A Study of the Focus Expression Function of the Modal Adverb 'you' in Modern Chinese

摘要

The main point of view in the academia is that "you" is generally lightly read when expressing refutation and negative tone adverbs with a focus. This paper uses experimental phonetics to test 10 subjects "wo you mei hua ni de qian, guan na me duo!", "ni zen me you lai le?" The pitch frequency percentage values of each of the two sentences were analyzed, pointing out that "you" tends to be the focus in negation, rebuttal tone or rhetorical tone. When "you" is the focus, its pragmatic function is to serve as the narrow focus of the whole sentence to accentuate the pragmatic function of negative presupposition and counter-question. The paper also proves that with the semantic blur of "you", its tendency to focus is smaller.