Abstract
This paper deals with exclamatives in Mandarin and has two main objectives. The first is the application of the exclamativity tests proposed in the literature to identify “true” sentential exclamatives in Mandarin. The second goal is to establish the essential components of sentential exclamatives in Mandarin, in order to understand the necessary components in exclamatives cross-linguistically. Our starting point is Zanuttini and Portner’s (Language 76(1):123–132, 2000; Language 79(1):39–81, 2003) proposal, which argues that the two fundamental syntactic components that identify a clause as an exclamative are a factive operator and a wh-operator. They identify the force of exclamatives, with a semantic operation called widening, which is connected to the surprise reading generally considered to be associated with exclamatives. In this paper, we show that there are only two types of true exclamatives in Mandarin, both involving scalar degree adverbs. These two types of exclamatives reveal that, contra Zanuttini and Portner, neither wh-elements, nor surprise is an essential property of exclamatives. We argue that scalar focus, ego-evidentiality, as well as factivity, form an integral part of exclamatives.
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Notes
There are different treatments based on a scalar interpretive feature: Rullmann (1995), Gutiérrez-Rexach (1999), and Villalba (2004) treat the extreme degree meaning as a semantic presupposition; Z&P (2003) take it to be a conventional implicature; Villalba (2003) provides arguments to treat it as a conversational implicature, explaining the high degree in exclamatives as a strong context-dependency.
Based on data from Dutch, Corver (1990, chap. 5) argues that the wh-operator wat ‘what’ in CP can mark a clause as exclamative.
For Z&P (2000, 2003), two specifiers are needed to host the factive F operator and the Wh-XP. They argue that the CP of exclamatives consists of multiple layers (à la Rizzi 1997): CP1, hosting the factive F operator, and a higher projection CP2 hosting the Wh-XP: [CP2 Wh-XP [C [CP1 F-OP [C [IP…]]]]].
In traditional descriptive grammars (Chao 1968; Zhu 1982; Dow 1983, among others), the making of an exclamative is mainly associated with the sentence final particle a and its variants (ne, ba, ya…). However, as Chao (1968, p. 805) states, “the exclamatory use of a does not exclude its concurrent use in the [many] other functions”. The final particle a, in fact, is usually associated with a bundle of different meanings (see Li and Thompson 1981; Li 2006; Chu 1998, 2002, among others). We review and discuss the previous studies on the interpretation of the particle a in Sect. 4.4.
Some Mandarin speakers consider (4b) slightly acceptable as a question: ‘How much is Lisi tall?’.
We observe that the rhetorical reading seems to have the so-called “disapproval reading” (Obenauer 1994), in the sense that the speaker has a sort of negative attitude; for instance, ‘How come he is so tall and I am not?’.
Example (8) is ungrammatical even if we change the particle to ne. This is probably due to the interpretation of zěnme, which is either an instrumental or a manner adverb, as in (i):
(i)
Nǐ
zěnme
lái
de?
you
how
come
de
‘How did you come? (by bus/train/tram)’
As Z&P (2003, footnote 11) state: “this is not to say that all factives allow exclamative complements. For instance regret does not allow WH complements in general.”
The Mandarin speakers we consulted indicate that the presence of the final particle in (9a–c) makes the sentences “strange,” though not ungrammatical. However, note that without the final particle, the exclamative interpretation disappears: “Lisi knows that s/he is this tall.” As we will see in detail in Sect. 4.4, the final particle seems to express the speaker’s subjectivity. Thus, the presence of the final particle in (9a–c) could mean that the speaker shares the opinion expressed in the embedded exclamative.
“If the subject is other than the first person or the tense is other than present, this conflict disappears. For example, in Mary doesn’t know how very tall he is, there is no conflict between Mary’s lack of knowledge and the speaker’s presupposition that he is very tall” (Z&P 2000, p. 3).
Stalnaker (1998) defines the Common Ground as the bulk of knowledge the speaker assumes to be shared with the hearer. The Common Ground does not only consist of a set of propositions that is presumed to be mutually accepted, but also of a set of entities that have been introduced into the Common Ground before (see Krifka 2007; the original notion of Common Ground is from Stalnaker 1974; see also Karttunen 1974; Lewis 1979).
In Type III, the final particle a can be replaced with ne. The interpretation remains a rhetorical question.
The question is whether the answer to a rhetorical question is really an answer, or just a confirmation. We leave this observation as an open issue for future research.
As noted above, without the final particle a, Type I sentences can be used as statements. Native speakers we consulted also pointed out that without the final particle a, Type I sentences can be used as answers to questions, though the speaker has to indicate the height with a gesture. Type II sentences are however not possible as answers to questions. See Sect. 4.4. for further discussion of the role of the final particle a in exclamatives.
