouble, lend out not return

zhi can, shizai haojipass misery, really good-extreme

'Some people never buy books. They borrow a bunch of books fromlibraries every week. After finishing reading them, they return the booksor some others. It's really a wonderful thing because you have the joyof reading without paying for it and, furthenI).ore, you don't have thetrouble of storing books nor the pain of books loaned out without everbeing returned.'

b) Zhu Feng ban nian qian cai cong Miaoli dao Taipei, ta yuan shi geZhu Feng half year ago just from Miaoli to Taipei, she first was M

caichaniang, laozi shi jiugui, houniang you bu rong,tea-picking-woman, father be alcoholic, step-mother YOU not tolerate,

bile chulai.force-LE out-come

'Zhu Feng came to Taipei from Miaolijust a half year ago. She had beena tea-leave picker. But she had to leave home because her father was an

The you in (36.a) connects the two portions in bold: 'have the joy of readingwithout paying for it' and 'don't have the trouble of storing books nor the pain ofloaned-out books never being returned'. The one in (36.b) also connects theitalicized portions: 'her father was an alcoholic' and 'her step-mother wouldn'taccept her.' In each case, the clauses linked by you combine to make aevent/situation whole. In (a), it wouldn't be completely wonderful if one situationis present without the other. I.e. 'To read without paying' or 'to have no trouble ofstoring books and no pain of loaned-out books never being returned' alone wouldnot be able to make up the wonderful experience. They must both work together tomake the experience complete. In (b), one or the other situation alone might nothave forced Zhu Feng to leave home. It is only through the combination of thefather being an alcoholic and the step-mother not accepting her that she left home.

These two passages seem to support Chen's (1993) claim about the linkingfunction of you. Below, we quote a few more passages from another source (Beida,1982:509)

(37.a) Wusi yundong shi fan diguozhuyi de yundong, you shi fanMay-4 movement be anti imperialism DE movement, YOU be anti

fengjian de yundong.feudalism DE movement

'The May-4th Movement was a movement of anti-imperialism, and it isalso a movement of anti-feudalism.'

b) Shishishang, zhe qiaqia shuomingle zongli shi ji guanin-fact, this just-right explain-LE premier be both take-care

da shi, you zhua xiao shi de hao zongli.big business, YOU catch little business DE good premier

'In fact, this just explains that the premier is a good one who takes care ofboth big and small matters.'

In (a), anti-imperialism wouldn't be good enough a description of the May-4thMovement without anti-feudalism, or vice versa. In (b), the premier would not begood enough to take care of only big matters without tending small matters, or viceversa. In this respect, both passages lend more support to Chen's view of the linkingbehavior of you.

Next, we will look at zai for its connective function in discourse. While it hasbeen regarded as an adverb of time, degree and extent that indicates the repetitionor continuation of an action or behavior' (Beida, 1982:529), it can be more simply

(38.a) Bu chi fan ye keyi, shijian hai zao, zai zuo yihuir. (ibid.)not eat meal YE alright, time still early, ZAI sit a-while

'Never mind if you can't (stay to) eat. But, it's still early and why don'tyou stay a little while longer?'

b) Bu neng zai zhuile, mashang shoulong zhanshi, zhunbei dirennot can ZAI chase-LE, at-once gather soldier, prepare enemy

fangong. (ibid.)counterattack

'(We) cannot chase any more. Gather the troops together at once andprepare for the enemy's counterattack.'

c) Weile xushu de bianli qijian, wo zai zheli xian shuofor narrate DE convenient view, I at here first talk

maodun de pubianxing, zai shuo maodun de teshuxing.contradiction DE universality, ZAI talk contradiction DE peculiarity(op. cit. 530)

'For convenience of presentation, I will talk about the universality ofcontradiction and then talk about its peculiarities.'

d) Women dou xiang zai qu kankan ta. (Chu, 1983:58).we all think ZAI go see-see himlher'We all want to visit himlher again.'

There is an obvious repetition of an action in the passage in © above: 'talking aboutcontradiction'. The rest of the examples, however, don't have any explicit mentionof another action similar to the one in the zai clause: 'to stay another while' in (a),'to chase (the enemy)' in (b), and 'to visit himlher' in (d). But, by using zai, aprevious similar action is implied. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be a need fora distinction between time, degree and extent, or between repetition andcontinuation.

However, if we examine the instances of repetition in (38) more closely, we fmda difference between them. In (a), (b) and (d), the repetition is actually therecurrence of an identical event. But in (c), the repetition is not really any suchrecurrence, but it is rather the new occurrence of a similar but different event. Thatis, the first event is the talking about the universality of contradiction and the secondis the talking about its peculiarities. In such cases, another adverb xian 'first' may

be used in the first clause to pair with zai. The events are here presented with afocus on their sequential ordering. This distinction between identical and non-identical events thus has an important consequence on the interpretation of zai.When the events/situations linked by zai are identical, the adverbial connectivepresents them as repetitions. When they are not identical, the events/situations areexplicitly presented as sequentially ordered.

As a matter offact, this same distinction also applies to the interpretations of haiand you. The data presented in (29) and (30) involve identical events and those in(31) through (37) involve similar but different events. Accordingly, the hai and youin those two sets of data are interpreted differently. Here is a recapitulation of theinterpretations. When the events/situations linked by the adverbial connective areidentical, hai presents the second as a continuation of the first and you presentsthem as repetitions of the same. When the events/situations are not identical, haipresents the second as a further elaboration on the first and you presents them ascomponents of a whole.

To summarize what has been discussed in this section, we note the following:

This set of adverbs must be discussed in two separate environments: Whetherthe events/situations linked are identical or not.

(a) Zai presents them with a focus on sequential order.(b) Hai presents the second as an elaboration on the first.(c) You presents them as components ofa whole.

In addition, hai and you may function as modality adverbs, expressing'undesirability' toward the event/situation. In this capacity, they carry a heavystress.

The functions listed above must be considered in conjunction with thedistinctions between the adverbs made in the traditional treatment, which werementioned at the beginning of the section. We repeat the traditional distinctionsbelow:

event/situation.(b) You refers to a repetition of a past event and zai refers to a repetition of

a future event.(c) Otherwise, you indicates the repeated event/situation is unpleasant but

zai is neutral.

Finally, we give a graphic representation of the discourse functions of the threeadverbial connectives: (E/S = 'event or situation')

(i) zai indicates repetition ifI=j, and(ii) zai focuses on the sequential order if I=/=j.

(i) hai indicates continuation of the same E/S ifI=j,(ii) hai indicates further elaboration on E/Sj if I=/=j, and

(iii) hai expresses 'undesirability' when a heavy stress is placed on it.

(i) you indicates a recurrence ofE/Sj, ifI=j,(ii) you indicates that E/Sj and E/Sj make up a larger whole E/S if I=/=j,

and(iii) you expressed 'undesirability' when a heavy stress is placed on it.

In this chapter, we have pointed out that many Chinese adverbs also perform thediscourse function of linking clauses. Some of them are easy to identify as such, dueto their ability to occur in clause-initial position. Most of them, owing to theirinability to occur in that position, have hardly ever been treated as connectives.Among them are modality adverbs which have only recently received someattention in linguistic literature. A short list of such adverbs illustrated mostly insimple sentences was given. A few of them were further illustrated in longerdiscourse contexts and discussed in some detail.

Three sets of modality adverbs are specifically selected for detailed analysis asconnectives. They are chosen because they have been a source of confusion forstudents as well as for teachers. The members of each set are found to be similar intheir basic functions but differ in some subtle ways. Both cai andjiu, for instance,can be used to link condition and assumption explicitly and link expectationimplicitly. But they differ in many other ways on the basis whether the condition orassumption is temporal or non-temporal. Even when they are supposed to besynonymous in linking an expectation, they still differ in whether the contrast issimple or scalar. Cf.list in (15) and graphs in (14')-(19'). The set of bing, dao andye expresses a basic notion of 'contrary to an assumption'. Again, they differ inwhether the statement represents an objective observation or subjective opinion.Dao further indicates that the event/situation is a desirable one. Cf. graphs in (28).Finally, the set of hai, you and zai has 'repetition' or 'continuation' as the commonground, yet each differs from the others in more than one way. When theevents/situations being linked are identical, you behaves more like zai in indicatingrepetition. When the events/situations are not identical, each ofthe three has its owninterpretation. In term of deontic modality, only stressed hai or you may indicatethat the event/situation in question is undesirable. Cf. graphs in (41).

At a deeper level, however, all three sets share a modality feature as a commondenominator: Speaker's Presumption.9 This feature does not only unite manymodality adverbs; it also cuts through other categories such as sentence-finalparticles and aspect markers. Thus, for example, Ie as a change-of-state particleindicates 'interruption of speaker's expectation' and -guo as an experiential-aspectmarker 'identifies experience of an activity within a shared time frame,' etc.Ultimately, 'speaker's presumption' may very well be treated as a majormorphosyntactic-discourse category in Chinese at a level of abstraction whichserves as 'the basis for a truly comprehensive account of Chinese discourse.'

We have demonstrated that the modal adverb sets all possess intricate propertiesas clause connectives. No simple translation or explanation, even with ampleillustrations as is often done in traditional grammar, can satisfactorily characterizeany of them. We thus hope that our analysis has pointed out a direction for futurestudy of similar discourse problems.

We have all along stressed the modal nature of the adverb that is being treatedas a clause-connective. The reasons for this emphasis may not have been made clearenough. For one thing, modality adverbs have mostly interested grammarians fortheir intriguing modal interpretations. Therefore, little attention has been paid totheir other functions. We hope to compensate for this neglect by our emphasis ontheir discourse function. Another reason lies in historical development. Forms ofmodality are said to be one of the sources from which conditional connectives arederived. (See Hopper and Throughout, 1993: 179.) If so, the treatment of modalityadverbs as connectives has its significance not only in synchronic analysis but alsoin diachronic grammar. And, indeed, there seems to be some budding interest in thediachronic development of Chinese adverbs as connectives (cf. Liu, 1993).

(iii) Ni zenme cailjiu gei wo zheme yidiar?you how CAIIJIU give me this little'How come you gave so little?'

1. See, for example, Li and Thompson (1981:635ff and 653ft) where suchadverbs are treated to some extent.

2. Biq (1987), Chu (1991), Mei-chun Liu (1991 & 1993) and Chen (1991 &1993) are some of the recent attempts to examine the discourse functions of suchadverbs.

3. The adverb jiu has to be deleted at the same time. We will address thisproblem in the next section.

4. X. Li (1991) gives a fuller list of 116 such adverbs in common use with theirpositional distribution in terms of same or different subjects in the two clauses theyconnect. While the work itself is just a taxonomy of adverbs, it provides a body ofinformation for further analysis. Another good source of adverb usage is BeidaZhongwen Xi (1982), where 790 'empty words' are treated. Many of them aremodality adverbs.

5. The distinction between past and future lies in the form of the verb. A plainverb without any aspect marker represents either a habitual or futurehappening/situation while a de at the end of the predicate indicates that theproposition is presupposed-thus, realis and past.

6. According to Mei-chun Liu (1993:2),jiu is said to 'single out one choiceagainst all possibilities' and cai is said to signal 'scalar contrast between theasserted and the expected'. They thus both mark counter-expectation, orcontrastiveness (in the sense defined by Chafe 1976), but in distinct ways: jiuselects one out of a set; cai sets up scalar contrast.' This distinction explains whyin (12.a), repeated as (i), both adverbs are permissible while only jiu is permissiblein (ii) below:

where there is predominantly a 'scalar contrast'. Yet,jiu seems to be as good as cai,though it is possible for the speaker to mean that there are many other alternativesin terms of the quantity you give me.

7. There are certainly other meanings and functions that some of the adverbsmay possess. E.g. ye seems to have quite a few other uses besides expressing 'onthe contrary' and indicating subjective judgement. But, our immediate concern isto explore the similarities and differences between the three as members of a set.

8. These three are the members ofa set that Chen (1993) treats in her research.9. I owe this idea and the discussion hereof to an anonymous reviewer of an

earlier version of the manuscript. What is enclosed in quotes are direct quotationsfrom the reviewer.

(i) Zhangsan cailjiu kanwanle diyi zhang.'Zhangsan only finished reading the first chapter.'

(ii) Zher *cailjiu chan mei, bu chan biede. (Adapted from Biq)here *CAIIJIU produce coal, not produce other'This place only produces coal, nothing else.'

The reason that (i) can take either cai or jiu is that 'finishing reading the firstchapter' can be interpreted either as one alternative against other possibilities (the-jiu interpretation) or as an amount of work against other amounts (the scalar cai-interpretation). It is obvious that in (ii), 'producing coal' can only be interpreted asone alternative against other possibilities but not as an amount of production againstother amounts on a scale.

One difficulty with this theory is that there are few clear-cut cases where onlycai, but notjiu, can be used in the limiting sense. E.g.

Sentence-final particles in Mandarin Chinese, such as a/ya, ba, Ie, ne, ma, and me,have mostly been considered in terms of their semantic and/or syntactic contents.While it is relatively adequate to treat ma as a question marker and ba as asuggestive particle on the one hand, to consider some of the other particles merelyin semantic or syntactic terms is definitely insufficient on the other hand. Forexample, even though in most textbooks there is some agreement on Ie as a change-of-state marker and ne as a marker for mild question and continued action2, oneencounters tremendous difficulties in interpreting actual data containing theseparticles. The situation with the others is much worse: there is a lot of confusionin their treatment. Textbook interpretations of a/ya range from 'affirmation,approval or consent' to 'polite command, suggestion' to 'a question or apresupposition' and finally to 'strong opinion, softening question, summoningattention, enthusiasm and mild reproach'. And those of me range from'obviousness' to 'impatience' to 'request, advice, command, consultation, consentor agreement' to 'compliance, supposition' and finally to 'probability andsuggestion,.3 It is obvious that such semantic or syntactic characteizations are notonly divergent in meaning, but are conflicting in usage.

Recent reference grammars, such as Li and Thompson (1980) and Chu (1983),are more consistent in their treatment of sentence-final particles. Aside from ma,which is purely syntactico-semantic in nature, each of the other particles is given abroader modality/discourse function in those reference grammars. Yet, as the books'tend to treat the particles within the confines of a sentence, there are still a host ofinadequacies that must be addressed in order to reach a fuller understanding ofthose particles. .

This chapter will first provide a brief review of the syntactico-semantictreatment of some of the particles and then propose a more general framework forconsidering the modality and discourse functions of the major ones. This proposal "is partially based on previous researchers as indicated in the citations; but it reliesheavily on the present author's two unpublished research projects (Chu, 1986 and1987c). The fmal section evaluates the interactions between the different functionsof each particle.

The general strategy of this chapter is to find a core function for each particleat one or more levels. It is hoped that on the basis of the core function the largenumber of labels usually given to any particle by grammar books can be derivedfrom either the meaning of the utterance itself or from the discourse content inwhich the utterance occurs.

In this section, we will mainly take up three of the sentence-final particles: ma, Ie,and me and try to provide a syntactico-semantic account of them. By doing so,however, it is not implied that all three of them can be exhaustively characterizedby their syntactic and/or semantic features. We start with the least controversial maand move on to Ie and me. As we go on, we will find the treatment less and lessadequate if we stay within the bounds ofa traditional sentence.

As was mentioned above, the treatment of the question particle ma is the leastcontroversia1.4 It can be added to a statement to form a question. E.g.

(I) Ta hui shuo Zhongguohua ma?he/she know-how speak Chinese MA'Does he/she know how to speak Chinese?'

which is a straightforward question formed by adding ma to the correspondingstatement Ta hui shuo Zhongguohua 'He/She knows how to speak Chinese.' Othersimilar examples abound. It should also be noted that only declarative sentencesmay be turned into a question by the addition of the particle. Imperative andexclamatory sentences do not enter into the formula. E.g.

(2.a) ?Qing jinlai ma?please in-come MA

'?Please come in?'

b) ?Jintian tianqi duo hao ma?today wether how good MA

'?How nice the weather is today?'

Tht<Chinese sentences in (2) can be uttered only when they are interpreted as echoquestions to mean, respectively, 'Did I hear, "Please come in"?' and 'Did I hear'How nice the weather is today"?'

While the basic fact of adding ma to a statement to form a question is simpleand clear-cut, there are related complications that deserve some discussion. Theyare (a) the negative ma-question, (b) the difference between the ma-question and theV-bu-V question, and (c) the status of other particle questions with a/ya, ba and ne.They are discussed in the following sub-sections.

In the affirmative ma-question, the affIrmation statement P together with the particlema can be interpreted as 'Is it true that P?, Thus, the example in (1) above means'Is it true that he/she speaks Chinese?' which can be reduced to an everyday form'Does he/she speak Chinese?' In the case of the negative ma-question, thecombination of the negative statement not-P and the particle ma does not mean 'Isit true that not-P?' Nor does it mean 'Is it not true that P?, It involves someexpectation on the part of the speaker. E.g.

(3) Ta bu hui shuo Zhongguohua ma?he/she NOT know-how speak Chinese MA'Doesn't he/she speak Chinese?'

The speaker expects the answer to be affIrmative, i.e. 'He/She speaks Chinese.' (Li& Thompson, 1981 :562)

4.1.1.2. Differences Between Ma-Question and V-Not- VQuestion

Though the ma-question is usually glossed as a yes-no question, the yes-no questionin English can be translated into another Chinese question form. E.g.

