Beyond negation: “Not” as evaluation and speech-act trigger in Mandarin Chinese negative markers

ABSTRACTHow do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 used eye-tracking to assess children's use of stress in resolving structural ambiguities. Experiment 2 took advantage of special properties of Mandarin to investigate whether children can use intonational cues to resolve ambiguities involving speech acts. The results of our experiments show that children's use of prosodic information in ambiguity resolution varies depending on the type of ambiguity involved. Children can use prosodic information more effectively to resolve speech act ambiguities than to resolve structural ambiguities. This finding suggests that the mapping between prosody and semantics/pragmatics in young children is better established than the mapping between prosody and syntax.

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Speech act and communication effects of attaching a tag question in Mandarin Chinese

JOURNAL OF CHINESE HUMANITIES ◽

10.35955/jch.2019.12.73.149 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 73 ◽

pp. 149-173

Author(s):

Byum-Lyul Lee

Keyword(s):

Mandarin Chinese ◽

Speech Act ◽

Communication Effects

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The Structure of Split Questions in Mandarin Chinese

Studies in Chinese Linguistics ◽

10.2478/scl-2020-0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 1-32

Author(s):

Ting-Chi Wei

Keyword(s):

Mandarin Chinese ◽

Shell Structure ◽

Speech Act ◽

The Other ◽

Final Particle ◽

Focus Movement ◽

The One ◽

Split Questions ◽

Empty Subject ◽

Final Particles

AbstractThis article proposes a pro analysis for split questions (SQs) in Chinese, dissimilar to the biclausal account employing focus movement and deletion in Arregi 2010 and the one employing the silent head in Kayne 2015 and Tang 2015. SQ consists of a wh-clause and a tag clause. We argue that the entire SQ is an information/confirmation-seeking question, represented by a Speech Act Phrase (SAP)-shell structure (Speas and Tenny 2003; Oguro 2017, etc.) with wh-clause in its specifier and the tag in its complement. The tag of Chinese SQ is a base-generated clause, [pro (copula) tag ma/ne], composed of an empty subject pro, an optional copula, a tag, and a final particle, instead of being derived from a fully-fledged structure parallel to the wh-part akin to those of English and Spanish SQs. Such a pro analysis overcomes difficulties encountered in the other accounts regarding the distribution of the final particles and their clause-typing, the optionality of the copula, the ubiquitous uses of tag, the connectivity effects, and the island-insensitivity. Analytically, two seeming variants of SQ imply that the derivation of an SQ depends on whether its tag moves and whether a copula exists.

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Negator turned intersubjective speech-act adverbial

Concentric. Studies in Linguistics - Concentric ◽

10.1075/consl.00025.lau ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Seng-hian Lau

Keyword(s):

Mandarin Chinese ◽

Speech Act ◽

Natural Languages

Abstract This study investigates the non-negating negator m̄ in Taiwanese. With respect to its function, this study argues that it is neither an intensifier nor a rhetorical marker. Furthermore, contrary to prevalent intuition, the combination m̄-tō is not parallel to the ostensible cognate bújiù in Mandarin Chinese. Instead, the non-negating m̄ is an intersubjective speech-act adverbial affix attaching to the head of FocP (realized as tō or tsiah) that takes scope over whatever follows. Typologically, this study uncovers another use of non-negating negation in natural languages, and consequently challenges the enterprise pursuing a unified analysis for the phenomena of the so-called expletive negation.

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Indexical and Sequential Properties of Criticisms in Initial Interactions: Implications for Examining (Im) Politeness across Cultures

Russian Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.22363/2687-0088-2019-23-4-904-929 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 904-929

Author(s):

Michael Haugh ◽

Wei-Lin Melody Chang

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

Cultural Studies ◽

Cultural Differences ◽

Mandarin Chinese ◽

Speech Acts ◽

Speech Act ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Cultural Groups ◽

Linguistic Behaviour ◽

Cross Cultural Studies

Cross-cultural studies of (im)politeness have tended to focus on identifying differences in linguistic behaviour by which speech acts are delivered, which are then explained as motivated by underlying cultural differences. In this paper, we argue that this approach unnecessarily backgrounds emic or cultural members’ understandings of (im)politeness. Through a comparative analysis of criticisms in initial interactions amongst Taiwanese speakers of Mandarin Chinese and amongst Australian speakers of English, we draw attention to the way in which similarities in the locally situated ways in which criticisms are delivered and responded to (i.e. their sequential properties) can mask differences in the culturally relevant meanings of criticisms (i.e. their indexical properties) in the respective languages. We conclude that cross-cultural studies of (im)politeness should not only focus on differences in the forms or strategies by which speech acts are accomplished, but remain alert to the possibility that what is ostensibly the same speech act, may in fact be interpreted in different ways by members of different cultural groups.

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