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Guiding assertions and questions in discourse

Mandarin dique and zhende

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Abstract

This paper explores how discourse markers contribute to the update of discourse through a detailed study of Mandarin dique ‘indeed’ and zhende ‘really’. On the basis of empirical data and a naturalness rating experiment, we show that dique and zhende make similar yet different contributions to discourse updates. Dique presupposes that its prejacent issue is old, while zhende presupposes that its prejacent issue is old and that some discourse participant has failed to resolve this issue. Furthermore, dique and zhende can embed both assertions and questions. This supports Farkas and Bruce’s (2010) Table stack model, which provides a uniform treatment for assertions and questions.

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Notes

  1. A variety of terms are used to refer to this class of expressions, including ‘discourse marker’ (Schiffrin 1987), ‘pragmatic marker’ (Fraser 1996; Brinton 1996), ‘discourse particle’ (Schourup 1985), ‘connective’ (Blakemore 1987), etc. The term ‘discourse marker’ and ‘discourse particle’ are both frequently used. We did not adopt the term ‘discourse particle’ for the words discussed in this study (i.e., dique and zhende), since they are polysyllabic and contain significant phonetic content, and thus do not fit the label ‘particle.’

  2. The Mandarin data reported in this paper are based on the introspection of the first author, who is a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, unless otherwise noted.

  3. The English data in (7), (8) and (9) are based on the introspection of two English native speakers the authors consulted.

  4. Romero and Han (2004) only present examples containing VP-initial really, but they did not distinguish between sentence-initial and VP-initial really in their discussion of really. Hence we assume that really at both positions is claimed to have the same semantics as the verum operator in their analysis. Therefore, Romero and Han’s (2004) analysis cannot explain why the use of really is infelicitous in (9) unless they propose a different semantics for sentence-initial really from that of the verum operator.

  5. See more analyses of discourse items in Germanic and Romance languages in Karagjosova (2004, 2006), Coniglio (2008), Coniglio and Zegrean (2010), McCready and Zimmermann (2011) and Kaufmann and Kaufmann (2012).

  6. See Section 3.1 for the formal definition of an issue.

  7. We assume that p ‘It will rain’ has not been suggested by anyone in the previous discourse in (28). If some individual has already predicted the rain, as in (17), then the use of dique is felicitous here.

  8. See Section 3.1 for the formal definition of issue resolvement.

  9. The use of zhende indicates that the speaker believes that y’s answer does not resolve I. It does not necessarily indicate that the speaker believes that y’s answer is false. As in (i), C’s answer can be true, i.e., the company is indeed full of beauties. B knows that C’s assertion is true, but B believes that this assertion does not resolve A’s issue.

    1. (i)
      figure u

  10. These two discourse markers make the same contributions in another speech act, i.e., commands, as they do in assertions and questions. See Yuan (2015:208–211) for the discussion of the interaction between dique/zhende and commands.

  11. Qualtrics is a web-based system that conducts online surveys. Version 45634 of the Qualtrics Research Suite. Copyright©2013 Qualtrics. http://www.qualtrics.com.

  12. In this experiment, each participant has seen all target sentences in all kinds of contexts. Hiramatsu (1998) and Snyder (2000) point out that acceptability ratings may be influenced by repeated exposure. The current results can and should be replicated in a follow-up experiment in which separate experimental lists are constructed according to a Latin Square-design, such that each list contains an equal amount of target sentences per context, and each list is judged by an equal number of participants.

  13. See Farkas and Bruce (2010:86–87) for the original definition of the Table stack. Farkas and Bruce (2010) assume that the items on the Table are syntactic objects paired with their denotations. For example, after Anne’s assertion in (46), the syntactic structure (i.e., ‘Sam is home’[D], ‘D’ for the sentential feature of declaratives) and its denotation (i.e., the set {p}, p = ‘Sam is home’) are both added onto the Table. Having syntactic forms available in discourse together with semantic contents allows conversational moves to have access to both of them. For simplicity, the definition in (48) omits the syntactic structure and hence only the denotation (i.e., an issue I) is added onto the Table. See also Isaacs and Rawlins (2008) who make use of the notion of stack to model a context.