(4.a) Ni xihuan Moxige cai ma?you like Mexico food MA

b) Ni xihuan bu xihuan Moxige cai?you LIKE NOT LIKE Mexico food

Sentence (4.b) involves a V-not-V question, where the main verb is reduplicatedwith a bu 'not' between the repeated forms to create another type of yes-no questionin Mandarin. The questions in (4.a) and (4.b) are equivalent propositionally but notpragmatically. According to Li and Thompson (1981:548-554), while (4.a) bringsin an assumption about the corresponding statement, (4.b) is neutral. They alsoclaim that the assumption in (4.a) can be either positive or negative in terms of thecontent of the corresponding statement. That is, the speaker of (4.a) may assumethat the hearer likes (or does not like) Mexico food. Li and Thompson furthercontend that while a non-neutral context calls for a ma-question, a neutral one

accepts either question form. They imply that a neutral context may absorb theassumption. Li and Thompson's interpretation, however, has one difficulty: theassumption can be either positive or negative.

Examining through the contexts Li and Thompson provide for the questions,there is only one situation where they claim the assumption is positive, i.e. theproposition in the corresponding statement is assumed to be true by the speaker:(p.553)

(5) (The speaker sees that the hearer has returned)Ou ni yijing huilai Ie ma?oh you already return-come PFV MA

'Oh, are you back already?'

In fact, this question does not just express an assumption that the speaker sees thehearer has returned; but, more importantly, it indicates that the speaker didn'texpect the hearer to be home so early. The assumption, therefore, is negative aboutthe early return of the hearer, i.e. 'I didn't expect you to return so soon.'

We conclude that the ma-question brings in a weak negative assumption-anassumption that is contrary to the proposition in the corresponding statement.s But,since this assumption is weak, it can be absorbed by a neutral context. Thisconclusion also explains why a negative ma-question anticipates a positiveresponse. The assumption in this case is contrary to the corresponding negativestatement to which a ma is added to form the question.

4.1.1.3. Other 'Question' Particles-AIYa, Ba and Ne

Despite the fact that they are considered question particles by some grammars andtextbooks, a/ya, ba and ne do not actually mark 'question' in their own right. It istrue that they often occur at the end of a question: Ba does more often than a/ya,and ne most often. Yet, that fact alone doesn't necessarily make them questionmarkers. That is, the questioning force doesn't necessarily come from the particlesthemselves just because they occur in questions. In this subsection, we will showthat the interrogative force in questions with a/ya, ba and ne comes from some othersources. The reasons for their frequent occurrence in questions will be made clearin Sections 4.2 and 4.3.

A. Questions with A/Ya. Such questions typically occur with a question wordin them:

(6.a) Shei a?who A'Who is it?'

b) Shenmo shi ya?what matter YA'What is the matter?'

The function of a/ya is said to strengthen the interrogative force (Dow, 1983:150)or to soften the tone (Beida, 1982:55). The reason that this particle is labelled aquestion particle is perhaps a matter of convenience for such expressions as Ni haoa? 'How are you?' which is almost always introduced in the first lesson of abeginning Chinese course.

B. Questions with Bo. The so-called ba-questions are usually translatable intoEnglish as questions starting with 'Why don't you ...?' Thus, the particle ba isoptionally treated as a question marker. The treatment works well in cases wherethe subject is second person. The following examples are cited from Li &Thompson (1981 :308):

(7.a) Ni he shui ba6

you drink water BA'Why don't you drink some water?'

b) Ni xiangyixiang bayou think-one-think BA'Why don't you think about it a little?'

There are two disadvantages in this treatment: (i) When the subject is not secondperson, some other English question forms have to be used in translation, which isat best confusing, and (ii) The particle ba would have to be given separateinterpretations for questions and non-questions.

In relation to problem (i) above, Li & Thompson (1981 :308-210) have to use'OK?' ' ...don't you agree?' etc. for the translations of ba:

(8.a) Wo he ban bei ba.I drink half glass BA

'I'll drink half a glass, OK?'

b) Ta buhui zuo zheyang de shi ba.he/she not-will do this-manner DE thing BA'He/She wouldn't do such things, don't you agree?'

Facing problem (ii), one has to invent such other interpretations as 'agreement','approval', 'decision', etc. for the following examples: (Dow, 1983:152)

(9.a) Hao ba, jiu zhemo ban ba.alright BA, then this-way do BA'All right, (we'll) do it this way.

b) Cuole jiu cuo ba.wrong-LE then wrong BA'If it's wrong, it's wrong.'

c) Fanzheng zhunbei hao Ie, diren yao lai jiu rang tamenin-any-case prepare ready LE, enemy want come then let they

lai ba.come BA

Both approaches give rise to complexity and confusion in the analysis of thefunction of ba.

A detailed analysis of this particle will be provided in Section 4.2.1.

c. Questions with Ne. The most annoying problem with the ne-question isthat while the sentence has to be interpreted as a question, there is often nothing elseto which an interrogative force may be syntactically attributed. Dow (1982: 162)gives the following examples:

(lO.a) Nide shu ne?your bookNE'Where'slHow about your book?'

b) Nimen dou huilai Ie, ta ne?you all return LE, he/she NE

'You have all come back. Where is/How about himlher?'

Superficially, there is no other interrogative markers in the questions in (10) above.Therefore, it is very convenient to assign an interrogative function to the particle nethere, especially for pedagogical purposes. In fact, all ne-questions as well as other~e-utterances must follow from some previous context. And the questioning forceIS contextually and phonologically determined if there isn't any other signal for it.Phonologically, a ne-question always has a rising intonation at the end. (Dow,1982: 161) In addition, the interpretation of such questions cannot be pinpointedunless a sufficient context is available. We will elaborate on the importance ofcontext for ne-sentences in Section 4.3.2.

4.1.2. The Change-of-State Particle Le

The sentence-fmalle, when clearly distinguishable from the perfective -Ie, is usuallyinterpreted as marking a change of state. (Cf. Chao, 1968:692; Chu, 1983:97-101.)This analysis is basically correct, as it can be shown to apply to different types ofpredicates below. (For types of verbs in the predicates, see Section 2.1.) In thegloss, only those meanings are given that are relevant to Ie as a sentence-finalparticle. Other possible meanings will be discussed following the examples.

i) Ta shenti hao Ie.he/she body good LE'He/She is healthy now.' (as opposed to 'hislher not being healthybefore')

ii) Dongxi dou gui Ie.thing all expensive LE

'Things are expensive now (Le. Prices have risen).' (as opposed to'Things were not expensive before.')

i) Ren dou zou Ie.person all leave LE'Everyone is leaving/gone.' (as opposed to 'At least some were notleaving or were present before.')

ii) Yu chi Ie.fish eat LE'The fish is eatinglhas (been) eaten.' (as opposed to 'It is not eatinglhas

not (been) eaten.)

i) You ren qiao men Ie.there-be person knock door LE

'Someone's knocking on the door.'(as opposed to 'Nobody was knocking on the door.')

ii) Ta zufu si Ie.he grandfather die LE.'His grandfather is dead.' (as opposed to 'His grandfather was alive

i) Haizi shuizhao Ie.child sleep-successful LE'The child is asleep.' (as opposed to 'He/She was not asleep before.')

ii) Xiao Di dapo wan Ie.Little Brother make-broken bowl LE'Little Brother has broken a bowl' (as opposed to 'He did not break abow!.')

i) Zhao jia gai(le) yisuo da fangzi Ie.Zhao family build( -PFV) a-M big house LEThe Zhaos have built a big house.' (as opposed to 'They did not builda big house.')

ii) Zhang Jiaoshou chuban(le) haojiben shu Ie.Zhang Professor publish(-PFV) several-M book LE'Professor Zhang has published several books.' (as opposed to 'Prof.did not publish several books before.')

Many of the utterances in (11) are ambiguous and 'change of state' is only one oftheir possible interpretations.

The most clear-cut cases are those with state verbs in (l1.a). Since they expressa state, the change-of-state interpretation is straightforward. For the other cases,one has to impose a stative reading on the entire predicate before any change-of-state interpretation is possible, which certainly stands to logic. For example, in thechange-of-state interpretation, (ll.b.i) has to be understood as a state (Le.'Everybody's gone' or 'Everybody's in the process ofleaving'). For the secondreading 'Everybody is in the process ofleaving, the usual interpretation is that theyare starting to leave since the change is from a state of not leaving to one ofleaving.Chao (1968:798) calls it the inchoative use. If the sentence is understood as an~vent, then it means 'Everybody left' and there can be no change-of-stateInterpretation. As a matter of fact, this Ie will not even be considered a sentence-final particle; it will be a perfective-aspect marker. For (l1.b.ii), similarinterpretations are available: 'The fish haslhave (been) eaten', 'The fish is/are in theprocess of eating/being eaten.' The event interpretation 'The fish ate' is possibleonly when the Ie is considered a perfective marker.

For (l1.c.i), only the change-of-state interpretation is possible, since a

perfective marker would occur immediately after the main verb qiao 'knock' ratherthan after the 'V +0' phrase qiao men 'knock on the door'. The change involvedis from 'Nobody was knocking ...' to 'Somebody is knocking .... ' Utterance (11.c.ii)is two-way ambiguous: the perfective-aspect reading 'His grandfather died' and thechange-of-state reading 'His grandfather is dead.' Again, only when a stativemeaning is imposed on the utterance can the change-of-state interpretation becompatible. Note also that since semelfactive verbs are non-durative, they are moreeasily interpretable as states when followed by Ie.

The achievement verbs in (I 1.d) contain a stative ending: zhao 'successful'after shui 'to sleep' andpo 'broken' after da 'to make'. The natural interpretationof the two utterances are stative.

The utterances in (l1.e) are also states rather than events. The main point in(i) is not the event that the Zhaos built a big house, but rather a change as a resultof building the big house. Likewise, the main point in (ii) is not the event that Prof.Zhang published several books, but rather the change as a result of his publishingseveral books. In other words, the speaker uses (l1.e.i) and (l1.e.ii), not to tell theoccurrence ofthe events, but rather to present the consequences of such events. Itis usually very difficult to regard an accomplishment predicate as expressing a state.With the fmalle, however, such a predicate has to be converted into a state beforeit makes any sense. A further piece of evidence that the utterances in (11.e) are forstates is the deletability of the perfective -Ie, though it is more natural in (ii) than in(i). This and some other problems with the accomplishment predicate will beworked out later in Section 4.4.

In the same marmer, the utterance in (I I.f) below is not meant to tell what eventhappened yesterday but rather what change happened from one state to another byway of the event.

(11.f) Ta zuotian chi(le) liangwan fan Ie.he yesterday eat(-PFV) two-bowl rice LE

'He ate two bowls of rice yesterday.' (as opposed to 'He ate more/lessthan 2 bowls before.')

This utterance is most appropriately used to report on the improvement of thecondition of an invalid, i.e. his/her appetite improved. It is not appropriate as areport on the mere occurrence of the event without any reference to a previousdifferent condition.

After the examination of the sentence-final Ie in different types of predicatesas above, one feels very comfortable to conclude that its change-of-stateinterpretation is basically correct. And, indeed, it is. The following apparentcounter~examples are just a result of isolated sentences interpreted without thebenefit of a discourse context:

(12.a) Zhe dongxi gui Ie. (Chao, 1968:962)this thing expensive LE'This is too expensive.'

b) Zhege wenti, tamen yanjiu(le) bantian Ie. (Chu, 1983:100)this-M problem, they study(-PFV) long-time LE

'This problem, they have studied for a long time.'

The reason that a simple change-of-state interpretation doesn't work very well isthat both (a) and (b) in (12) involve more than just a simple statement. Sentence(l2.a) is a case where Ie expresses 'excess over some norm', according to Chao(ibid.). Its interpretation obviously requires a context where the price was, or isexpected to be, lower than the current one. Sentence (12.b) illustrates thecoocurrence of the clause particle Ie with the perfective -Ie. Its interpretationrequires an approach that is capable of reconciling between the perfective aspect ofa dynamic event signalled by -Ie and the change of a non-dynamic state marked byIe, if we hope to hold on to the change-of-state meaning of the sentence-finalparticle.

Li and Thompson (1981 :238-300) provide further instances where a simplechange-of-state interpretation does not even come close to a satisfactoryexplanation. In addition to change of state, they give the following functionalcategories of Ie:

(To the accusation that the speaker has spent the afternoon sleeping)Wo kanle sanben shu Ie!1 read-PVF 3-M book LE

'(What do you mean?!) I have read three books.!'

(Discussing a specific action of a character in relation to a series ofongoing events in a play)

Ta tai zisi Ie!he/she too selfish LE'He/She is too selfish.'

Wo hele sanbei Ie!I drink-PFV 3-glass LE'(Look-I tell you) I've drunk three glasses (so, don't pour me any morel

Wo zai nali zhule liangge yue Ie.I at there live-PFV 2-M month LE'I have lived there for two months.' (As opposed to Wo zai nali zhuleliangge yue, keshi hai bu fai xiguan 'I have lived there for two monthsbut I'm still not used to it', where the first clause doesn't end in a Ie.)

All four of them involve quite extended contexts. One of the possibilities of whythere are various meanings for the fmal particle is that the particular interpretationscome from the contexts rather than from the particle itself. For example, Chang(1986:72-82) argues that L&T's category (a) is mmecessary because the correctionof a wrong assumption is derivable from the context, with the basic function ofchange of state supporting it. He gives several similar examples for deriving sucha reading with Ie. He further argues that categories (b) and (c) can also besubsumed under this basic function. Finally, he comments that their category (d)in fact should be examined in more detail to make it a discourse function. (SeeSection 4.3.1. below.)

At this point, the basic meaning of change-of-state for Ie seems to be correct.But solutions to the problems that involve this particle have to come from sourcesother than within the sentence itself. A discoursal analysis of Ie thus looks moreplausible where context plays a larger part than the sentence.

A discourse account of the sentence-final particle Ie is found in Section 4.3.1.

4.1.3. The Presuppositional Particle Me?

For some reason, the particle me has not received as much attention as some of theother sentence-fmal particles in the literature. Often, it is simply neglected, e.g. Liand Thompson (1981). Other times, it is treated as a variant of ma, though itsdifferent uses are recognized, e.g. Dow (1983). When it is treated separately, thedescription is very brief, e.g. Beida (1982:329).

Its brevity notwithstanding, Beida provides an insightful account for me: it isrecognized as a particle for 'emphasis, indicating obviousness and often expressingthe speaker's confidence in something as a matter of course'. For example,

(14.a) Wo yuan shuo laibuji me, ta pianpian yao quoI from-the-beginning say no-time ME, he just-wouldn't-listen want go

'I told him it was too late but he wouldn't listen and went ahead.'

b) Zhe shi wode jia me, wo za bu huilai!this be my home ME, I how not return

In (l4.a) the particle me expresses the same overtone as 'I told you so' and in (l4.b)it adds the meaning of 'You know that.' Both can be subsumed under the rubric of'What I am saying should be obvious.'

Independently of Beida, Chu (l985b:231-4) claims that me is a particle tosignal that the proposition (i.e. the meaning) of the entire utterance isPRESUPPOSED. His claim is later substantiated by additional data collected fromdifferent sources and by testing against other modality particles and adverbs. Ourconclusion here is that the generalized meaning of me can be represented as 'heavilypresuppositional' -Le. the speaker assumes that the content of the utterance is knownto the hearer. Below is a further example from actual conversation:

(15) Wo shuo wo Yingwen bu xing. [Ta shuo,] 'Hai, Yingwen bu xing, niI say I English not good. [he say,] 'well, English not good, you

jiu xian "take" Yingwen me.'then first take English ME

'I said my English wasn't good. "well," [he said, "if your] English is notgood, then you take some English [lessons] first.'"

The speaker in (15) is reporting on a conversation with her boss, who was to assignher a new job that would require a lot of English. So, she was trying to decline thenew assignment by the excuse that her English wasn't good enough. But, her bosspointed out that she could take English lessons first. In her direct quotation, a meis used to indicate that her boss assumed that the speaker knew what was being saidwas true. This is the presuppositional use of me. In other words, the particle marksthe utterance as presupposed.

Chappell (1991:47) does a semantic study of me and concludes that it has twodistinct but related uses in utterance-final position. The first use is to remind 'thelistener that the entire proposition is obvious or self-evident from the precedingdiscussion or from their shared cultural knowledge.' The second is 'to expressdisagreement, possibly combined with indignation or impatience at the hearer'sopposite point of view.' While the second use is a combination of the basic functionof me and some pragmatic factors, the first one is closely similar to Chu' s 1985bclaim: me is used to indicate that the content of the utterance is presupposed.Chappell's data clearly illustrate this fundamental use (p. 49):

(l6.a) Ranhou ne, ta ...jiu shang Ie me.after NE, he ..then wounded LE ME

'After that, he'd hurt himself, of course.'

b) Jiu zhidao yiding shi ta diao de yinwei ta kan kan tathen know certainly be he drop DE because he see see him

zouguo me.walk-past ME

'He knew it was definitely dropped by him ...because, well, he'dseen ...seen him walk by.'

Both of the instances of me express the meanings of 'of course', 'as you know', etc.,which is derivable from presupposed knowledge.

It is clear that both Chu and Chappell have identified the basic semanticfunction of the sentence-final particle me as indicating that the content of theutterance is presupposed. This function is clear within the utterance itself. Theother meanings such as obviousness, self-evidence, disagreement, impatience andindignation are not clearly demonstrated by this semantic feature of the particleonly. Some pragmatic factors must be considered in order to determine on thoseother usages. The next two sections will deal with me and other particles in moredetail in terms of modality and discourse context.

