Rejected expectations: The scalar particles cai and jiu in Mandarin Chinese.

摘要

This dissertation investigates the four uses of cai and jiu in Mandarin: the temporal, the restrictive, the conditional and the emphatic uses. The major claim is that the various uses of the two particles are related by virtue of their common link to a semantic structure. Cai and jiu presuppose a change of state in the truth value of a proposition, and they presuppose that this change happens at a different point from where it is expected to happen. For cai, the asserted value is located "farther up" on the structure than the expected value, whereas for jiu the asserted value is located "farther down.";In the temporal use, cai expresses that the change happened later than expected while jiu expresses that it happened earlier than expected. Special attention is paid to the antinomic phenomena exhibited by them. In the restrictive use, cai denotes that the asserted value is more than expected whereas jiu denotes that the asserted value is less than expected. It is further argued that cai always induces a strict order among alternatives on a directly or indirectly related temporal scale whereas jiu can induce a temporal scale when it occurs with the sentential le and a nontemporal scale otherwise. These particles are compared with zhi which is happy with an unordered set of alternatives and can be associated with a nontemporal scale as well. The generalizations work for both linear and hierarchical orders.;In the conditional use, the same structures are argued to account for the effect that cai marks the condition as necessary and jiu marks it as sufficient. For cai, it is asserted that the protasis entails the apodosis but no lower-ranked or less specific alternative can make the apodosis true, whereas it is expected that the apodosis would be true under a less specific protasis. For jiu, it is asserted that the protasis satisfies the apodosis, but it is expected that the apodosis would be true under a more specific protasis. The emphatic use of the two particles is related to the conditional use. The emphatic flavor comes from the rejection of what is expected. Hence, it is shown that we do not have to resort to multiple ambiguity but can describe cai and jiu as having a uniform meaning.