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

Main author: Xue, Lu
Other authors: Jiang, Yan
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-40381
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description 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.
format Journal Article
author Xue, Lu
author_facet Xue, Lu
Jiang, Yan
authorStr Xue, Lu
author_letter Xue, Lu
author2 Jiang, Yan
author2Str Jiang, Yan
title The Semantics and Pragmatics of the Quasi-logical Use of yòu in Mandarin Chinese
publisher SOAS University of London
publishDate 2023
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/40381/