In Section 3.2, modality is defmed in the sense of Lyons (1977) as consisting of twocategories: epistemic and deontic. Epistemic modality is what determines the truthof the proposition, which we have more or less regarded as semantic in nature in thepreceding section. Deontic modality is what expresses obligation and permission.In addition, opinion and attitude can also be assigned to this category. In thepresent section, we will deal with deontic modality in general and attitudinalmodality in particular through the use of sentence-fmal particles. Included in thiscategory are ba for uncertainty, a/ya for personal involvement, and me forinsistence.

Though the treatment of this particle as indicating 'suggestion', 'mild question','modesty', 'supposition', 'agreement', etc. is generally accepted (e.g. Dow,1983:151-2; Chu, 1983:105-7; Li et aI, 1984:428-9), there are still some questionsas to its fundamental function. The most general and detailed account of thisparticle is found in Li and Thompson (1981:307-311). We will start with theirassumption and try to improve on it by proposing a more basic function in thissection.

4.2.1.1. Li and Thompson's' Soliciting Agreement' Account

Li and Thompson (1981 :307-311) assign a function of 'soliciting agreement' to thesentence-fmal particle ba. This treatment is claimed not only to be able to accountfor the usual cases of ba that have just been mentioned above and illustrated in (17)below; but it is also made to be able to explain such unusual occurrences in aquestion-word question as illustrated in (18) below.

Women zou ba.we go BA'Let's go.'

Wo gaosu guo ni Ie ba? (Chao, 1968:808)I tell EXP you LE BA

'Have I told you (that) before?'

Haizi dou da Ie ba?child all big CHANGE-OF-STATE BA

'The children are all grown, I guess.'

(18) Ni daodi yao shenme ba? (Chao, 1968:807)you after-all want what BA'What do you want, after all?'

All the sentences in (17) can be interpreted as adding the question 'Do you agree?'to the corresponding statements. For (18), Li and Thompson's explanation (p. 311)is that it most naturally occurs in a context where two people are quarrelling andone fmally says (18) in exasperation. They feel that a fuller message such as (18')below should clarify the problem:

While Li and Thompson's explanation for (18) may seem to fit the agreement-solicitation function by providing a 'don't-you-think' frame, there is still somediscrepancy between the exact meaning and use of (18) on the one hand and thefunction of soliciting agreement on the other. In fact, the explanation seems to fitprecisely because this very important feature of the use of the sentence-final ba is

left out in the interpretation of the sentence in (18).It is true that (18') is a more accurate translation than the one given in (18); but

it is also true that it doesn't adequately highlight the content of ba. Without ba,(18) could just as well be represented as (18") below:

There are two points that merit further discussion in the L&T explanation. First, themeaning 'don't you think', which is supposed to reflect the agreement-solicitationfunction of ba, actually comes from the question itself; it doesn't come from thesentence-final particle. Secondly, the other portion of the added meaning 'youshould let me know' is there just to complete the interrogation. That is, 'Don't youthink ...what in the world you want?' is not a complete question. 'You should let meknow' is needed to serve as a link between the direct question 'don't you think' andthe indirect one 'what you want'. Neither portion of the added meaning in (18')therefore comes from the final ba. In other words, neither really accounts for thefunction of ba. On the other hand, the ba in (18) DOES correspond to the Englishtranslation OK in (18'), if the latter is given a suspended intonation for impatience.With this specific intonation, it can be interpreted as expressing '(I have now saidall I have to say. If you are still not convinced, then) I give up.' In the givencontext, this OK means 'I have insisted you don't need what you say you need; butnow if you are still not convinced, I concede unwillingly that you might need it.'Add this meaning to the question without ba, then you get exactly the one with batranslatable into its English counterpart in (18'). The explanation of this particularcase of ba therefore lies in its expression for an unwilling concession.

The situation now leaves us with a very thorny problem: How can we preciselyand compactly represent the content or function of this use of ba? Furthermore, ifthe representation is claimed to have any validity, it must also be able to reconcilebetween the occurrences of the particle in (17) and those of numerous other casesbecause native speakers perceive them as one and the same sentence-final particleba.

4.2.1.2. The 'Speaker's Uncertainty' Proposal

Before we try to answer the question just raised above, let us first consider otherutterances like those discussed in (9) in Section 4. I. 1.3, repeated as (19) below.

Hao ba, jiu zhemo ban ba.alright BA, then this-way do BA'All right, (we'll) do it this way.'

Cuole jiu cuo ba.wrong-LE then wrong BA'If it's wrong, it's wrong.'

Fanzheng zhunbei hao Ie, diren yao lai jiu rang tamen lai ba.in-any-case prepare ready LE, enemy want come then let they come BA

'In any case, we are ready. If the enemies are coming, let them come.'

While the first ba in (19.a) may be regarded as a pause particle in the middle of asentence and thus will not be considered here, all the other occurrences of ba aredefmitely sentence-fmal.

All three utterances in (19) are subject to various interpretations, depending ontheir contexts. Thus the translations only represent one possibility in each case. Forexample, (19.a) may be interpreted as the speaker 'accepting' the proposal of doingsomething in a certain way or encouraging others to 'accept' it that way. Utterance(19.b) may indicate that the speaker is willing to 'accept' something being wrongor that he/she is advising the hearer to 'accept' it. Likewise, (19.c) can be taken asthe speaker 'accepting' the fact or he/she advising the hearer to 'accept' it.Whatever their interpretations, there is something consistent through all threeinstances: the speaker's reluctance in acknowledging or accepting what is expressedin the proposition. This unchanging theme thus seems to be ba's basic function inthis set of utterances. We propose to use one of the subjective epistemic modalitymeanings (Lyons, I977:800ft) to describe this common thread piercing through allthree in (19): the speaker's UNCERTAINTY about the content of the propositioncontained in the utterance as a whole.

Let us now look at how this 'speaker's uncertainty' interpretation works in theabove cases. By using ba, the speaker is saying, 'I am not quite sure about it,though ... .' This fits nicely for (19.a), which may thus mean: 'I am not quite surethat it should be done this way, though (you mightilet'slI will try)'. For (19.b), theinterpretation can be: 'I am not quite sure that it is wrong, though if that's the case,(I would/you might accept) it as wrong.' For (19.c), the full meaning can be: 'I amnot quite sure about it, though if the enemies are coming, then let them come.'

A similar interpretation can be applied to the utterances in (17) for the sameresult. For (17.a), the interpretation becomes: 'We will go, but I am not quite sureabout it,' and therefore it is not a strong directive but a suggestion. Utterance (17.b)means: '(I think) I told you before, but I am not sure if! did.' As the second personis involved in this non-imperative, it sounds more like a question. Utterance (17.c)means: '(I think) the children are all grown but I am not quite sure.' Since it is aplain statement, it is interpreted as a supposition. Generally, the corresponding

epistemic modality meaning can be variously expressed in English by adverbs likeperhaps and maybe, auxiliaries like may and might, or such other forms as let's, tagquestion, I guess, etc.

To explain (18) in the same fashion, however, involves some complication. AsLi and Thompson (1981 :311) note, the utterance is natural only after a long quarrelbetween two parties. It was also pointed out above that there is a further scenariothat must be added to the context in order for the utterance to be meaningful. Thatis, the speaker, having been unable to convince the listener of something, fmallygives up and concedes unwillingly by asking, 'What do you want after all?' This'unwilling concession' is expressed by the final ba. At this point, a natural questionto ask is, What is the connection between this unwilling concession9 and thespeaker's uncertainty just proposed above? To answer this question, we need to goback to the basic function of sentence- final particles.

By definition, a sentence-final particle is added to a sentence as a whole andthus generally operates over the entire sentence (or clause). In other words, theinterpretation of a sentence-final particle does not just affect any portion of thesentence (or clause) in which it occurs, but it rather affects the whole sentence (orclause). In the case of (18), then, the interpretation of ba does not only affect thecontent of the proposition in the clause under discussion (i.e. 'what you want'); butit affects the entire question (i.e. the proposition plus INTERROGA nON as awhole). If we claim that the particle ba expresses the modality of speaker'suncertainty, then this modality meaning should be more appropriately interpretedas superposed over the question itself rather than any portion of the question. Inother words, ba here indicates that the speaker is not quite sure about the act ofasking the .question rather than about the content of the question. If so, then theinterpretation of(18) should be: I am not quite sure if the question should be asked,though I am asking you what you want, after all. The situation of the speaker'suncertainty about asking the question is perceived as hislher unwillingness toconcede. This interpretation is completely congruent with the situation givenabove. It is also obvious that this interpretation of (18) as having an uncertaintymodality meaning is more accurate and general as well as more natural than the'agreement solicitation' interpretation.

Below, we examine some more examples to further verify the applicability ofthis 'speaker's uncertainty' hypothesis in some of the other uses of ba that havebeen proposed in the literature.

(a) Ni bie guan zhege xianshi ba. (Dow, 1983:152)you don't meddle this-M idle-matter BA'You better not meddle with this danm thing!'

(b) Neige ni beng gei qian Ie ba. (Chao, 1968:807)that you needn't give money LE BA

'Then you won't need to pay for that.'

Wei shehuizhuyi shiye er zhandou ba. (Beida, 1982:68)for socialism cause ER fight BA

'(We shall) fight for the cause of socialism.'

(a) Tang zai shangxue, zhongxue yi gai biye Ieif PROG go-to-school, middle-school already should graduate PFV

ba. (Beida, 1982:68)BA

'If (he) had gone to school, (he) should have graduated from highschool.'

(b) Nimen dou xinku Ie ba. (Chu, 1983:106)you all tired-from-hard-work LE BA

'You must all be tired from working hard. '

Varied as the labels may be, the interpretations in (20)-(22) are very wellcovered by our 'speaker's uncertainty'. Both utterances in (20) are imperatives.When an imperative is accompanied by a marker of uncertainty, it becomes arequest or piece of advice. Whether such an utterance can be regarded as a warningor not depends on its content, e.g. advice not to do something in order to avoiddanger is a warning. Those in (22) involve present situations. If the speaker is notquite sure about a present situation, what he/she says is regarded as an estimate orguess. Finally, (21) is a statement about some future action. Ifit involves secondand third persons only, it is a hortative. A less than sure hortative can only beconsidered a wish. But if it involves the first person as well, then it is definitely awish whether or not there is a ba at the end.

From another perspective, our modal analysis of speaker's uncertainty for theparticle ba has an added advantage. It uniformly accounts for both the sentence-final particle ba and the pause particle ba in the middle of a sentence. In an earlierexample, (19.a), repeated blow:

(19.a) Hao ba, jiu zhemo ban ba.alright BA, then this-way do BA

'All right, (we'll) do it this way.'

it was mentioned that the fIrst ba might be regarded as a pause particle and was notconside~ed. In fact, ~tcan likewise be accounted for as one for expressing speaker'sunc~rtamty. The difference between a plain hao and hao ba is just a matter ofstraightforward .agre:ment vs. a qualifIed ~greement. In other words, by using haoba the speaker ISa httle doubtful about hls/her agreement, i.e. he/she is uncertainabout giving his/her consent. Below are some more examples of ba used as a pauseparticle (Beida, 1982:68-69).

(23.a) Tianyoude taitai xinzhong hen nanguo: shuohua ba, meideTianyou's wife heart-in very uncomfortable: talk BA, nothing

shuo de; bu shuo ba, you jiejue-buliao wenti.talk DE; not talk BA, further solve-not-fmish problem

'Tianyou's w.ife feels very uncomfortable: If she talks, there's nothing totalk about; Ifshe doesn't, that doesn't solve the problem, either.'

b) Z?e shi neizh~ng tebiede tianqi: zai wuli ba, zuobuxiagong qu, ;his be that-kind unusual weather: at house-in BA,work-not-on go, ;

chulai ba, ye bing meiyou yiding kezuo de shi.out-go BA, also as-assumed not-have necessarily able-do DE thing

'It wa~ that kind. of unusual weather: If you stay inside, you can't getanythmg done; If you go out, there isn't anything particular for you todo, either.'

Note th~t in both instances, the ba-phrases occur in pairs. They are presented asalternatives, expressible in the 'either ...or ... ' format. Note also that in bothinstances, either occurrence of the ba-phrase is sufficient to mark the alternativeAt the same time, such ba-phrases can also be interpreted as conditionals (Beida:1982:67). The ~eason why they can take on two different interpretations is that theyare actually denved from the speaker's uncertainty. One more example will suffice:

(24) Zhejian shi, ta ba, buken zuo; wo ba, buhui zuo.this-M matter, he/she BA, not-willing do; I BA, not-know-how do'As to this job, he/she doesn't want to do it and I don't know how to do it.'

derived from the speaker's uncertainty reading independently of each other orjointly.

In this section, we have discussed the function of the sentence-fmal particle ba fromdifferent perspectives. We fIrst reviewed Li and Thompson's representation of baas a particle for 'soliciting agreement'. While it works in most cases, it doesn'tquite fIt the interpretation of special cases such as its presence in the question-wordquestion. Besides, it is impossible to derive from 'soliciting agreement' such otherfunctions as indicating speaker's acceptance, agreement, etc. We thus haveproposed speaker's uncertainty for ba as a modality particle. As a sentence-fInalparticle, ba's modality function is interpreted as superposed over the entire sentenceor clause. Thus, in the case of a question with a ba, its modal force exerts over thequestion as a whole rather than over the proposition within the question. Thisexplains naturally why a question-word question ending in ba has an added readingof unwilling concession.

Furthermore, the speaker's uncertainty hypothesis also explains the ability ofba to express speaker's acceptance or agreement, since in all such cases there isalways implied some unwillingness-i.e uncertainty on the part of the speaker.

Finally, speaker's uncertainty provides a uniform account for both the sentence-fmal particle ba and the sentence-internal pause particle ba.

Not much has been done on this particle in published literature. Some shorttreatments are found, chronologically, in Chao (1968), Li and Thompson (1981),Dow (1983), and Li et al (1984:426-8). In this section, we will propose ageneralized core function for this particle to integrate the previous treatments.

4.2.2.1. Functions Identified by Chao and Dow

Chao (1968:803-6) identifIes 10 functions for the sentence-fmal particle a/ya. Theyare listed below:

Ni mingtian chuqu bu chuqu a?you tomorrow out-go not out-go A'Are you going out tomorrow?'

Ni bu chu a?you not go A

'You are not going?'

Wai, xiansheng a!hey, mister A

'Say, mister!'

Xiao Wang a! Ni hai mei shang chuang a?!Little Wang A! you still not go-to bed A'Little Wang! Aren't you in bed yet?!'

Zou a! Zamen dou zou a!leave A! we all leave A'Let's go! Let's all go!'

Wo bing mei zuo cuo ya!I as-assumed did-not do wrong YA'I didn't do it wrong (as it was assumed to be)!'

Benlai ni ye zhidao a, ye yongbuzhao zai shuo a,...in-the-beginning you also know A, also no-need again say A'As you already know and I don't have to say it again ...'

Zhege ren de hua shi kaobuzhu de ya!this-M person DE word be unreliable DE YA'This man's word is unreliable, mind you!'

Yaoshi ni bu ken a, na wo jiu bu guan Ie.if you not willing A, then I then not care LE'If you are not willing, then I won't have anything to do with it.'

Shenmo tian a, di a, ri a, zhexie zi dou hui xie.such tian A, di A, ri A, these characters all know-how-to write'Characters like tian, di, ri, etc, he can write them all. '

A close examination of the examples above reveals that in most of the cases thesame functions in each heading can be performed without the fmal particle, exceptperhaps for (33) and (34), which are not exactly sentence-final. Stripping theexamples of the particle in (25) through (32), the remaining sentences retain themeanings identified by Chao. The resulting utterances, however, do seem to lacksomething that the original ones have. It does seem that the types of speech-actforce in the utterance provide a favorable environment for the particle a/ya to occur.But what the particle actually does appears to be quite something else.

Dow (1983: 149-151) lists eight uses for the same particle; they are pretty muchsimilar to the functions that Chao identifies.

4.2.2.2. Li and Thompson: Reduced Forcefulness

A more serious effort to discover the function of a/ya as a sentence-fmal particle isfound in Li and Thompson (1981:313-317), though the treatment is brief incomparison with those of the other particles. They observe that the meanings ofconfirmation question, vocative particle, command, impatient statement, andwarning as exemplified in Chao, are actually contained in the utterances themselvesrather than expressed by the particle. As a result, they attribute one basic functionto a/ya: to reduce the force of the utterance. 'Reduced Forcefulness' is the labelgiven to the particle. In other words, softening the tone is considered its main use.

In most cases, reduced forcefulness is an appropriate interpretation.Unfortunately, it doesn't apply across the board without any problem. For example,in the case of a warning, instead of reducing forcefulness, the presence of theparticle seems to make the warning more personal and more concerned thanotherwise. E.g.

(35.a) Ni dui ta yao xiaoxin yidiar.you toward him/her must careful a-little'You got to be careful about him/her (though it's not quite my business).'

b) Ni dui ta yao xiaoxin yidiar a.'You got to be careful about himlher (and 1 am really concerned).'

The addition of an a at the end in (b) makes the warning more personal and moreconcerned. Stripping the utterances off a/ya in (32) will produce the same effectas in (35.a). There are other cases where the forcefulness of the tone seems to beincreased, rather than reduced, by the presence of the particle. Compare (a) and (b)below.

