상호작용적 자원으로서의 현대중국어 어기조사 ‘吧’

Abstract

This study investigates the functions of the Chinese sentence-final particle ba from an interactional perspective. This study examines several aspects of ba, including its distributional properties, collocation patterns, and sequential structures in conversational contexts. I argue that ba in discourse carries two key elements: the internal state of a speaker’s knowledge about an event or a state of being and the speaker’s stance toward the information or proposition being delivered. In using ba, a speaker pragmatically tilts the epistemic gradient from declaration toward a questioning stance by lowering his or her epistemic commitment (or by raising the addressee’s). The sentence-final particle ba can exert these forces by conveying information about the reasons for such raising or lowering of epistemic commitment. This analysis opens up an interesting line of study regarding the sentence-final particle ba from dialogic interactions between interlocutors and enriches our understanding of how Chinese sentence-final particles in general function in interaction.