The End Of The Sentence, "ne" Functional Analysis

The utterance-final particle(UFP) ne呢in modern Chinese can beemployed in declarative, interrogative and exclamatory sentences. Like other functionwords (虚词), its meaning is vague and it seems unattached to other elements of thesentence. Then, what role does it play in communication?Halliday (1994) suggested that "in the act of speaking, the 'speaker' (bothspeaker and writer) adopts for himself a particular speech role, and in so doing assignsto the listener a complementary role which he wishes him to adopt in his turn.". Yet,"in moving into the role of speaker, the listener has considerable discretion." In otherwords, he/she can choose "what" and "how" to response or even refuse to react.Halliday then took the TAG as an example and argued that, "the speaker on his parthas a way of forestalling this: he can add a TAG, which is a reminder of what isexpected."We believed that in Chinese, people would also forestall listener's feedback andit seems that "ne" carries the function of expressing the speakers' attitude or even helpsto indicate the listener what reaction is expected. However, the function of "ne" becomevague when it merges with the context. This paper takes a Discourse approach and look into contextual elements whileanalyzing the functions of "ne" which are found in the novel,四世同堂. We believethat its primary function is to express the interrogative mood. Secondary functionssuch as to express consideration, intense inquiry and puzzlement are then derived.During the communication processes, it can stimulate interaction through softeningthe tone, inviting the listeners to think and giving feedback.