(36.a) Wo shi hen ai ni de a!1 be very love you DE A'It is a fact that 1 love you very muchl-Le. you know how much 1 loveyou!'

b) Wo shi hen ai ni de.'It is a fact that 1 love you very much.-Le. 1just want you to know thatit's a fact.'

Utterance (a) is more forceful than (b) bflcause of the personal involvement in thetone which (b) lacks.

Thus, Li and Thompson (1981 :317) appear to be partially correct when theycomment on the difference that the absence of a/ya makes in a warning: ' ...withoutthe sentence-final particle a/ya, [the warning] is more urgent, more official andmore detached than [one with it].' Their 'more official and more detached' tone inthe absence of the particle is the other side of our comment above: 'more personaland more concerned' because of its presence. The higher degree of urgency,though, is directly related to the impersonal nature of the message.

We now further investigate the use of the particle a/ya on the basis of data fromscreen scripts, recorded conversations, and questionnaires we used in earlierunpublished studies Chu, 1986 & 1987c). Our conclusion is that the sentence-fmalparticle a/ya denotes the speaker's personal involvement.

Below are some samples from the data that we have collected:

a) A: Huoji zhun bi gan haochi, wo bang ni jia ge ganzi....turkey gizzard comapre liver good-eat, 1 help you pick M liver ...'Turkey gizzard tastes better than liver. Let me pick a piece of liverfor you ...

B: Tai da Ie. Wo chile zhege jiu bu chi neige Ie a. Bietoo big LE 1 eat-PFV this-M then not eat that-M LE A don't

zai gei wo Ie.again give me LE

'It's too big. I'll eat this piece but not that one! Don't give me anymore.'

b) A: Ta ziji hui gaosu ziji zhe shi zenmoyangde luyindaLit selfwill tell self this be what-kind tape'It [the tape recorder] will tell itself what kind of tape is beingused.'

B: OK. Na hen hao a.OK. that very good A

'All right. That's terrific!'

Nimen yaoshi zai bu zhengqi dehua, guojia jiu yao wanle a.you-pI. if still not shape-up if, country then will finsih-LE A.

Nimen nianqing ren, zeren ke zhen bu qing a.you-pI young person, responsibility KE real not light A

'Ify'all still don't shape up, the nation isn't going to have any future.Young men, your responsibilities are really crucial!'

M: Beizhi zui-gai wan-si, benxian lifan-tongshihumble-me crime-deserve 1DODO-death,this-county translator

you bei fanren shahai Ie.again by barbarians kill LE

'I humbly beg your excellency's forgiveness. Once again, ourtranslator was murdered by the barbarians.'

G: Yige xiaoxiaode tongshi sile, hebi dajingxiaoguai ya.one-M tiny-little translator die-PFV, why-must make-a-fuss YA.

Gei maile, bujiu dele me.give bury-LE, not-then OK ME

'No need to make a fuss about the death of a lowly translator! Justbury him, will you?'

Obviously, none of the first three can be interpreted as for expressing reducedforcefulness, as Li and Thompson claim. On the other hand, while all three can beregarded as adding a touch of personal concern, the fourth instance actually showsindifference. All four of them can be comfortably covered under the proposedgeneral feature personal involvement. The case in (38.b) can be interpreted as'Let me tell you there is no need to make a fuss about....' In the same vein, the onein (37.a) can be taken to be saying, 'Let me tell you that....' and the one in (37.b),to be saying, 'It is my opinion that it's terrific.'

The label 'personal involvement' can be justified by two pragmatic parameters:speaker's concern and degree of certainty. Speaker's concern is measured by theoccurrence of frrst- and second-person subject or topic. The rationale behind it isthat a second-person subject/topic expresses the speaker's interest in the hearer(s)and that a first-person subject/topic indicates the speaker's participation in the stateof affair. According to the statistics from our corpus, more than 50% of theoccurrences of alya have a second-person subject/topic and more than 20% havea first-person subject/topic, i.e. a total of over 70%. Degree of certainty ismeasured by the utterance's ability to tolerate the addition of modality adverbsexpressing certainty. Adverbs such as yiding 'definitely' are for high certainty;others such as keneng 'likely' are for intermediate certainty, and still other such askongpa 'I'm afraid' are for low certainty. We find that over 70% of the instancesof alya in our corpus are in the intermediate range of certainty. Since an opinionis not quite a fact and is thus usually coded with mid-range certainty, alya'soverwhelming ability to cooccur with adverbs of this nature indicates that theparticle is used to express a personal opinion. These two parameters of speaker'sconcern and intermediate-range certainty combine to prompt us to call alya aparticle of personal involvement.

This more generalized interpretation of 'personal involvement' does not onlydissolve the difficulty in (37) and (38), but it also incorporates into the core functionother case which would otherwise be considered exceptional. E.g. in (29) above,repeated below as (39):

(39) Zou a. Zamen dou zou a.leave A. we all leave A'Let's go! Let's all go!'

the first-person subject zamen is more f~r the speaker's personal involvement thana command or a softening of the ~one, I.e. reduced .forcefulness. . .

An added advantage in treatmg alya as a particle of personal mvolv~m~nt ISthat it is also easily applicable to the use of the particle for pauses wlthm anutterance. The reader may try to apply it to examples (33) and (34) above.

In Section 4.1.3 above, we discussed the semantic aspect of the sen~~nce~fIn~1particle me: Semantically, it can be regarded as a particle ofpresupposltlon, I.e. Itsignals that the content of the utterance ~spres.uppo~ed to .be true. Th~t, howev~r,isn't all that there is to the particle. ThiS sectIOn Will mamly address ItS modalttyfunction of 'insistence'. We draw heavily on Chappell (1992) and our ownunpublished work.

4.2.3.1. Chappell: Obviousness, Disagreement andIndignation

We recall that Chappell (1991:47) proposes two distinct but related semanticfunctions for the sentence-final me. One is the 'obviousness' function, i.e. meserves to remind 'the listener that the entire proposition is obvious or self-evidentfrom the preceding discussion or from their shared cultural know~edge.' Thesecond is the 'disagreement' function, i.e. the particle 'expresses disagreement,possibly combined with indignation or impatience a~the hearer's ~o.int ofview-:(Section 4.1.3. above.) In the same section, we mentioned that the ~Isagreementinterpretation is perhaps a combination of the basic function modified by somepragmatic factors. It is now in order for us to look into the substance of ourprevious comment.

Just as we have treated the divergent meanings of some of the other sentence-final particles, we will try to see if this disagreement read~ng isn't inde~~ theproduct of the core function of the particle in combination With the propositIOnalcontent ofthe utterance. At this point, a natural question arises: How does a hearertell that the particle is used for one function rather than for the other? To answerthe question, let's look at some of Chappell's data:

(40) B: Xianzai shou zheizhong chuguochao yingxiang de ren tainow suffer this-kind go-abroad-trend influence DE people too

duo Ie. (p. 55)manyLE .'

'There are far too many people being influenced by thiS trend of gomgabroad.'

C: Zhe ye shi hao shi me!this also be good matter ME

'That's something good, too!' [sic][low intonation pitch, quiet voice]

(41) B: Ni kan women you bashifen de yudi gen ... (p. 56)you see we have 80-point DE leeway with'You see we have 80 points leeway over the ... '

A: Zhongzhuan me.polytechnic ME'Polytechnic!'[high pitch, raised voice, attenuated me]

B: Zhongzhuan me.polytechnic ME

'With the polytechnic.'[low pitch, neutral voice]

Chappell claims that the me in (40) is used to express disagreement. In fact,however, the same disagreement meaning can just as well be expressed without theuse of me. The point of disagreement is quite explicit when Speaker C says that it[so many people going abroad] is something good following speaker B's disapproveof it. The biggest problem in Chappell's interpretation of what Speaker C says liesin the infelicitous translation of the adverb ye, which she renders as 'too' at the endof the English version. Actually, the adverb ye in this context is also a modalityword: it means 'you might think otherwise, but actually it is [something good].' (Cf.Section 3.2.2.) Similar examples can be found in the following exchange:

(42) A: Dao Niuyue qu, zuo feiji wo zuobuqi.to New-York go, take plane I take-not-afford

'Flying to New York, I can't afford it. '

B: Qishi ye bu gui.actually YE not expensive'Actually, it's not expensive.'

Speaker Bin (42) usesye not for the 'also' meaning but for presenting an oppositestate of being in disagreement with Speaker A. Just as in the case of (40), a fmalme can likewise be added to the utterance by Speaker B in (42). The differencethen is an added meaning of 'Of course, .... ' 'You know that, .... ' etc. Thus, the mein this case, as is in the case of(40), is nothing more than 'presupposed' added to

a statement of disagreement. It is therefore not quite accurate to assign a'disagreement' reading to the particle. An obvious answer to the question posed inthe preceding paragraph is, therefore, that the hearer/reader derives thedisagreement function of me from the propositional meaning of the utterance itself.

The conversation in (41) calls for some situational background in order to fullyunderstand it. The situation provided by Chappell is like this: Speaker B is talkingabout her daughter's entrance exam. Her daughter has scored 500 points, which is80 points above the cutoff point for admission into polytechnics. Yet, the daughteris admitted to a school no higher ranked than any polytechnic. Speaker B istherefore quite angry at the unfair admission result. Thus, the first me used bySpeaker A is said to express indignation and the second one by Speaker B is foragreement. Unfortunately, only the description of situation is given in Chappell.The very terse and incomplete linguistic context Chappell cites, as presented in(41), doesn't really give any clue to the alleged indignation. There is thus no wayto confirm or refute whether the indignation reading indeed arises from the particlealone.10 But, from the intonation given underneath each utterance, it is pretty clearthat intonation seems to have more to do with whether 'indignation' is present. Forexample, the following utterance can very well be interpreted as a simple questionor an indignant remark, depending on what intonation accompanies it.

(43) Shei shuo de me?/!who say DE ME'Who said that?/!'

With a low pitch and neutral voice on me, it is just a question for information-i.e.'(I insist that you tell me) who said that'. Yet, when uttered with a high pitch andraised voice on the particle, it may carry the tone of' Are you accusing me of sayingthat?'-there definitely is some indignation in it. Therefore, our suspicion is that,just as in the case of disagreement, the indignation reading is also derivable fromthe propositional content of the utterances with the added intonation. Theagreement reading for the me by Speaker B in (41) can be dismissed the same wayas was the disagreement reading above.

For lack of more appropriate data, we will not further comment on the'indignation' use of the particle. But we will proceed to look at a more detailedanalysis of the particle me, based on a much large amount of data from the field inthe next section.

4.2.3.2. From Factuality to Insistence

We did an extensive investigation of three sentence-final particle me, ne and a/yaon basis of two questionnaire surveys, two screen-plays published in Taiwan, andabout 3 hours of tape-recorded live conversation with 10 participants altogether.The findings about me can be formulated in a hypothesis as follows:

(44) The function of the sentence-fmal particle me is to indicate factuality and,more importantly, to express insistence. I.e. by using this particle, thespeaker is saying that the content of the utterance is a fact and that (s)hewants the hearer to accept it as such.

The hypothesis doesn't only address the issue of the semantic content of theparticle, but it also takes into consideration the intention of the speaker in using it.The latter is a pragmatic function. Let us first look at a few examples from therecorded conversation:

(45) Wo bushi zao gaosu ni Ie, wo xiansheng xia xingqi you yaoI not-BE early tell you Ie, my husband next week again will

chuchai Ie me.go-on-business-trip LE ME

'Didn't I tell you so! My husband is going on a business trip again nextweek.'

(46) A: Ta gen wo tongnian, shu zhu de, .she with me same-age, bom-in-the-year-ofpig DE .'She is my age, bom in the year of the pig.'

B: Ta haoxiang bi ni xiao yidian.she seem than you young a-little'She seems to be a little younger than you.'

A: Xiao yidian? Ta gen wo yiyang, shu zhu de me.young a-little? she with me same, bom-in-the-year-ofpig DE ME'A little younger? (No), she's my age, bom in the year of the big.'

In both (45) and (46), the speakers use me not only to indicate that the content ofthe utterance is true (Le. presupposed) but also to persuade the hearer to accept itas true.

To confirm the hypothesis, the collected data are examined for independentevidence. The particle me is found to be incompatible with such low certaintyadverbs as kongpa '(I'm) afraid', haoxiang 'seems (like)', yexu 'perhaps', while itpreponderately with high certainty adverbs such as dangran 'of course' andyiding'defmitely'. The cooccurrence rate of me with low certainty adverbs is found to be0% (of two tokens) in the screenplays and 2% (of 42 tokens) in the tapedconversations. This fmding clearly suggests that the speaker using this particle iscertain of the propositional content of the clause. Thus, the factuality portion ofthe hypothesis is confirmed.

The hypothesis is further tested in two surveys with 65 and 77 native speakingrespondents in each. The first survey asks the participants to select the mostappropriate sentence-final particle out of three possibilities, including the non-useof any. The following is a sample item in the survey.

(47) A: Wo bu xiang da dianhua qu wen, pa tamenI not want make phone-call to ask, afraid they

tingbudong.hear-not-understand

'I don't want to ask them on the phone, [because] I am afraid theywouldn't understand [my English].'

B: Nide Yingyu shuode hen hao (ne, me, 0).your English speak-DE very good

'You speak very good English (ne, me, 0).'

Of the 61 valid responses, 55 choose me for this environment, where Speaker Bobviously tries to encourage Speaker A to make the phone call in English byassuring him/her that it is a fact that he/she speaks very good English. Thestatistical figures show an overwhelming agreement in the choice of me. Out of atotal of over 200 responses that prefer a fmal particle, 84% (179 tokens) choose mewhile only 14% (19 tokens) choose other particles. Even when the preference fornon-use of any particles (56 tokens) is included, the agreement on the use of me isstill as high as 68%. These figures strongly confirm that the particle is also used forinsistence.

The other survey is designed to find out whether the choice of the particle meis affected by such factors as past vs. future event or subjectivity vs. objectivity inthe speaker's attitude. In this questionnaire, both past and future events arepresented and the participants are instructed to choose the most appropriate particleand reject the least appropriate vis-a-vis the presence of a given adverb or to choosethe most appropriate adverb and reject the least appropriate vis-a-vis a givenparticle. The adverbs used for this purpose are you, hai and zai. We recall that youand hai are associated with subject judgement of certain type of events while zai isneutral. The following illustrates the items in the survey:

(48.a) Ni zenmo hai bu xiangxin, Xiao Ming zuotian wanshang __ cyou,you how still not believe, Xiao Ming yesterday night _

zai, hai) qichuan Ie me.asthema LE ME

'You still don't believe me! (Let me tell you) for sure, Xiang Ming hadanother asthma attack last night.'

b) Ni jintian bubi huiqu Ie, fanzheng mingtian __ (you, zai, har)you today no-need go-back LE, anyway tomorrow

yao lai me.need come ME

'You don't have to go home today; you will have to come back againtomorrow, anyway.'

(49.a) Wo shuo Lao Wu yiding hui dangxuan, zheci bushi youI said Lao Wu definitely would be-elected, this-time not-be again

dangxuan le (O, me, ne, ya).elected LE

'I said Old Wu would definitely be elected. And he sure was electedagain.'

b) Aiya, ni cai hele nemo yidiar jiu, zenmo hui zui ne?well, you just drink-PFV that little booze, how can-be drunk NE?

Zai he yibei_(O, me, ne, ya).again drink a-M

'Well, you've had very little, how can you be drunk? You sure can haveanother drink. '

The (a) examples present past events and those in (b) present future events. Thedifference doesn't seem to affect the choice or rejection of me.

The correlations between the adverbs and the particles are less straightforward.For (48.a) where there is the presence of a me, 74 out of78 respondents choose youas the most appropriate adverb and 41 rejectzai as the least appropriate. For (48.b),72 choose hai as the most appropriate and 57 reject zai as the least appropriate inthe presence of a me. The results indicate that me is more compatible withsubjective judgement than with a neutral view expressed somewhere else in thesame utterance. This subjective judgement added on to the semantic function ofpresupposition seems to produce the function of insistence.

For (49.a) where the adverb you is present, 64 out of 77 respondents choose meas the most appropriate; and 33 and 32 reject ne and ya, respectively, as the leastappropriate. The result agrees with the above findings. For (49.b), however, where

the neutral zai is present, only 43 choose me as the most appropriate; and 46 and 22reject ne and ya, respectively, as the least appropriate. These results might seem toill fit the overall pattern for me being likely to cooccur with a subjective judgementadverb.

Further examination, however, reveals that (49.b) does not contradict thehypothesis. ..

While it is natural the insistence-particle me to occur WIthan adverb for hIghlysubjective opinion, it doesn't necessarily follow that the particle can NOT cooccurwith a neutral modality adverb. In fact, since the particle has the entire clause as itsscope its 'insistence' force simply overrides the neutral sense of the adverb within

, IIthe clause.

All the evidence above thus supports our hypothesis that me has a modalityfunction of insistence.

Now we examine some more data to make sure how the divergent interpretationsof the particle can be derived.

(50) A: (Holding his nose at the dinner table)W0 shi pa hui dapenti.I be afraid would sneeze

'I am afraid I would sneeze.'

B: (Turning to C)Ba napkin na yizhang gei ta.BA napkin take a-M give him'Get a napkin for him.'

A: Napkin wo you me.napkin I have ME'Napkin, I've got one.'