  14. See Cohen and Krifka (2014) and Krifka (2015, 2017) for a similar theory of speech acts that models both the current cg and its projected continuation. Their framework characterizes various reactions to different speech acts, e.g., acceptance and rejection of assertions or questions, based on the notion of commitment states and commitment spaces.

  15. Dique and zhende can either occur at sentence-initial position or VP-initial position. This paper only discussed dique/zhende at sentence-initial position. Adverbs at these two positions make similar semantic contributions and both can be analyzed as presupposition triggers. For example, both sentences in (i) indicate that the proposition ‘Li went abroad’ has been suggested, and both sentences in (ii) indicate that p ‘Li went abroad’ has been suggested and that some discourse participant remains uncommitted to the truth of p. See Appendix and Yuan (2015:109–130) for the discussion of a subtle difference between sentence-initial and VP-initial dique/zhende.

    1. (i)
      figure y
    1. (ii)
      figure z

  16. We would like to thank the editor for reminding us that one of the most important advantages of employing Farkas and Bruce’s (2010) theory is that it allows us to analyze dique and zhende as lexical items that affect the discourse updates.

  17. The potential of the framework of Farkas and Bruce (2010) is greater than what have been discussed above. Other pieces of work which adopt this model include Farkas (2011) on imperatives, Chernilovskaya (2014) on exclamatives, Müller (2014) on German modal particles, Malamud and Stephenson (2015) on tag questions, etc.

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Acknowledgements

We are sincerely grateful to the editors and three anonymous reviewers whose feedback on earlier versions has tremendously helped improve this paper. Special thanks are also due to Satoshi Tomioka and Stefan Kaufmann, who introduced us to Farkas and Bruce’s (2010) framework. We are also grateful to Christopher Davis, Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine, Magdalena Kaufmann, Paul S. Law, Po Lun Lee Peppina, Elin McCready, Haihua Pan, Kyle Rawlins, Uli Sauerland and Grégoire Winterstein for their constructive criticism and valuable comments. This research was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant number 17JNQN007) awarded to Mengxi Yuan and JSPS KAKENHI (C) Grant Number 18K00589 awarded to Yurie Hara.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jinan University, School of Humanities, Zhuhai City, China

    Mengxi Yuan

  2. Waseda University, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Tokyo, Japan

    Yurie Hara

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  1. Mengxi Yuan
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Correspondence to Mengxi Yuan.

Appendix A: Adverbs at sentence-initial and VP-initial positions

Appendix A: Adverbs at sentence-initial and VP-initial positions

A difference between sentence-initial and VP-initial dique/zhende is that VP-initial adverbs can be embedded but sentence-initial ones cannot:

  1. (86)
    figure ab

In this paper, a sentence-initial adverb is defined as a sentential force modifier, which takes a force head as its argument. This correctly predicts that sentence-initial adverbs cannot be embedded, as clauses indicating sentential forces cannot be embedded in Mandarin. As pointed out by Han (1998), there are many languages in which embedded clauses cannot express force. This is indeed the case in Mandarin. Mandarin clauses marked as questions or commands cannot be embedded. When it appears that these clauses are embedded, they are in fact direct quotations. For example, ni xihuan wo ma in (87) is a direct quotation of the question ‘Do you like me’ uttered by Li, and ni lai wo jia ba in (88) is a direct quotation of the command ‘Come to my home’ uttered by Li.

  1. (87)
    figure ac
  1. (88)
    figure ad

In contrast, VP-initial dique can be defined as a propositional modifier, which can be embedded:

  1. (89)

    λα.α〈T(c)[0] ={α}〉, and α is of type 〈s,t〉

The different denotations correctly predict that sentence-initial dique can occur in a wh-question, whereas VP-initial dique cannot, as in (90). According to (89), VP-initial dique must take a single proposition of type 〈s,t〉 as an argument. Semantically, wh-questions are composed of a set of propositions (of type 〈〈s,t〉,t〉) and a force head. Therefore, VP-initial dique is not compatible with wh-questions, and hence (90b) is ungrammatical. In contrast, sentence-initial dique can take a set of propositions as its argument, and thus (90a) is grammatical. See Yuan (2015) for the detailed discussions on the differences between sentence-initial and VP-initial dique/zhende.

  1. (90)
    figure ae

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Yuan, M., Hara, Y. Guiding assertions and questions in discourse. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 37, 1545–1583 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-9435-y

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