The Semantics and Pragmatics of the Quasi-logical Use of yòu in Mandarin Chinese

Xue, Lu; Jiang, Yan

Abstract

This paper focuses on the quasi-logical use of yòu (又) ‘again’ in naturally occurring conversation. It is argued that such a usage of yòu not only keeps its generalised conjunctive meaning, whose left conjunct can be either explicitly present or omitted, but also contributes to inducing pragmatic inferences. Since the logically encoded meaning of yòu and the presuppositional meaning it engenders fail to provide a coherent interpretation of yòu in a negation context, there is a need to backtrack and accommodate an implicit proposition as the premise for inferring the implicature of that utterance, i.e. a conditional. We also argue that what really invites the said abductive inference is the specific construction of [yòu + neg + right conjunct], rather than the adverb yòu per se.

Citation

Xue, L., & Jiang, Y. (2023). The Semantics and Pragmatics of the Quasi-logical Use of yòu in Mandarin Chinese. SOAS working papers in linguistics, 21, 16-29. https://doi.org/10.25501/SOAS.00040381

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 12, 2022
• Publication Date: Sep 25, 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 25, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 25, 2023
• Journal: SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics
• Print ISSN: 1473-0855
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 21
• Pages: 16-29
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.25501/SOAS.00040381
• Keywords: Mandarin grammar, construction, pragmatic inference, Mandarin adverb yòu
• Publisher URL: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/schools-and-departments/school-languages-cultures-and-linguistics/department-linguistics/soas