(51) A: ...Ni dei xian tingdedong. (Chappell, 1991:53)you must first hear-DE-understand

' ...You must be able to understand (it) first.'

B: Dui. Neng tingdedong me.correct able hear-DE-understand ME'Right. Be able to understand (it).'

The me-clauses in both (50) and (51) express a state/situation. The speakers use theparticle to indicate that the state or situation is factual. In addition, Speaker B in

(51) also agrees with what Speaker A has just said. This agreement meaning,however, doesn't come from the particle; it rather comes from the propositionalmeaning of the utterance in the discourse.

(52) Ni ziji jueding de me. (Dow, 1983: 161)you self decide DE ME

'You made the decision by yourself.'

The me here reinforces the factual nature of a past event. Similar cases are foundin examples (48.a) and (49.a) above.

(53) Chezi kai man diar me. (Dow, 1983:161)car drive slow a-little ME'Drive a little slower, will you!'

Example (53) involves a deleted second-person agent and is thus an imperativesentence with an expected action. Dow comments that me implies that the expectedaction is what the hearer should do. In other words, the speaker is not only givinga piece of advice or a command, but it is also an urge for the listener to carry out theprescribed action. Example (49.b) can be interpreted the same way. On the otherhand, (48.b) contains the conjunctive adverb hai and thus the focus of the messageis not on the carrying out of the action but rather on the completion of a wholeaction/event. (Cf. Section 3.2.3.)

(54) A: Wo jintian wanshang chide tai duo ..., huxi dou , qi meifaI today evening eat-DE too much .., breathe all , air no-way

jinqu, weizhi dou bei zhan .enter, room all by occupy .

'I ate too much tonight..., even breathing ..., no way for any air to enter,all room is occupied by ...'

B: Ni yao shang yihao, jiu hao Ie me.you if go bath-room, then OK LE ME'You would be OK if you just go to the bathroom once.'

Speakers B uses the particle me to assure Speaker A what definitely will happen ifhe goes to the bathroom.

(55) Wo bushi gaosu ni Ie ma? Lao Xu zhen fuqi, tamen fufuliang xiageI not-BE tell you Ie Q? Old Xu really lucky, they couple next-M

yue you yao fei dao Meiguo qu kan sunzi-zunnu qu Ie me.month again will fly to U.S. go see grand-children go LE ME

'Didn't I tell you that? Old Xu is really lucky. He and his wife are flyingto the U.S. next month to visit their grandchildren, again.'

The speaker is assuring the hearer that the Xus will definitely go to the U.S. againnext month. Note the auxiliary yao in the second line, which also indicates a moredefmite future happening than such other auxiliaries for futurity as hui,jiang, etc.(Cf. Liu, 1994.) The latter auxiliaries don't fit in this assurance context.

Our discussions can thus be summarized as follows:

a) Semantically, me indicates that the proposition of the utterance is factual,as in (50), (51) and those in Section 4.1.3. This is the presuppositionfunction.

b) Pragmatically, me indicates that the speaker/writer wants thehearer/reader to accept what is being said as factual, as in (48.a), (49.a)and (52). This is the insistence function.

c) When an expected future state or event is involved, the speaker/writerassures the hearer/writer that the state will surely exist or the event willsurely happen, as in (54) and (55). This is the assurance meaning of theinsistence function.

d) Finally, when the future event involves the hearer/reader as an agent, thespeaker/writer urges the carrying out of the action, as in (48.b), (49.b) and(53). This is the exhortation meaning of the insistence function.

In these senses, the particle me covers the meanings of 'factuality', 'assurance', and'exhortation'. Other meanings such as 'agreement', 'disagreement', and'indignation', etc. can also be derived from the basic functions of the particle jointlywith the propositional meaning of the utterance. Its core functions, however, remainconstant: Presupposition on the semantic level and insistence on the modalitylevel.

In section 4.1. and 4.2, some sentence-final particles have been discussed in theirsemantic-syntactic and/or modality functions. Our main concerns in those sectionsare what the particles do within the syntactic and semantic domain of a clause andhow the speaker wants the hearer to treat hislher utterance. Thus, a sentenceparticle may be used to indicate that the utterance is a question (ma), expresses achanged state (Ie) or contains a presupposed statement (me). Furthermore, a

sentence particle may be used to indicate that the speaker is not entirely sure aboutwhat he/she is saying (ba), that he/she shows personal involvement by saying whathe/she is saying (a/ya), or that he/she wants the hearer to accept what is being saidas true (me). In this section, we will discuss another dimension of sentence-finalparticles: their functions to express relationships between clauses or sentences.These relationships belong to discourse.

Three sentence-fmal particles will be dealt with in this section. They are: theend-of-discourse particle Ie, the clausal or sentential linking particle ne, and theobviousness particle me.

The sentence-fmal particle Ie has generally been recognized as one for indicatinga changed state and is thus called 'change of state' or 'change of status' particle.This treatment is basically adequate in explaining its semantic effect on isolatedclauses. In many instances, however, a simple 'changed state' interpretation isinsufficient by itself. Some pragmatic factors has to be considered in conjunctionwith it. E.g.

(57) A: lintian zhongwu wo qing Wenshan chifan. Wo ye qing ni.today noon I treat Wenshan eat I also invite you'I am asking Wenshan to have lunch with us today. Why don't youjoin us.'

B: Bomu, xiexie nin, wo bu zai nin zher chifan Ie. Wo yihuir jiuaunt, thank you, I not at you here eat LE I a-while then

dei zou, yinwei... (DeFrancis, 1965:262)must leave, because ...

'Thank you, Auntie. I would like to, but I can't eat here. I have toleave in a little while because .... '

Note that Speaker B's use of Ie corresponds very well with the polite form ofdeclining an invitation in English 'I would like to, but....' The reason for thechange-of-state particle to be able to stand for such a polite expression is a resultof the combination ofa pragmatic principle with the semantic content of the particle(Chu, 1985b). That is, the speaker's inability to stay for lunch is interpreted as achanged state from hislher willingness to stay.

Another kind of problem is illustrated in (58), which is taken from a translationexercise from an English passage. 12

'The prosperous society has made ''the impoverished intellectuals" ponderhow to make money. More and more of them hold part-time jobs.'

a) Fanrong de shehui shi 'qiong shusheng' zhuomo qi zenyangprosperous DE society cause 'poor intellectual' ponder start how

zhuanqian lai Ie.make-money come LE.

b) Congshi dier zhiye de ye yuelaiyueduo Ie.engage-in 2nd occupation DE also more-and-more LE

Th: passage, as it is, doesn't provide for a smooth reading. An informal survey ofnatIve speakers produced the following suggestions: (i) Change the full stop at theend of the first sentence to a comma because ..., (ii) Add tamen 'they' as thesubject/topic of the second sentence, and (iii) The first Ie may be deleted becauseit puts too much emphasis on the first sentence. Whatever the reason, the nativespeakers surveyed all felt that something can be done to improve the passage andthat this something has to do with the first Ie, the absence of a pronoun, or the statusof the two clauses being one sentence or two sentences. All this suggests that bothan initial pronoun in (b) and the final Ie in (a) have to do with cohesion betweenclauses. And, indeed, the best way to improve the passage is to either delete the Iein (a) with a concomitant change of the full stop to a comma, or to add an initialtamen 'they' to (b). What all this means is that the Ie in question is moreappropriate to occur in a position that is likely to be interpreted as the end of someunit larger than just a clause.

This brings us to a thesis by Chang (1986), where the discourse function of thesentence-fmal Ie is recognized as marking a discourse block. After reviewing Chao~1968), S~an~s (19:9), Li and Thompson (1981) and Andreasen (1981) and fmdingmadequacles m theIr analyses, Chang (1986: 120-149) takes a discourse approachto the study of the sentence-fmal Ie. He finds that, besides the semantic function of'changed state', the sentential Ie is mainly used to mark the end of a discourse unit.He provides the following print-media samples where a changed-state reading isimpossible for the final Ie:

(59) Dang yanyuan yixing daoda Moluoge de shihou wendu gaodawhen actor a-group arrive Morocco De time temperature high-reach

huashi yibaisanshisan du, qie kan liangwei mingFahrenheit 133 degree, let's-wait see two-M famous

yingxing zheci rube zaidu gongtong fahui tamende changcai Ie.movie-star this-time how again together stretch their talent LE

'When this team of actors and actresses arrived in Morocco, thetemperature reached 133Op. Let's wait and see how the two famous moviestars would again pull together their talents for another big hit.' (p. 122)

(60) You qian de shihou, chang xiang-zhe mei qian de shihou,have money DE time, often think-ZHE not-have money DE time,

buyao luan hua qian, zhe suanshi wo shushinian jiankudon't aimlessly spend money, this count-as I decades hardship

gongdu shenghuo de zuida xinde Ie. (p.123)work-study life DE biggest lesson LE

'When one has money, one must often think of days when one hasn't. Thisis the biggest lesson that I have learned in the past few decades in whichI work-studied hard (to obtain my degrees).'

In either case there is hardly any possibility to invoke a changed-state reading. Yeta Ie occurs at the end of each of the passages. This fact suggests that there must besomething else that the Ie marks. The native intuition here is that with the Ie, thepassage is fmished and that the hearer/reader knows there is nothing more thespeaker/writer is going to say on the subject.

On the other hand, there are other cases where a Ie could occur but does not.The following examples are also provided by Chang:

(61.a) Shishishang, neijian maoyi yi lancheng popian (Ie)in-fact, that-M sweater already rot-into broken-pieces (LE)

b) xi ye wu fa xi (Ie)wash also no way wash (LE)

c) zang de buneng zai baocun (Ie)dirty DE cannot further keep (LE)

d) haoxiangjiu yiliu zai Xiaojinmen Ie. (p.l23)seem then leave at Xiaojinmen LE

'In fact, the sweater had already become rags. (It) could not stand anyfurther washing, (and it was) so dirty that (it was) not worth keeping anymore). (i) might have left it in Xiaojinmen.'

(62.a) Ta huidao Meiguo yihou,she return-to America after,

b)jiu xinle Tianzhujiao(le)soon believe-PFV Catholicism (LE)

c) yitian-yitian xiaoshou (Ie)day-by-day weak-thing (LE)

d) dao Shengdanjie de shihou, yijing buchengrenyang Ie. (p.134)to Christmas DE time, aleady not-as-human-shape LE

'After she returned to the U.S., she became a Catholic. Day by day, shegrew more and more emaciated. When Christmas came, she looked likea skeleton.'

Both (61) and (62) are connected discourse blocks. Ifconsidered independently ofeach other, clauses (a}-(c) in (61) could each end in a change-of-state Ie. So could(b)-(c) in (62). These positions are indicated by the Ie's in the parentheses. Astexts, however, (61) and (62) contain no Ie in any of the clauses except for the lastone in the original. On the other hand, there is very little meaning of a changedstate in (6 1.d), yet a final Ie is found at the end of it.

These facts and those in (59) and (60) combine to point to the conclusion thatthe function of the sentence-fmalle within the contexts in those examples is to markthe end of a discourse unit. Furthermore, this use can even overrule the presenceor absence of the change-of-state function. That is, the need for marking the endof a discourse calls for the use of a Ie where no changed state may exist.Conversely, the need for marking the non-end of a discourse may result in theomission of an otherwise necessary change-of-state Ie.

This proposed function of Ie marking the end of a discourse unit explains twoother facts, which have puzzled Chinese teachers and linguists for quite some time.The first is that passages like (61) and (62) would sound unfmished without the finalIe. Sometimes, the absence of such a Ie would even have the same effect on anisolated single-clause sentence. E.g.

(63) Women zuotian dao Disinai Shijie quowe yesterday to Disney World go'We went to Disney World yesterday.'

If the speaker says (63) and stops, it sounds like there's something more but~e/she's not going to say it. The addition of a Ie at the end would signal to thelistener that there's nothing more the speaker wants to say about it.

The other fact is that excessive use of Ie within passages like (61) and (62)

would make the reading choppy. The reader may experiment with the passages todiscover how much worse they read if a Ie is inserted in the positions indicatedthere.

Furthermore, this function of marking the end of a discourse unit may subsumewhat Li and Thompson (1981 :283-290) call 'closing a statement' function. (Cf.Section 4.1.2. above.) This function also agrees with what Huang and Davis (1989)advocate as the 'interruption' function of Ie at the discourse level. Nevertheless,some restrictions must be imposed on this use of Ie. Classical flavor and factualassertion seem to be two of the main exceptions where this Ie is excluded (Chang,1986: 145-6).

Unfortunately, things are not that straightforward when it comes to the question'What constitutes a discourse unit?' Ifwe try to defme such a unit by the use ornon-use of Ie at the end, it would obviously be circular. Moreover, this Ie occursmost frequently in narrative discourse, and only rarely in the other genres of thelanguage. Such a defmition would only be partial even if it weren't circular.Despite the fact that Chang (1986) conducted a survey to determine the nativespeaker's perception of what a discourse unit may be on the basis of the use of thisIe, his conclusion seems to be that it may vary. We hinted above in connection withthe example in (58) that the break between discourse units may be marked by otherformal signals such as the presence of a pronoun instead of a zero. Similar issueswill be addressed in detail in Chapters 8 and 9.

Among all the Mandarin sentence-final particles, ne has perhaps attracted mostattention among Chinese grammarians. There are several extended studies on it, yetmost of them limit themselves to the confmes of the sentence. We will thus reviewonly those studies that are more or less discourse oriented. They are Li andThompson (1981), Alleton (1981), Chu (1984 & 1985a) and King (1986). Anintegrated account of the particle will follow the reviews.

4.3.2.1. Li and Thompson: Response to Expectation

Li and Thompson (1981 :300-307) treat the sentence-final particle ne as having twodifferent functions: 'response to expectation' and 'question marking'. We havementioned in Section 4.1.1. that ne does not mark a question in its own right thoughit is quite compatible with one. Thus, we will only discuss its function for markinga response to an expectation here.

L&T (1981 :301) propose the 'response to expectation' function to account forthe differences between utterances like the following:

(64.a) Tamen you sanliang qiche.they have three-M car.

b) Tamen you sanliang qiche ne.they have three-M car NE

'Listen, they have three cars.'

That is, 'the presence of ne ...calls the hearer's attention to the information by tellinghimlher that this is what the speaker wishes to say in connection with the hearer'sprevious claim.' On the other hand, (64.a) is 'completely neutral in terms of thepragmatic function of the sentence. It merely states the fact that they [the peoplebeing spoken of] have three' cars. L&T further claim that their response-to-expectation function can subsume all the meanings described by Chao (1968:802-804):

Zhangsan shuozhe hua ne.Zhangsan speak-DUR utterance NE'Zhagnsan is speaking (to someone).'

You yibai chi ne.exist 100 feet NE'It's as much as 100 feet.'

Tamen hai mai gu qin ne.they also sell ancient zither NE

'They also sell ancient zithers.'

Zhei dao hen weixian ne.this actually very dangerous NE

'This is rather dangerous, mind you.'

L&T believe that all the four situations fit nicely into their 'response to expectation'hypothesis because all of them require some prior situation or discourse for themto legitimately occur. The contexts can be, e.g. 'somebody wants to see Zhangsan'for (a), 'a remark that a certain oak tree is pretty high' for (b), 'somebody'sdiscovery of a music shop carrying exotic musical instruments' for (c), and

'somebody's intention to go bungie-jumping' for (d). They also point out that oneof the specific meanings attributed by Chao actually comes from a source other thanthe ne: The continued state in (a) is derived from the presence of the durative aspectmarker -zhe. In fact, there are two other similar cases: the meaning of 'interest infurther information' comes from the adverb hai and the meaning of 'as much as'comes from the verb you.

Li and Thompson give six more examples, each with a situation, to illustratetheir point. While all but one of the examples can be explained by the meaning theypropose, there are numerous others that don't fit as comfortably into this 'responseto expectation' function. We will discuss such examples in Section 4.3.2.4.

Alleton (1981) assumes that the sentence-final ne is a modality particle and thus herapproach depends heavily on the intonation of the utterance. She suggests that theparticle is used to appeal 'to the listener's active participation' (p. 91). Her studyof the particle is divided under three intonation categories: Interrogative Intonation,Suspensive Intonation and Assertive Intonation. We summarize her findingsaccordingly.

a) Wo zen neng ru wode xinyuan zuo ne?I how can as my wish do NE

'How might I do it as I like it?'

b) Women de shi ni dasuan zenmo ban ne?we DE matter you plan how do NE'How do you plan to take care of our problem?'

Alleton believes that the ne in (a) is used for style and clarity and the one in (b) formaking the utterance sound 'less harsh'. She further states that in either case the neis recognized as deletable.

b) Ni qu bu qu ne?you go not go NE

'Are you going [then]?'

c) You ren bu tongyi ne? 13

there-be person not agree NE'What if there are people who don't agree?'

As with (66.a), Alleton thinks that the ne in (67.a) is 'a redundant elementcontributing to the overall clarity of the utterance' only. She also believes that thene in (67.b) makes the utternace less harsh and the one in (67.c) marks 'hypotheticalinterrogation', i.e. it turns a statement into a question having the meaning of' If S,then what is to be done?'

a) Wo yao qu, ni ne?I want go, you NE

'I want to go. And you?'

b) Aya, mi ne?EXCLAMATION, rice NE'Oh my! Where's the rice?'

Her only comment is that the ne is not deletable. She doesn't give any structural orsemantic analysis.

