Belief And Doubt: Epistemology Of Tag Questions

This Ph.D. dissertation, within the theoretic framework of cognitive grammar and the theory of evidential ity, focuses on the study of the corresponding relationship between the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic function of tag questions and the epistemological state related. This study, in accordance with Langacker (1987; 1999), is aimed to demonstrate that the inter-relationship of the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic function of a linguistic unit can be more reasonably and completely comprehended and explained, in addition to other motivating factors, with reference to the cognitive event that happens in individual minds at the time of the utterance. This study is meant to evidence that the language user's epistemological state of the state-of-affairs concerned serves as the fundamental support of the construction of linguistic expressions, as is noted in the theory of evidentiality (Chafe and Nichols, 1986).This thesis, based on the results of the belief-doubt experiments carried out with the natives both Chinese and English as subjects, offers in Chapter Four a description of the speaker's epistemological state at the time of the utterance of a tag question in the sense that the speaker believes to some extent the proposition denoted in the declarative clause to be true, yet still is not completely sure of, or has some degree of doubt about, it. The elaboration of the epistemological state related to tag questions sheds some light on the cognitive event that happens in the mind of the speaker when he/she utters the other types of Yes-No questions, as well as Wh-questions. It is noted that the speaker, when posing a question, has some degree of belief in, as well as some degree of doubt about, the truth value of the proposition or some component(s) of the proposition queried in interrogatives, be it a Yes-No or a Wh-question. The finding that belief and doubt are the major aspects of interrogatives in terms of epistemological state prompts the author to attempt a theoretic model to the effect that belief is the prerequisite of doubt; doubt arises on the basis of belief and is directed towardbelief - belief arrived at as a result of the dispelling of doubt. The endless cycles of the reoccurrence of belief and doubt facilitate the enrichment of mankind's knowledge of the world. This is called the cognitive BDH.In line with the cognitive BDH, this study has found that there generally coexists, in a TQ (for "tag question") operation, the speaker's belief in, and his/her doubt about, the propositional content within the propositional scope of a TQ which demonstrates itself as a pair of dialectic epistemological categories, with one increasing while the other decreasing, and vice versa. This theoretic model is called the TQ BDH.Pertaining to the above two BDHs, Chapter Five provides a detailed analysis of the assignment to the declarative and the tag of the topic and the comment, of the three pragmatic conditions subject to a tag question and of the pragmatic function a tag question is used to perform. The analysis proves that the assignment of the information structure of a tag question, the pragmatic conditions and the pragmatic function in relation to a tag question are the result of the pragmatization of the speaker's epistemological state related to tag questions. Additionally, an elaborate study is executed in Chapter Six about the grammaticalization of the speaker's epistemological state related to tag questions, indicating that the idiosyncratic appendence of the tag, the compulsory precedence of the declarative and the complex syntactic construction of different types of tag questions are the result of the grammaticalization of the speaker's epistemological state related.Moreover, the hypotheses of the above two BDHs are extended to the analysis of other types of Yes-No questions and of Wh-questions in English as well as tag questions in Chinese, French and German in terms of the speaker's epistemological state related. The author has noticed that the speaker's epistemological state - the...