Intensification and Modal Necessity in Mandarin Chinese (Routledge Studies in Chinese Linguistics)

"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"-- Provided by publisher Series page 3 Title page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of abbreviations 10 1 Introduction 12 2 Review of previous studies 26 3 The most general case: yídìng 40 4 Intra-sentential resolution: tiědìng 62 5 Certainty confirmation: kěndìng 74 6 Certainty expression: dǔdìng 94 7 CAUSing: bìrán 109 8 Anti-CAUSing: bìdìng 121 9 Underspecified modal base: shìbì 132 10 Addressee’s To-Do List: wùbì 145 11 Archaic strong modal epistemic necessity and intensification: bì 156 12 General discussion 166 13 Conclusion 193 Index 198