4.3.2.2.2. Suspensive Intonation

This category is usually regarded as a pause particle instead of a sentence-finalparticle. Alleton (p.l02) gives the following pair to illustrate the differencebetween one with the interrogative and one with the suspensive intonation.

(69.a) Ta niang ne? (Interrogative intonation)she mother NE'And her mother? (Where is she/What's she doing?)'

b) Ta niang ne, yinwei... (Suspensive intonation)she mother NE, because ...

'Regarding her mother, in asmuch as ...'

Her interpretation is that the ne has the meaning of 'with regard to, regarding' if thepreceding element is a nominal. If the preceding is an 'adverbial (verbal element),

ne calls attention to that which comes after it: Xianzai ne, ... "now, ..."; Qishi ne, ..."in fact, ...'''

There are three subcategories under this intonation: Cognitive Verbs, ProgressiveAspects or Actualization, and Emphatic Use.

(70) Cognitive Verbs: (The following verbs are used in the illustrations: yiwei'think wrongly' , renwei 'to have the opinion', caixiang 'guess' , xiangxiang'imagine', and zhidao 'know'. We will only cite two examples.)

a) Ta yiwei zhe shi sheme zhongyao dongxi ne.(p.l 03)he consider this be some important thing NE'He thought this was something important.'

b) Wo hai bu zhidao ta zai nar ne. (p.107)I still not know she at where NE

'I still don't know where she is.'

Alleton believes that when ne is used with cognitive verbs, the utterance representsa case where the discussion remains open. In (a), what can be considered open isthe fact that the speaker thinks the subject 'he' was wrong. However, she doesn'tdiscuss (b) in the same vein.

A: Fan ne? (p. 108)rice NE'(Where's) the meal?'

B: Zuozhe ne.cook-DURNE'(It's) being cooked."

Here, Allleton rightfully denies the progressive meaning of ne, which is usuallyespoused by textbooks and grammars. Instead, she suggests two possibilities. Oneis that' ne plays a part in the construction of utterances as linked to previous ones.'The other is that 'ne is used to indicate that the speaker is making a statement toclear the matter up.'

a) Mingtian ta hai lai ne. (p.109)tomorrow he still come NE'He's coming again tomorrow.'

b) Wo xiang ni xiang de jiqie ne.I think you think DE eager NE'I miss you badly.'

Alleton thinks that the label 'wishing to convince' is better for the ne in (a) than theusual label 'emphasis'. She dismisses the example in (b) by saying that it isrecognized by her informants as either rural speech or written usage.

While Alleton uses a suitable approach in her research by relying on both writtenand spoken data and by consulting native informants, her interpretations of the dataare often misdirected. Furthermore, despite her claim that ne in some cases has alinking function, her examples are given without context. She doesn't try tocompare utterances with and without ne in terms of the function of the particle. Themain drawback of the study, however, seems to be her preoccupied notion of ne asa modality particle rather than a discourse marker. Besides, her total reliance on theinformants for the interpretation of some utterances is not quite advisable, e.g.(72.b). The net result of the study is a collection of meanings and functions for theparticle that are not coherent among themselves and are impossible to derive fromany unified source. One useful claim of the work is ne may be used for 'linking tothe previous utterance'. (Cf. Example (71) above.) The article's main importancelies in the fact that it was the first published full-length article on the topic in aprestigeous journal.

Next, we take up another journal article. This time, it is one with a discourseapproach.

King (1986) bases his work on the distinction of narrative world and spekaer/hearerworld in the discourse model. Within this model, a need is recognized for thespeaker to sometimes call the attention of the hearer to some backgroundinfomration in the narrative world. To achieve this purpose, King (p. 27)hypothesizes, the speaker uses ne 'as a device for highlighting or evaluating certainportions of background information in the discourse and bringing them to theattention of the hearer in the speaker/hearer world.' His examples provide amplelinguistic context for discussion.

King finds ne occurring under four circumstances: (i) repetition of recentlyintroduced information or with presupposed information, (ii) rhetorical question by

which the speaker pauses and steps back to survey the situation, (iii) explanationsor details concerned with previously mentioned information made in parentheticalcomments, and (iv) direct address by speaker to hearer. They are illustarted in thefollwoing examples, respectively:

Weishenme haixia liangan you zhe zhong qingxing xiangfa zhiwhy strait two-bank have this kind situation think-way ZHI

yi ne, jiushi yinwei haixia liangan dou you xiangtong deone NE, just because strait two-bank both have similar DE

wenti. Zhege wenti de yuanyin ne,... (p. 29-30)problem. this-M problem DE cause NE

'Why do both sides of the strait have this situation? .. one opinion isbecause there are similar problems on both sides of the strait. The reasonfor these problems, ... '

The first ne occurs with presupposed information ('opinion') and the second withinformation that has just been introduced ('problems'). Here, we have some doubtabout the status of 'opinion' as presupposed.

Hen duo de da diguo. Xianzai zhege da diguo dao nar qu Ie ne?very many DE big empire. Now this-M big empire to where go LE NE'Many big empires. Where are all these big empires now?' (p. 30)

The shifters xianzai 'now' and zhe 'this' provide evidence that the speaker isdirectly addressing the audience in the speaker/hearer world instead of the narrativeworld.

Yi chenggong yihou, Sun Zhongshan Xianshengjiu shibai Ie .once succeed after, Sun Yat-sun Mr. right-way fail LE .

Geren chenggong yihou, geren you gerendeeach-person success after each-person have each-person

sili, jieguo ne, zhenzheng yonghu sanminzhuyipersonal-interest, result NE, really support 3-people-principle

de ren hen shao. (p. 31)DE people very few

'Once it had succeeded, Sun Yat-sen failed .... After everyone hadsucceeded, they all became concerned with their own private interests. Asa result, the actual number of people supporting the Three Principles of thePeople was very small.'

The ne is supposed to highlightjieguo 'result'. The problem with this one is thatjieguo can hardly be regarded as background information, though it serves tointroduce further detail of what happened in the narrative.

Wo jintian ne hen jiandande gen dajia tan YlXla zhege jindaiI today NE very simply with everybody talk a-little this-M modem

Zhongguo zhengzhi fazhan shang de yixie wenti. (p.32)China politics develop on DE some problem

'Today I would like to briefly discuss with you some problems in thepolitical development of modem China.'

The ne following jintian 'today' is said to focus on the interaction with theaudience.

King goes on to test his hypothesis in much longer discourse blocks of differentstyles. Each of the occurrences ofne does seem to meet at least one of the criteria.That is, in the environment of repetition, presupposed information, explanation,rhetorical question, or direct address.

King's study certainly is an improvment over previous ones. Nevertheless,problems remain. One of them is that some of the alleged 'presupposed backgroundinformation' is not actually presupposed or background. (cf; comment following(74).) Another problem is the definition of highlighting/evaluating. Are they justanother way of saying 'calling something to the attention of the hearer'? The mostserious problem is, however, that there is no clear demonstration of what wouldhappen without the ne in the examples given to illustrate the point. It seems thatKing has only shown what is compatible with ne rather than offer an explanation forits use.

In the next section, we will try to answer these questions. At the same time, we

will show that it is altogether possible to formulate an integrated account of all themeanings and functions attributed to the particle, if one core discourse function isassigned to it.

This section will start with a brief review of three papers by Chu (1984 & 1985a &b), who calls ne a particle of relevance. The notion of relevance will be revised tobe inter-clausal and inter-sentential linking. By doing so, we will be able tointegrate all the previous works in a principled way.

Chu (1983b:lOl-105) uses the term 'continuative' to describe the sentence-finalparticle ne. In a series of subsequent studies (1984, 1985a, 1985b), he revises thenotion and fmally decides to call it 'a particle of relevance'. The decision is madeafter his failure in a pilot project to apply Lyons'(1977) semantic model of modalityto the study of the particle.

We first look at what is meant by relevance. Brown and Yule (1983:84)interprets 'relevance' as marking 'your contribution as relevant in terms of theexisting topic framework.' 14 Thus, a particle of 'relevance' may be defined as oneindicating, for some reason, that the utterance in which it occurs is relevant to whatis going on in the discourse or conversation.

There is, however, still the question of when and why the particle ne is needed.The answer may come from a line of reasoning like the following:

When the content of an utterance is not obviously relevant to the topicframework, a particle of relevance is more needed than when an utteranceis obviously relevant. The reason that a speaker bothers to use such aparticle is to show that an effort is being made to render hislhercontribution relevant when what he/she says might not appear to be so.

We proceed to look at some data along the line of reasoning.In the data collected from screen plays, recordings of conversation and

questionnaires in a pilot project, we isolated three meanings or functions for theparticle: (i) contradiction to addressee's expectation, (ii) (rhetorical) question, and(iii) further statement. These three are quite similar to what King (1986) proposes,which is summarized in Section 4.3.2.3 above. The major difference between oursand King's, however, lies in our claim that the various uses, menaings and functionsattributed to ne can be subsumed under the notion of relevance to provide a unifiedaccount ofthe behavior of the particle. We further hypothesize that all three of themeanings/functions, in some sense, deviate from the existing topic framework,though in different degrees. Intuitively, contradiction deviates farther from the

topic framework than does (rhetorical) question, which in turn deviates farther thanfurther statement.

Now, if ne is used to mark an otherwise irrelevant utterance as relevant, themost deviant-i.e. contradiction to the addressee's expectation-should need this nemost. On the other hand, the least deviant-further explanatin-should need it least.

The following examples illustrate the three meanings or functions that we haveisolated for ne. They also serve to explain the relative distance of deviation of each.(The dialogues are selected from screen plays and actual conversations and are usedin a survey where subjects were asked to choose a sentence-final particle for theposition left blank. The figures in the parentheses indicate the percentages ofrespondents who chose ne for the position. Because a respondent was allowed tochoose more than one form for each blank, the total number oftokens selected foreach blank varies from 61 to 65.)

A: Ta zheme da nianji, dao Meiguo lai zenmo guo a!he this old age, to U.S. come how pass A

'At his old age, how is he going to get around in the U.S.?'

B: Ni nandao yiwei ta bu hui shuo Yingyu ma? Tadeyou isn't-it think he not know-how-to speak English MA? his

Yingyu shuo de bi ni hai hao ne. (92%)English speak DE than you even good NE

'You don't think he doesn't know English, do you? Actually, he speaksbetter English than you. '

The second sentence of what Speaker B says is obviously a contradiction to theaddressee's expectation. As this is a case of the farthest deviance from the topicframework, there is the largest need for a ne to mark it as relevant to theconversation topic. And, indeed, ne is almost unanimously chosen by therespondents.

A: Xiao de shihou bu zhongyong, jianglai da Ie zenmo chengsmall DE time not useful, future big LE how become

cai ne. (67%)useful-person NE

'(If one) doesn't make himself useful while young, how can he gow upto be a useful person?'

B: Nin bie shengqi, yexu nin shuo de dui, keshi bu yidingyou don't upset, perhaps you say DE right, but not necessarily

yangyang dou dui ya.everything all right YA

'Please don't feel offended. You may be right, but not necessarily rightall the time.'

A: Ou? Zheme shuo, ni shi quancai Ie. Ni dao jiaoxun-qi-wo-Iaiou? thus say, you are genius LE. you inversely teach-QI-me-LAI

Ie!. .. Wo dao yao lingjiao-lingjiao.LE! ... I then wan seek-advice seek-advice

'So? Being smart, aren't you? If you mean to teach me a lesson, ...I'mready for it.'

B: Shifu, tudi zenmo gan jiaoxun nin laorenjia ne? (84%)Master, pupil how dare teach you sir NE'How would I dare to do anything like that, sir!'

The last utterance by Speaker B 'How would I dare to do anything like that, sir' isa rhetorical question, meaning 'I dare not do it.' Eighty-four percent of therespondents decide that a ne is needed after it. The second clause of the firstutterance by Speaker A 'how can he grow up to be competent' can be regarded aseither a rhetorical question or a further statement. Only 67% of the respondentsthink that a ne should occur at the end.

So far, the percentages of respondents electing to use ne pretty well agree withthe degrees of deviance from the topic framework. A contradiction receives a 92%vote; a rhetorical question, 84%; and a borderline case between rhetorical questionand further state, 67%. There is, however, a less clear-cut case, which is presentedbelow.

A: Ni xianzai dengzhe biye Ie, zhen kaixin.you now wait-DUR graduate LE, real happy.

'How lucky you are! Just waiting to graduate.'

B: Wo hai dei xie yipian luwen ne. (87%)I further must write a-M thesis NE

'I still have a thesis to write.'

We believe that the remark by Speaker B can be considered either a contradictionor a further statement. The percentage of respondents that choose to use ne is 87,in the medium range. But this case is open to different interpretations. Theproblem, reasonable as it may sound, will not be further pursued, just to stay awayfrom too much digression. We will move on to something more central to the issuein the next section.

4.3.2.4.2. Soliciting Participation, Highlighting, Relevance:Syntactic Structure and Information Status

The preceding sections have reviewed several past works on ne. The issuesinvolved, however, may have been made more confusing than illuminating by thevarious approaches and even more diverse claims. Chao (1968) takes a sententialapproach and gives five different meanings. Li and Thompson (1981) look at thefunction instead of the meaning of the particle and propose the notion of 'responseto expectation' to subsume all of Chao's meanings and more. Alleton (1981) treatsne as a modality particle and concludes that its function is to solicit activeparticipation. King (1986) takes a discourse approach and decides that the particlefunctions to highlight the background information in discourse. Chu (1984, 1985a& b) proposes the notion of relevance for ne to accommodate its inter-sententialforce. The authors seem to be as different as apples and oranges. Yet, if we lookdeeper into their motivations and perspectives, each study seems to be correct in itsown way, though to different degrees. Put together, they almost form acomprehensive description of the particle. But something is missing that may piercethem together and glue them into one piece. In this regard, we propose to closelyexamine the syntactic structure and the information status of the utterance inquestion. We hope that, together with a single function of ne, they can serve as thebasis for deriving different meanings and functions of the particle. By doing so, wecan explain why a given ne is interpreted as it is-Leo what it means, what functionit performs and whether it is optional or not. Specifically, we will be checking onhow a given ne-utterance is said to be used (i) as a pause particle, (ii) to highlightbackground information, (iii) to solicit active participation, (iv) to mark relevance,and/or (v) to mark a rhetorical question. Additionally, we will also determine (vi)whether a given ne is deletable and (vii) whether it indicates response toexpectation.

Let us first examine a previously used example to see what the syntacticstructure and the status of information are like and how they affect the interpretationof the utterance. (The numbering of the example remains the same as it appearedbefore. Out-of-order numbering in later examples likewise indicates that it is a

Weishenme haixia liangan you zhe zhong qingxing xiangfawhy strait two-bank have this kind situation think-way

zhi yi ne, jiushi yinwei haixia liangan dou you xiangtongZHI one NE, just because strait two-bank both have similar

de wenti. Zhege wenti de yuanyin ne,... (p. 29-30)DE problem this-M problem DE cause NE

'Why do both sides of the strait have this situation? .. one opinion isbecause there are similar problems on both sides of the strait. The reasonfor these problems, ... '

The second ne of this passage occurs in the utterance zhege wenti de yuanyin, wherewenti is a repetition of one in the preceding sentence. It is obvious that the speakeris not only attempting to relate the utterance to the previous sentence by therepetition, but he/she is also making an effort (as King claims) to 'highlight' therelationship by the use of ne. Additionally, we can look at it from two otherperspectives. From a syntactic viewpoint, it is a noun phrase, which generally actsas a topic (or subject) at the beginning of an utterance. From a communicativeviewpoint, it contians a piece of partially given information15 by virtue of therepetition. This utterance therefore does not serve much purpose in terms ofsending a message, as a message is usually made up of new information. Ittherefore needs something to follow it to give a meaningful message. There are twoways of doing so. The speaker may go on to add a predicate/comment to completethe statement. Then, the ne is interpreted as a pause particle. Or, the speaker maychoose to wait for the hearer to go on and complete the message. In this latter case,the utterance can be interpreted as a question. It is in this latter sense that Alletonis correct in claiming that the particle performs the function of soliciting activeparticipation.

On the other hand, the fIrst ne occurs at the end of the utterance xiangfa zhi yi'one of the ways of thinking-i.e. one opinion'. (The deleted portion before it is

jiushi shuo, zhege, zhege 'that is to say, this, this', which is much like 'well...,like ... ' in English. Thus, it doesn't really fIgure in terms of the relation between theutterance and anything preceding it.) The NP in question has no formal relationwith any previous sentence as does the one followed by the other ne. The speakermay therefore be making a special effort to indicate a relation with what has beenoccurring in the discourse, but more likely a relation with what is going to come.Thus, it is not likely a case of 'highlighting' background information at this point;

it is more likely a case of forewarning the hearer that the present noun phrase isgoing to be the topic to be talked about. Since the utterance contains nothing buta noun phrase, it has to be continued in order for it to be meaningful. The ne is thusinterpreted as pause particle. Furthermore, as it contains no old information, itcannot constitute a question;16 the speaker has to complete the statement.

So far, we have looked at two utterances marked by ne that are noun phrasesonly. In both cases the ne can be interpreted as a pause particle. If the noun phrasecontains a piece of given information, the ne can also be regarded as marking aquestion and as soliciting active participation. If the noun phrase doesn't containany given information, the speaker himselflherselfhas to complete the statement byadding a predicate/comment to it. The ne can not be interpreted as marking a

.question or soliciting active participation.There are, of course, other forms of utterances that ne can mark. Example (79)

above is such a case. We will take another look at it below:

A: Ni xianzai dengzhe biye Ie, zhen kaixin.you now wait-DUR graduate LE, real happy.'How lucky you are! Just waiting to graduate.'

