Linguistic form, meaning and procedure: A cognitive and pragmatic analysis of ye in Mandarin Chinese

In linguistic communication words are the building blocks of propositions as they form the units of meaning in sentences. Words are generally considered to provide meaning components, which, when integrated by the grammatical structure of the sentence, constitute the proposition. This may be regarded as their contribution to the CONTENT of the meaning of a sentence. However, there is now increasing recognition that certain types of words may contribute more to how meanings are constructed or manipulated than just the meaning of the sentences themselves. In a sentence, such as John is also a car seller the word also signals that the addressee should derive the communicative import of the sentence by placing it in the context of another proposition, such as ‘Larry is a car seller’ or ‘John is a car buyer’. In other words, ‘also’ may be considered a discourse particle which instructs the addressee to interpret the sentence in question in the context of certain assumptions, stated or unstated. The function of the word also may be termed as PROCEDURAL function.; The present work is a study of the uses of Chinese particles, mainly ye, which is the counterpart of English ‘also’. This study is a model of the cognitive and pragmatic Theory of Relevance developed by Sperber and Wilson. The areas of theoretical interest in my discussion are in the distinction between descriptive and interpretive or inferential use; the different ways utterances may have contextual effects; and how linguistic form constrains the hearer's interpretational processing. This study also intends to shed some light on the discussion of a new approach to particle typology, one based on the Relevance theoretic framework.