Open AccessRepresent an issue as open: Mandarin discourse particle <em>ba</em>
Author(s) -
Yang Yuan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings from semantics and linguistic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2163-5951
pISSN - 2163-5943
DOI - 10.3765/salt.v30i0.4832
Subject(s) - interrogative word , mandarin chinese , ambiguity , linguistics , assertion , context (archaeology) , sentence , philosophy , psychology , computer science , mathematics , history , archaeology , programming language
The Mandarin sentence final particle ba has been described as expressing uncertainty or soliciting agreement in declaratives ("weakening" an assertion, Han 1995, Li 2006 a.o.). However, ba-interrogatives appear to be "strengthening" a question to a demand: "you must answer this question," similar to the cornering effects associated with or not questions (Biezma 2009 a.o.). To account for this "weak" and "strong" contrast, some have postulated a lexical ambiguity: ba1 in declaratives and ba2 in interrogatives (Chao 1968, Zhu 1999). In this paper, I discuss new data showing that ba-declaratives are not always less forceful and ba-interrogatives are not always more forceful than their unmarked counterparts, which challenges current theories. I propose that, uniformly, the use of ba represents an issue as open. The "weak" and "strong" effects are results of ba interacting with the discourse context.