B: Wo hai dei xie yipian luwen ne.I further must write a-M thesis NE'I still have a thesis to write.'

In this dialogue, the ne follows a full sentence. While the subject/topic of thissentence wo 'I' refers to the same person as ni 'you' in the sentence by Speaker Aand thereby contains given information, the predicate/comment is completely new.By using ne, the speaker is in effect saying that the situation hai dei xie yipian/unwen 'still have to write a thesis' is related to what the other party has just said.In this case, only the 'relevance' interpretation is plausible. There is no 'solicitingof active participation', nor is there 'highlighting of background information'. Noris it a response to any expectation. We will give another example below:

(80) A: Lao Zhang shuo ta mang de budeliao, lian fumu shengbing yeOld Zhang say he busy DE extremely, even parents sick also

mei kong qu kan tamen.no time go see them

'Old Zhang said that he was extremely busy. His parents got sich andhe couldn't even fmd time to visit them.'

B: Ta zhege xingqi you dale liangchang gao'erfu ne.he this-M week again play-PFV two-game golfNE

'He played golf twice, again, this week.'

The ne here works the same way as the one in (79). In both cases, the deletion ofne would make the utterance inappropriate because there is some semanticincongruence between what B says as a response to what A says. In other words,the utterance is not what would usually be expected and thus can not be used as aresponse without the help of the particle to make it relevant. Both cases are thoseof an obligatory use of ne: a deletion of the particle would affect the coherence ofthe dialogue. Furthermore, since the utterance is in the form of 'subject/topic +predicate/comment' with the topic containing given information and the commentcontaining new information, it carries a complete message and does not require anymore information to be added to it. The ne cannot be interpreted as marking aquestion or soliciting active participation.

The predicate/comment ofthe clause ending in ne, however, doesn't alwayscarry new information. It may sometimes contain a piece of given information butwith a question word in it. The passage in (78), repeated below, illustrates thisform.

A: Xiao de shihou bu zhongyong, jianglai da Ie zenmo chengsmall DE time not useful, future big LE how become

cai ne. [Call it case (a)]useful-person NE

'(If one) doesn't make himself useful while young, how can he gow upto be a useful person?'

B: Nin bie shengqi, yexu nin shuo de dui, keshi bu yidingyou don't upset, perhaps you say DE right, but not necessarily

yangyang dou dui ya.everything all right YA

'Please don't feel offended. You may be right, but not necessarily rightall the time. '

A: Ou? Zheme shuo, ni shi quancai ie. Ni dao jiaoxun-qi-wo-Iaiou? thus say, you are genius LE. you inversely teach-QI-me-LAI

Ie!. .. Wo dao yao lingjiao lingjiao.LEL .. I then wan seek-advice seek-advice

'So? Being smart, aren't you? If you mean to teach me a lesson, ...I'mready for it.'

B: Shifu, tudi zenmo gan jiaoxun nin laorenjia ne? [Call it case (b)]Master, pupil how dare teach you sir NE

'How would I dare to do anything like that, sir!'

In the first case, (a), the particle ne marks a clause carrying a piece of giveninformation in the verb: chengcai 'become competent' (which is synonymous withthe preceding zhongyong 'be useful '). In case (b), ne marks another clause carryingold information in the verb jiaoxun 'teach (someone) a lesson' and its object ninlaorenjia 'you, sir'. The fact that both the subject/topic and the verb (+ object)carry given information suggests two points about the utterances: (i) there is no newmessage in the subject/topic and the verb (+ object), and (ii) there is no problem ofrelating the clause to the preceding portion of discourse even without the particle.Because of (i), the hearer's attention is naturally directed to the other parts of theutterances for new information: the question word zenmo 'how'in both (a) and (b),the subordinate verbjianglai da Ie 'grow up in the future' in (a) and the auxiliarygan 'dare' in (b). Because of (ii), the function of ne is diverted to the rest of theutterances, too. Indeed, the particle can be interpreted as signaling a relationbetween the question form (plus the auxiliary and the subordinate verb) and the restof the discourse. By this ne, the speaker is saying that the discourse context maynot warrant a question at this point, but the interrogation together with the auxialiaryor the suborindate verb is relevant, anyway.

From another perspective, let us determine what would be possible answers tothe questions. The ne in (a) links two clauses that form a natural cause-effectsequence and the answer is thus too obvious to warrant saying it explicitly. Thisqualifies the utterance to be a rhetorical question.17 The ne-question in (b) asksabout the speaker himself and thus does not demand an answer from the hearer. Itis also qualified for the label rhetorical question.

This use of ne, therefore, is basically for indicating relevance. Though it canbe said to express a response to expectation, it can hardly be highlighting anybackground information or soliciting any active particpation. Its rhetorical-questionfunction obviously is not an inherent characteristic of the particle but is derivedfrom the nature of the question. Finally, the ne is not deletable because of the non-apparent relation between the question form and the preceding discourse.

Next, we will examine another type of utterance marked with ne. In this type,the subject/topic contains given information, but the predicate is a question withoutany given information. Example (74), repeated below, illustrates it.

Hen duo de da diguo. Xianzai zhege da diguo dao narvery many DE big empire. Now this-M big empire to where

qu Ie ne? (p. 30)goLENE

In (74), the subject/topic of the ne-uttemace is given information and the~redicate/comme~t is new information. The particle would work the same way asm (79) and (80) If the predicate/comment were not a question. As a question, itmay be followed by an answer. But, the answer is so obvious that it doesn't meritany explicit mention. Thus, this utterance is treated as a rhetorical question. Thep~rticle, on ~he other h~nd, merely serves to relate the utterance to the preceding?ISCOUrs~wIthout .servmg any other function. Since the subject/topic is givenmformatIon, there ISalready enough fo, nal tie expressed. The ne is optional.

The final type carries new information in both the subject/topic andpredIcate/comment portions. The dialogue below illustrates this type.

(81) A: Hao ba. Womenjiu ba ta mai Ie.good BA. we then BA it sell LE'OK We'll sell it.'

B: You ren bu tongyi ne? (Cf. (67.c) above)there-be person not agree NE

'(What it) somebody doesn't agree?'

Both the subject/topic and the predicate/comment of the ne-utterance contain newinformation. ~i1e the utterance is a full clause carrying a complete message, itwould no~ be m any way related to the rest of the discourse without the particle.The relatIOn between them, however, is very vague and may be interpreted inseveral ways. The utterance may be regarded as a question, if it occurs with aquestion intonation. Then, it may take on the meaning of 'what if...?' But if it isuttered with an assertive intonation, it may just be an information item the functionof which may be a report, a hint of possibility, etc. It might even be' construed asa threat when the subject of it is the first person wo 'I' or women 'we'.

The ne in (81) can be interpreted as soliciting active participation because itd~am.nds.some response or reaction. But there is no possibility of regarding it ashIghhghtmg background information or responding to expectation because no

portion ofthe utterance contains given information. The more general function isstill for inter-sentential linking.

We have looked at the ne-utterance from different perspectives. Syntactically, itcan be merely a noun phrase or a full clause. Communicatively, certain portions ofit may carry given or new information. In terms of speech act, it may be making anassertion or seeking more information. The particle ne may seem to play differentroles under the various conditions. But, basically, it functions to tell the hearer thatthe utterance is related to its context-a relevance function. Since it shows an efforton the speaker's part to make his/her utterance more relevant, it may often beinterpreted as softening the tone. On the other hand, as there isn't always a naturalrelationship between the ne-utterance and the rest of the discourse, the particle maybe said to function to indicate a response to expectation only in some cases, but notall the time.

Below is a summary of the combinations of the different syntactic structuringsand statuses of information each of them contains. Their effects on theinterpretation of the ne-utterance are also noted.

(82) Subjrropic Pred/Comment Interpretation

Given Info null 1,2,3,4

New Info null 1,4

Given Info New Info 4

Given Info Given Info + Q 4,5,6

Given Info New Info + Q 4,5

New Info New Info 'What if...?',3,4,6

In the chart, I = pause particle, 2 = highlight background information, 3 =qeustion or soliciting active participation, 4 = relevance, 5 = rhetoricalquestion, 6 = not deletable.

It is clear that relevance is the one function from which all the others arederivable. Whether or not the utterance serves as a response to expectation has todo with how it is related to the preceding context.

The approach outlined above seems to be applicable to the explanation of manyother meanings and functions identified in grammars and textbooks. The reader is

In the discussion of the particle me in Sections 4.1.3 and 4.2.3, the meaning of'obviousness' has been brought up a few times without being elaborated on.Although its relation to factuality and presupposition is easily conceivable, there isa need for a mechanism to establish 'obviousness' on the basis of the latter two.This mechanism seems to be discoursal in nature. That is, the 'obviousness'meaning is derivable from its discourse context. The following example illustratesthis point.

(83) A: Renhe dongxi yao jiang shiyong ...any thing must talk pragmatic'Everything has got to be pragmatic ...'

B: Jiang shiji.talk practical'Be practical.'

A: Jiang shiyong Xiang qing ren chifan, buyao zuo neme duotalk pragmatic .like invite people eat-rice, don't cook that much

cai. Shige ren, jiu shige ren gou chi.. ..food. ten-M person, then ten-M person enough eat

'Be pragmatic .... Like giving a dinner party, don't cook too much food.If there are ten people, just (cook) enough for ten people .... '

B: S.hi. Women xianzai shi...meici dou chide guangguangde.nght we now be ...every-time all eat-DE all-gone'Right. We now ...every time everything eaten up.'

A: Shiyong me.pragmatic ME'Pragmatic, surely!'

~peak~r A first tries to correct Speaker B by repeating shiyong 'pragmatic'~edlatley after Speaker B has remarked, Jiang shiji 'Be practical'. The secondtune when A.points out that it is shiyong 'pragmatic' rather than shiji 'practical' thatthey. are talkmg about, he uses the fmal particle me to reinforce his position. Whathe IS. a~tu~lly sa~ing is 'By now it should be obvious that shiyong is thedescnptIon. That IS, the statement is assumed by the speaker to be true and the fact

of its being true is made obvious by the context. This same particle here can alsobe interpreted as for 'presupposition' if its semantic function is taken alone.Likewise, it can be said to express 'insistence' if its modality function is considered.

One more example suffices:

(84) A: You haoduo ren multiplication table beilethere-be many people multiplication table try-to-recite-PFV

henjiu.a-long-time.

B: Shi, xianzai Meiguo xuesheng, na, na, youde liu nianjiright, now Amecria student, eh, eh, some six grade

xiaoxue biyele hai buhui bei me.elementary-school graduate-PFV, still not-know-how recite ME

'Right. American students now, some of them who are in sixth grade,have already graduated from elementary school, do not know how torecite it.'

A: Ta yinwei, ta haoxiang conglai bu xuyao bei de.he because, he seem ever not need recite DE'They, because they never seem to need to recite [anything].'

c: Bu xuyao me. Zhe shi womende, zhege, zhege, jiaoyu fangfa me.no need ME this be our, this, this, education method ME

Bu xuyao.no need

'Of course, there's no need. This is our way of education, as you know.There's no need for it.'

All three instances of me can be said to indicate 'obviousness' from the contexts inwhich they occur. Following from Speaker A's statement that it takes a long timefor many people to try to recite (i.e. memorize) the multiplication table, the first mesays that it goes without saying that many six-graders still can't recite it. Thesecond me picks up from what A has just said that there seems no need for schoolchildren to memorize anything and asserts it as obvious that there is no such need.The third one traces from the current topic of conversation (Le. no need for

memorization) back to the current method of education as an obvious reason for thelack of such a need for young children. It is therefore the contexts that make itpossible for the me's to take on the 'obviousness' function. Each of them, however,still retains its semantic function of indicating presupposition-i.e. the function tosignal that the content of the utterance is known to both the speaker and the hearer.On the other hand, as there is nothing that indicates the speaker is trying to imposehis/her opinion or to advise on some action, the 'insistence' interpretation does notapply in (84).

4.4. Interactions Between Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics

Chinese grammarians and language teachers have long been puzzled over someconstructions that seem to defy reasonable explanation or interpretation. One ofthem is the so-called double-Ie construction, as is illustrated below in (85):

(85) Wo xue(-Ie) sannian Zhongwen Ie.I study(-PFV) three-year Chinese CHANGE-OF-STATE

'I have studied Chinese for three years.'

The puzzle here is the optional nature of the PFV marker -Ie. To some speakers,the presence or absence of this aspect marker does make some difference, thoughthey can only conjecture what the difference might be, often on the basis of Englishtranslation. To others, there is absolutely no difference between the two versions.The reason for the puzzlement and difficulty may stem from the fact that Chinesegrammar, like grammars of many other languages, has mainly been studied on asingle level, syntactic or semantic. The pragamtic (including discourse) aspect ofthe language has largely been neglected until recently. This section will try toincorporate all three levels of the language and view problems from that integretedperspective.

4.4.1. Perfectivity, Change of State and End of Discourse

As was discussed previously, the three notions 'perfectivity', 'change of state' and'end of discourse' are expressed by the homograph h<. As a perfective aspectmarker, it is considered a verbal suffix and is symbolized -Ie (cf. Sections 2.2.5 &2.3.1). As a change-of-state or end-of-discourse marker, it is considered a sentence-final particle and is symbolized Ie (cf. sections 4.1.2 and 4.3.2). However, thedistinction is obscured when the form occurs in a position which is bothimmediately after a verb and at the end of a sentence, e.g.

(86) Ta lai( -)Ie.he come(-)PFV/CHANGE-OF-STATEIEND-OF-DISCOURSE'He came/has come/is here/is coming/will come/will be coming/ .... '

The reason sentence (86) has so many different interpretations is that the Ie ismultiply ambiguous. It may be interpreted as a perfective aspect marker, change-of-state marker, end-of-discourse marker, or any combination of the three. With Iemarking perfectivity only, (86) means: 'He came.' As a change-of-state marker,Ie gives the interpretation of changing from 'his being in the state of not coming'(Le. he wasn't to come or didn't intend to come) to 'his being in the state ofcoming'. The translation of (86) can then be '(Now) he is coming/will come/willbe coming.' In this sense, an auxiliary like yao 'will, want, hope, desire' may beinserted in front ofthe verb lai without any significant change of meaning. WhenIe is regarded as marking both perfectivity and change of state through haplology(Chao, 1968:246), the interpretation of(86) includes both a past event ('he came')and a changed present state ('his status is changed from having not come to havingcome'-Le. 'he is here'). In other words, 'he came and is here.' A simplifiedEnglish translation is to use the present perfect: 'He has come', which indicates thata present state ('he is here') is the result of a past event ('he came'). The end-of-discourse function is not obvious in this single-utterance discourse. But the fact thatone can either stop at the end of the utterance or go on to say something related toit is good enough evidence for the argument that the Ie mayor may not beinterpreted as marking the end of a discourse.

More importantly, -Ie and Ie may interact with each other to produce variationsin form. The sentence in (85), repeated below, is a good example of such aninteraction.

(85) Wo xue(-Ie) sannian Zhongwen Ie.I study( -PFV) three-year Chinese CHANGE-OF-ST ATE'I have studied Chinese for three years.'

Obviously, (85) is a mixture of a past event ('I studied Chinese') and a presentchanged state (from 'it is less than three years' to 'it is three years that I havestudied Chinese'). And its interpretation is: 'I (started to) study Chinese in the pastand it has been three years that I've been doing it.' Equally obvious is where themessage is focused: It is the present state rather than the past event that the messagefocuses on. Thus, the translation 'I have studiedlbeen studying Chinese for threeyears.' If so, the happening of the event (Le. what is marked by perfectivity) iscertainly not in the focus of the message and can thus be ignored in theinterpretation. This results in the optional deletion of the perfective aspect marker-Ie.

From another perspective, a more technical explanation may be offered. Theperfective marker -Ie on the verb singals an event while the sentence-final Iedemands a change from one state to another. There is a conflict between theperfective marker and the sentence-fmal particle. The conflict, however, can beresolved in the following manner. Since the perfective marking is within the scopeof the change-of-state marking, the former is overridden by the latter in the process

of interpretation. The interpretation is then reflected in the structure by the optionaldeletion of the perfective -Ie. This seems to explain equally well why in the caseof the so-called double-Ie construction, the PFV marker is deletable.

The two cases above, (85) and (86), show how perfectivity and change of statemust be considered together in order to arrive at a reasonable explanation for themany possible interpretations of a simple utterance like (85) and for the variationof form in the structure of a sentence like (86).

Next, we cite a longer passage from Chang (1986: 177-8) to further illustratethe interactions between -Ie and Ie, the latter of which signal either change of stateor end of discourse or both.

