Full Description
This book addresses intensification and modal necessity in Mandarin Chinese.
Intensification is used in this book to describe the speaker's emphasis on a proposition, because, by emphasizing on a proposition, the speaker intensifies the degree of his/her confidence and affirmativeness toward the truth of a proposition, cf. the distinction between 'weaker' and 'stronger'. Modal necessity discussed in this book refers either to the speaker's certainty regarding the truth of an inference, judgment or stipulation, that is, epistemic necessity or to the speaker's certainty concerning the obligatoriness of a proposition, based on rules or regulations, i.e., deontic necessity. This book examines a series of lexical items in Mandarin Chinese that express either intensification or modal necessity, provides a unified semantics and also presents how these lexical items are semantically distinct.
Intensification and Modal Necessity in Mandarin Chinese is aimed at instructors, researchers and post-graduate students of Chinese Linguistics.
Contents
List of Abbreviations. Introduction. Chapter 2: Review of Previous Studies. Chapter 3: The Most General Case: Yídìng. Chapter 4: Intra-sentential Resolution: Tiědìng. Chapter 5: Certainty Confirmation: Kěndìng. Chapter 6: Certainty Expression: Dǔdìng. Chapter 7: Causing: Bìrán. Chapter 8: Anti-causing: Bìdìng. Chapter 9: Underspecified Modal Base: Shìbì. Chapter 10: Addressee's To-Do List: Wùbì. Chapter 11: Archaic Strong Modal Epistemic Necessity and Intensification: Bì. Chapter 12: General Discussion. Chapter 13: Conclusion. References.
