THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF 'CAI' AND 'JIU' IN MANDARIN CHINESE.

摘要

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between cai and jiu in Mandarin Chinese by integrating both a semantic and a pragmatic perspective. Cai and jiu sometimes appear synonymous with one another and sometimes antonymous. There is another paradox, namely, that C itself can apparently be interpreted in opposite ways. These puzzles are dissolved by identifying general meanings for each of cai and jiu and showing how the problematic interpretations arise from interaction of those general meanings with specific contextual factors.;Cai and jiu are distinguished from each other by the implicatures they carry. Cai gives exclusive focusing while jiu gives simple focusing. The former is both semantically and functionally a more constrained and thus more marked lexical item: besides sharing the highlighting function with jiu, cai further conveys a denial of the expectation established through the context. The general meanings of the two particles are represented in a simple logical notation. Pragmatic notions such as "scalar implicature", and Gricean maxims of relevance and of quantity, are utilized to derive the various interpretations realized in particular contexts from the general meanings.;In other words, a general meaning cuts across all the usages of each particle, and the two particles relate to each other in a systematic way. Integrating semantics and pragmatics allows for a unified analysis of the uses of cai and jiu, which previous studies have failed to achieve.;Cai and jiu are both analyzed as syncategorematic particles placing focus on some element involved in speech. The diversity in interpreting the two particles is accounted for in terms of the notions "focus", "variable", "variable domain", and "scope". Cai/jiu can have four different kinds of focus: (1) the temporal setting of the narrated event, (2) the circumstances determining the actuation of the event, (3) the event itself, and (4) some element internal to the event. The four different uses resulting from these distinct focus types are called temporal, parametric, emphatic, and limiting.