(87.a) Diertian wuhou, wo shang youju qu (.00/.00) ling-Ie (.15/.19)next-day afternoon, I to post-office go withdraw-PFV

qian,money

b) zai taiyang shai-zhe de dajie-shang zou-Ie (.89/.06) yihuir,at sun bask-DUR DE big-street-LOC walk-PFV a-while'walked a little while on the sun-baked street,

c) hu'er juede shenshangjiu linchu-Ie (.54/.24)xuduo han lai,suddenly feel body-LaC then drip-out-PFV much sweat come'suddenly I felt I was sweating all over

d) wo xiang wo qianhouzuoyou de xingren yikan (.00/.00)I toward I front-back-left-right DE pedestrian a-look

'I took a look at the pedistrians around me,

e)jiu buzhibujue ba tou difu-Ie (.51/.02)xiaqu,then unconsciously BA head lower-PFV down'and automatically lowered my head,

f) wo toushang jingshang de hanzhu, geng tong shengyuI head-LaC neck-LaC DE sweat-drop, even-more like heavy-rain,

side, yike yike zuan (.70/.13) chulai Ie (.05/.03).similar, drop drop ooze out-come CHANGE-OF-STATE/

END-OF-DISCOURSE

'The beads of perspiration on my head and neck, much like a heavy rain,

The passage is taken from a well-known writer Yu Dafu's Chunfeng Chenzui deWanshang 'An Evening Intoxicated in Spring Breeze'. It was used by Chang in asurvey to determine the interactions between the perfective aspect marker -Ie andthe sentence-final particle Ie. In the orignal, the perfective marker -Ie occurs fourtimes: after ling 'to withdraw' in (a), following zou 'walk' in (b), after linchu 'dripout' in (c), and following difu 'lower' in (e). Other verbs are not followed by thesuffix, though they are potential positions for the marker. The sentence-fmalleoccurs only once: at the very end of the passage. A total of eighty native speakersparticipated in the survey. They were presented with the passage with alloccurrences of (-)Ie removed and were asked to insert one wherever they feltnecessary. The figures in the parentheses are the percentages of respondentsindicating the need of a (-)Ie in those positions. The first figure indicates obligatoryuse and the second one, optional use.

The results of the survey present several interesting facts. In most cases, amajority of the respondents agreed with the author, athough not always, norunanimously. In three cases, however, there is disagreement. Only 15% and 19%of the respondents, respectively, opted for obligatory and optional use of -Ie afterling 'withdraw (money)' in clause (a), where the suffix DOES occur in the originaltext. On the other hand, 70% and 13% of them, respectively, preferred theobligatory and optional use of -Ie after zuan 'ooze' in clause (f), where no -Ieoccurs in the original. Furthermore, only 5% and 3% of the respondents,respectively, chose the obligatory and optional use of the sentence-final Ie at the endof clause (f), where it actually occurs in the text. Below are our explanations for thedisparity between the author and the respondents in their judgment for the use andnon-use of -Ie and le.18

Though the author uses the -Ie in cluase (a) to indicate anteriority (Chang,1986: 177-189), most respondents, without the benefit of any preceding context,interpreted it as the opening clause of a narrative. Such a clause usually sets thebackground or circumstances for the narrated events to happen. And the non-useof the perfective -Ie where it would normally be expected in a single event clause,is a device to mark such a background clause. For example, in the followingdiscourse (taken from students' homework in a third-year Chinese class at theUniversity of Florida):

(88.a) Shang xingqi, wo cong Zhongguo huidao-Ie Meiguo.last week, I from China return-PFV U.S.

'Last week, I returned to the U.S. from China.

b) Zai haiguan fasheng-Ie yidian mafan.at customs happen-PFV a-little trouble'I had some trouble at the customs.

c) Yige jianchayuan yao wo .a-M inspector want me .'an inspector wanted me ....'

clause (88.a) can be made more appropriate if the -Ie after huidao is left out for thereason that the clause actually serves to supply background infromation for whathappened in the narrative. Likewise, the English translation will be moreappropriate if the verb return is in the non-perfective progressive form, Le. wasreturning instead of returned. This then is a case where discourse needs overridethe syntactic or semantic considerations in the selection of the verbal form.Although 'returning to the D.S.' was an event and it happened in the past, yet asbackground information it is presented in the imperfective form. In Mandarin, theperfective marker is suppressed; in English, the progressive form is selected.

In (87.c), the disparity between the author and the respondents in their use ofthe perfective -Ie and the change-of-state or end-of-discourse Ie can again beexplained in terms of whether or not the passage is situated in a larger context. Theauthor presents the passage as a complete discourse unit and therefore it is wrappedup with Ie. The sentence-fmal particle can actually double for a perfective markerfor the 'verb + complement' zuanchulai 'ooze out'. Without the benefit of knowingwhether the discourse unit ends at that point, the participants in the survey had farless reason to mark the end of discourse than does the author himself. On the otherhand, without this final Ie for either perfectivity or end of discourse or both, theclause wouldn't be able to present a past event. Most of the participants thereforewere forced to insert a perfective marker to compensate for the deficiency. Thisseems to be a reasonable account for why the native speaking respondents disagreewith the author. It is certainly another case where discourse and semantico-syntactic needs interact to produce the most appropriate form. Consideration of onewithout the other would not offer a satisfactory account of why there are suchvariations in the syntactic form.

4.4.2. Presupposition, Insistence and Obviousness

In Sections 4.1.3, 4.2.3 and 4.3.3, the particle me was treated as having thefunctions of indicating (a) presupposition (Le. factuality) on the semantic level, (b)insistence on the modality level, and (c) obviousness on the discourse level. Withinthe insistence function, different meanings can be further derived in accordancewith the semantic content and syntactic structure of the utterance. They can bevariously labelled assurance, exhortation, impatience, indignation, etc. (Cf.Summary in (56).) At the risk of being repetitive, we discuss a few more examplesto conclude this chapter.

(89) A: Xiao Li you chushi Ie.Little Li again has-accident PFV/CHANGE-OF-STATE

B: Wo gaosu ni bie rang ta gu de me.I tell you not let him go DE ME

'I told you not to let him go. (i.e. Didn't I tell you ...?')

The particle me is in its presupposition function, indicating factuality of the contentof the utterance. On the discourse level, obviousness may be interpreted as 'Youdidn't believe me but now you should .... ' It may also be interpreted as expressingdispleasure, but that is a further derived meaning from the core function.

(90) A: Wo shenqing gongzuo xuyao jieshaoxin, keyi bu keyi qingapply job need recommendation-letter, may not may ask

ni xie yifeng?you write one-M

'I am applying for ajob and need letters of recommendation. I wonderif you can write one.'

B: Dangran keyi me.of-course may ME'Of course!'

The me in (89) is in its presupposition function on the semantic level. It reinforcesthe meaning of the adverb dangran 'of course'. In fact, either of them will besufficient for the meaning of 'as a matter of course', but the presence of both givesa stronger tone. On the modality level, instead of insistence the particle makes anassurance because the utterance invovle the first person rather than the secondperson. On the discourse level, it takes on the obviousness function.

(91) A: Womenjintian wanshang qu kan 'Jurassic Park', ni qu bu qu?we today evening go see' Jurassic Park', you go not go'We are going to see 'Jurassic Park' tonight. Are you going [with us)'?

B: Wo bu xiang quoI not think go'I don't feel like going.'

A: Zhege dianying hen haokan a!this-M movie very interesting A'The movie is very interesting, you know.'

B: Wo bu xiang chuqu.I not think out-go'I don't feel like going OUT.'

A: Weishenme? Gen women yiqi qu me.why with us together go ME'Why? Let's go together!'

B: Wo jiushi bu xiang qu me!I just not think go ME'I just don't want to go! That's why.'

The frrst me by Speaker A is used in the insistence function on the modality level.The second one is in its obviousness function on the discourse level. The functionis reinfroced by the presence of the adverbial expression jiushi 'no other than'identifying something already familiar to the hearer. E.g.

(92) Zhe jiushi wo shuode neiben shu.this no-other-than I talke-DE that-M book'This is the book that I mentioned.'

But, again, the second me may be interpreted as indicating displeasure orimpatience. These are derivable from the combination of the core function with themeaning of the utterance.

4.5. Variety of Functions of Sentence-Final Particles-A Summary

In this chapter, the major sentence-final particles are studied in their variousfunctions. Some of them function on a single level: ma is for interrogation on thesemantico-syntactic level; ba and a/ya are for uncertainty and personal involvement,respectively, on the modality level; and ne is for inter-clausal or inter-sententiallinking on the discourse level. Others serve multi-level functions. Le, distinguishedfrom the verbal -Ie, serves as a change-of-state marker on the semantico-syntacticlevel and as an end-of-discourse marker on the discourse level. The most versatileone is me. It serves as a marker of presupposition on the semantic level, as aninsistence particle on the modality level and as an obviousness marker on thedisocurse level. These facts are recapitulated in the chart in (93).

There have been a large number of interpretations for each of the particles inliterature. Many of these interpretations are widely different and some ofthem areeven opposite in menaing, e.g. agreement and disagreement for me. The mainpurpose of this chapter is to tie such divergent interpretations together by showingthat despite the widely different meanings assigned to each particle, they can largely

be determined on the basis of a core function. We have tried, and hope to havesucceeded to some degree, to identify such a core function for each of the particleson a certain level. As some of them have functions on different levels, thesefunctions may interact with each other to produce complications. Le and me are theones that have been discussed in terms of their functions on different levels. Themain problem with Ie is its ambiguity. At the end of a clause, it may serve either orboth of the functions of change of state and end of discourse. Besides, the presenceof this Ie may even affect the decision on the use or non-use of the perfectivemarker -Ie. Me serving on three levels presents some confusion. But approachingit from the internal structure of the utterance in which it occurs proves to be aneffective means to distinguish between the core functions. Further meaningdistinctions such as indigantion, impatience, exhortation, etc. can be made on thebasis of the core function together with the content of the utterance.

1. The term 'sentence' is used here in a very loose sense, although it may turnout to be true that the particles do actually mark 'sentences' in its more strictlydefmed sense (cf. Chapter 9). At this point, 'clause' is used where it is certain thatonly a simple clause is involved. Otherwise, 'sentence' is used to refers to astructural unit from a single clause to a group of clauses that are connected in theconventional way English clauses are to form a sentence in that language.

2. The characterization of ne as a mild question marker is not accurate. Wewill address this problem in Section 4.3. below.

3. The various ways of characteizing a/ya and me here are based on Bougerie(1994), which provides a list of interpretations of the sentence-fmal particles in 11textbooks that are most widely used in the U.S.

4. Strictly speaking, interrogation is a speech act but it has more often beentreated in the syntactic or semantic component of the structural study of a language.

5. There are still some puzzling instances that don't fit into this generalization.For example, a student newspaper ad begins, 'So, you want to be a lawyer? Attendour Free Seminar on law school admission.' The quoted question can only betranslated as a ma-question: Ni xiang dang lushi ma?

6. Some sentences do not end in any punctuation mark in Li and Thompson

(1981). .' ..~ ~ .7. This particle IS sometimes spelt ma (written l1fM'-or ,,"~,), To aVOId

confusion with the interrogative particle ma (written ~~ ), we will consistentlyspell it as me. (Cf. Beida, 1982:329 & 331.)

8. Chao distinguishes between yes-no questions with ba and 'doubtful posed'statements with ba by recognizing the latter as having a slightly lower intonationand a shorter syllable for the particle. A 'doubtful posed statement' is probably onethat is treated as equivalent to a statement with a tag question in English, e.g.

Nimen dou qu ba?you all go BA'You are all going, aren't you?'

9. 'Unwilling concession' can be made obvious only in longer texts than singlesentences. The following is an example to illustrate obvious unwilling concessionfrom Liu and Li (1992: 186-187). The story is about a young couple in China andhow the mother tries to pamper their only son despite the subtle indication by thefather of his disapproval. (Only the particle in question is given in Chinese; the restof the passage is in English.)

'How much is the overcoat? ' the young mother asks.'Thirty-two yuan, ' the clerk answers.'Really pretty. Beibei,' she turns to her son, 'do you like it or not? ''(i) like (it), ' he replies crisply and in a real sweet tone.'Buy-BA?' she asks her husband.'Buy-BAI' he's also very generous.After they have bought the overcoat, they come to the toy counter.Beibei sets his heart on a large Transformer at first glance. It sells for forty-

eight yuan.'It's too expensive. We can't afford it, ' says Father.But, Beibei starts crying right on the spot. '1want it, 1 want itl'Biting her lips, Mother says to Father, 'This is a (kind of) investment (on his)

intelligence. Buy itfor him BA. My sweater can wait. '

'But, you ..., ' Father, looking at Mother, says helplessly, 'All right BA, buy itfor him. We don't have much to hope for in our life. Everything rests with himnow.

The two instances of ba used by the mother are for suggestion and/or question,but those used by the father can't be anything but unwilling concession.

10. We cannot find any other instances of indignation for this particle in ourdata base, though it is highly likely for it to be used for such an expression. Ourdata base is taken from Chu (1986 & 1987c), which includes 45 tokens of me inrecorded conversations and 9 examples in a survey where the majority of78 nativespeakers choose me as the most appropriate final particle.

11. But, as mentioned earlier, me is strongly imcompatible with what may becalled 'low certainty' adverbs such as kungpa '(I'm) afraid', haoxiang 'seems like',yexu 'perhaps', etc.

12. This passage is a contribution of my students in the 1993-94 'Third-YearChinese' class at the University of Florida. Their sincere cooperation has not onlyhelped my teaching but also enhanced my research efforts.

13. This example is labelled as 'hypothetical interrogation' and appears to bemisplaced in this categroy of disjunctive question by Alleton.

14. 'Topic framework' is not a well-defined term. According to Brown andYule (1984:73-79), it refers to the content of a discourse rather than any formalfeatures. They give a few passages to illustrate the idea without offering adefmition. Here it is used to mean something more along the line of the traditional'theme' of a discourse up to a given point. We will try to defme the use of ne in amore precise manner without relying on topic framework.

15. Here we will take the term 'given information' as a working concept insteadofa theoretical notion. It is to be understood roughly as 'information that both thespeaker and the hearer share at that point of discourse'. A more precise definitionwill be found in Chapter 5.

16. A question is generally defined as a form to request more information.There doesn't seem to be any way for an utterance containing new information onlyto do so.

17. For a question becoming rhetorical because of its obvious answer, see Yao& Pan (1987:272-3).

18. There are quite some differences between the explanations here and thoseof Chang (1986: 177-219).

19. Dr. Cheung Kwan-Hin of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (personalcommunication) points out that corresponding to the three functions of me,Cantonese uses three different sentence-final particles.

Information has generally been treated in terms of two major categories: Given (orOld) vs. New. Given information is often defined as definite or presupposed andnew information, as indefinite or asserted. While they are closely correlated to thesemantico-syntactic notions of definite vs. indefinite and the logical concept ofpresupposition and assertion, the three sets do not completely overlap and thereforecan hardly be used to define each other. Indeed, there are frequent cases of giveninformation in the form of a non-definite expression occurring in the assertedportion of a clause and cases of new information in the form of defmite expressionsoccurring in the presupposed portion of a clause. In spite of efforts to refine thecategorization of given and new information by further subcategorizing them,problem of the kind have not been satisfactorily resolved in the literature.

In this chapter, we treat 'given' and 'new' as categories on the basis of thesource where information comes from. For the actual use of information, wepropose the notion of management of information-Leo whether a piece ofinformation is used to inform or not. In other words, a piece of information,regardless of its source, may be signalled for high or low informative value withina given context. Thus, the structure of information is viewed as consisting of twotiers: source and management. These two tiers are independent of each other,though there is a strong correlation between given information and low informativevalue on the one hand, and between new information and high informative value onthe other.

In the sections that follow, we will look at the problems inherent in thedichotomy of given and new information as categories irrespective of source ormanagement. We will try to find solutions to the problems.

In pragmatics, information is generally classified into two categories: Given (orOld) and New. This tradition can be traced back to the Prague School view, wherenew Information is defmed as 'information that the addressor believes is not knownto the addressee,' and given Information as information 'which the addressorbelieves is known to the addressee (either because it is physically present in thecontext or because it has already been mentioned in the discourse.)' (Brown andYule, 1983:154). Halliday (1967) elaborated on the notions by applying them tospoken English and established correlates between intonation and information

status. Later scholars, notably Chafe (1976) and van Dijk (1977) among manyothers, tried to link information status to syntactic structure with some success. But,after a lengthy discussion of both the prosodic and structural approaches, Brownand Yule conclude: (1983:189)

It is certainly the case, as Halliday has always insisted, that informationstatus is determined, not by the structure of discourse but by the speaker.It is also certainly the case that there are no 'rules' for the specification of'new' or 'given' status by the speaker. There are, however, regularities ....regularities which permit us to make statements like 'speakers usuallyintroduce new entities with indefinite referring expressions and withint~~atio~al prominence' and 'speakers usually refer to current givenentitIes WIth attenuated syntactic and phonological forms.'

The regularities that Brown and Yule refer to are just correlations betweeninformation status and the various signals for notions like definitenesspresupposition and assertion. Within the existing frameworks of information status'to look ~or per~ect corresponden~e between them would be futile and would onl;lead to dlsappomtrnent and confuSIOn.We will therefore work out a different systemto accommodate the general correspondences as well as the occasionaldiscrepancies in a more cohesive way. Before doing that, however, we need to lookinto the problems first.

5.1.1. Information Status and Syntactic Correlates

~rown ~d Yule (1983:170-1) present five different 'syntactic forms' for givenmformatlOn. In fact, these five can hardly be recognized as different 'forms', butthey are rather five sources which given information may be said to come from.They are illustrated below in (1)-(5).

(l.a) Yesterday I saw a little girl get bitten by a dog.b) I tried to catch the dog, but it ran away.

(2.a) Mary got some picnic supplies out of the car.b) The beer was warm.

(3.a) I saw two young people there.b) He kissed her.

(4.a) Look out.b) It's falling.