In this paper we only focus on exclamatives whose forms are not independent from the exclamative function. Exclamations with tài ‘too/so’ or zhēn(shì) ‘really’ cannot be considered “true” exclamative because sentences involving these elements can be simple declaratives or statements if uttered without emphatic intonation or any type of gesture (see example (i)). This is not possible with zhème/nàme or duōme (which requires obligatorily the final particle): the sentence in (ii) pronounced without any emphatic intonation and without a gesture indicating the height is not acceptable, or at least is very weird.
(i)
Tā
zhēn
gāo.
S/he
really
tall
‘S/he is really tall.’
(ii)
#/*Tā
zhème/nàme
gāo.
S/he
zhe.me na.me
tall
‘S/he is so tall.’
A sentence with zhēn ‘really’ can be used as an answer (iiiA); interestingly, this is possible also for the exclamatives with zhème or nàme without the final particle a, but only if the answer with zhème/duōme is expressed accompanied by a gesture (iiiB). Sentences with zhēn/tài used in questions do not need any additional gesture or special intonation.
(iii)
Q:
Tā
érzi
yǒu
duō
gāo?
S/he
son
have
much
tall
‘How tall is her/his son?’
A:
Tā
zhēn/
tài
gāo.
S/he
really
too
tall.
‘S/he is really/too tall.’
B:
Tā
zhème
gāo.
(with gesture)
S/he
this.me
tall
Moreover, notice that if we substitute zhème with nàme the sentence is less acceptable, and with duōme it is completely unacceptable. Sentences with zhēn/tài can be used as questions with the interrogative final particle ma (iiiA). As for the sentences with zhème/nàme, the replacement of the final particle a with the interrogative ma is not acceptable to the majority of native speakers we have consulted.
(iii)
A:
Tā
zhèn/
tài
gāo
ma?
S/he
really
too
tall
sfp
‘Is s/he really/too tall?’
B:
#Tā
zhème
gāo
ma? (without gesture)
S/he
this.me
tall
sfp
Elliot (1974) noticed that exclamatives are not compatible with negative scalar implicature expressions as in (i), while they are compatible with positive scalar implicature expressions as in (ii):
(i)
*It isn’t amazing how very tall he is!
(ii)
It is amazing how very tall he is!
Rett (2008, p. 147) proposes that exclamatives obey The Degree Restriction: “an exclamative can only be used to express surprise that the degree property which is its content holds of a particular degree.”
Pan and Boucher (2005) also observe that in certain dialects the particle -me can appear at the end of a sentence to provide the interrogative reading. However, it should be noted that this interrogative reading is a yes-no question reading, and the interrogative interpretation discussed by Zhū (1982) is the yes-no interpretation rather than a wh-question interpretation.
Note that zhème, nàme and duōme differ from even in English in that they are not additive, since they do not add a new element to the scale. However, they indicate the high end of a scale.
The sentence without the final a is a simple declarative sentence, and with a, it appears to have an interpretation that the speaker is asserting that he is indeed quite intelligent. The a is likely not the same final particle as the exclamative a as it is the high-pitched one (see Sect. 4.4).
Speaking about the contextually given scale of propositions on which a conventional implicature conveyed by an exclamative is based, Z&P (2000) state, in Footnote 5: “The details of what criteria are used to order this scale are a subtle matter, and we will not go into them here. Often they have to do with the proposition expressed being surprising, but apparently not always; for example, saying ‘what a good dinner you’ve made!’ to a host needn’t indicate that you didn’t expect it to be good.”
We owe the surprise contexts to Tyler Peterson (p.c.).
As DeLancey (2001) points out, ego-evidentiality and mirativity are different. Mirativity is related to the surprise effect of exclamatives. Marandin (2008, p. 446) states: “The ego-evidential approach captures the expressive flavor of exclamatives without arbitrarily assuming that they have to express an emotive attitude and in particular, surprise. Exclamatives in context can be associated with the expression of an emotion, just like any utterances of other types.”
Garrett uses the term origo to refer to the person from whose perspective a given evidential is evaluated.
We owe the examples in (46) to Giuseppe Torcolacci.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Guan Qianwen, Li Runsen, Li Yan, Wang Man, Yu Xinyue, Yuan Huahung, Zhang Xiaoqian, Zhu Yinyin, Zou Ting for detailed discussions of their Mandarin judgments. Thanks also go to Adriana Belletti, Anikó Lipták, Jean-Marie Marandin, Victor Pan, Marie-Claude Paris, Waltraud Paul, Tyler Peterson, Luigi Rizzi, Dylan Tsai for their useful suggestions, comments, and insights. We are also grateful to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which provided financial support for this research through a post-doc grant (2012–2013) for Linda Badan. All errors remain our responsibility.
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Badan, L., Cheng, L.LS. Exclamatives in Mandarin Chinese. J East Asian Linguist 24, 383–413 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-015-9136-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-015-9136-z