Le , guo and zhe in Mandarin Chinese: a relevance-theoretic account

Summary, in English

In this paper, I propose a relevance-theoretic account of the particles le, guo and zhe in Mandarin Chinese. Though conventionally regarded as aspect markers, on closer inspection they seem to contribute to a range of interpretations that cannot be subsumed under a semantic category or a specific temporal representation. The explanatory model presented in this paper builds upon relevancetheoretic ideas on encoded procedural meaning and Reichenbach’s (1947, Elements of symbolic logic. London: Macmillan) temporal schemas for the tenses and the aspects. I propose a procedure—a set of interpretational instructions (as described in, among others, Wilson and Sperber (1993b, Lingua, 90, 1–25), Blakemore (1987, Semantic constraints on relevance. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, Journal of Linguistics, 36(3), 463–486) and Carston (2002, Thought and utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.))—and a concept activated by the procedure for each of the particles. I show that these particles can contribute to a range of explicatures and implicatures and that their exact contribution to an utterance is highly context dependent.

• Author: Marita Ljungqvist
• Department/s: Chinese Studies
• Publishing year: 2007
• Language: English
• Pages: 193-235
• Publication/Series: Journal of East Asian Linguistics
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 3
• Links: http://www.springerlink.com/content/e70878752w34l11h/; http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10831-007-9012-6
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: History and Archaeology
• Keywords: Particles; Pragmatics; Mood; Aspect; Tense; Relevance theory; Procedural meaning
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 0925-8558