Modal Particles In Hongfeng Gelao

Modal particles are widely used in East and Southeast Asian languages as an important means of expressing subjective meanings such as emotions,attitudes,and mood.As a significant language family in Southeast Asia,Tai-Kadai languages employ modal particles frequently to express a variety of mood meanings.Gelao,a key member of the family,but for various reasons,is now an endangered language and should be rescued,recorded,and studied.Researches on Gelao at home and abroad concentrate so far on its syntax,phonetics,and grammar,with little attention given to its modal particles.Thus,recording and researching these modal particles will be practically and academically significant.Therefore,taking as the research object the modal particles of the Gelao language in Hongfeng Village,Pudi Township,One Hundred Li Azalea Precinct,Guizhou Province,with fieldwork data collected so far,drawing on Enfield’s(2007)classification and analysis framework for modal particles,and Palmer’s(2001),Timberlake’s(2007)and Lin Huayong’s(2014)classifications of modality,this study seeks to describe and analyze these modal particles,dwelling on their syntactic distributions,mood meanings,co-occurrence features,and restrained principles.Specifically,it aims to answer the following questions:(1)What types can the modal particles be classified into in Hongfeng Gelao? And what syntactic features and semantic functions do they possess?(2)How do these different types of modal particles co-occur?(3)What are the principles that affect their co-occurrences?The investigation reveals:(1)The modal particles in Hongfeng Gelao can be classified into two types: phrase-final modal particles and sentence-final modal particles.The meanings(functions)of these modal particles include mood meanings(declarative,interrogative,imperative,exclamatory)and modality meanings(emphatic,affirmative,obvious,reproaching,unsatisfying,regretful,assertive,reminding,etc.).Among them,phrase-final modal particles mainly express modality meanings like emphatic and reminding,and sentence-final modal particles largely elucidate mood meanings such as declarative and interrogative,and modality meanings like emphatic,affirmative,obvious,reproaching,and reminding.The two partially overlap in terms of function.(2)The co-occurrence of the modal particles,largely based on their modality classification,displays some certain features.To be specific,those particles of the emphatic category co-occur exclusively with those of the indicative category and typically precede them,while those of the indicative group can co-occur with those of the reminding group,the informing group,the commentary group,the hypothetical group,and the interrogative group,and usually precede them.Additionally,within the indicative category,it is common that several particles can co-occur.(3)Their co-occurrences are restrained by four principles: semantic scope,semantic integration,coherence,and prominence.And preferences also exist among the four rules when used to expound their co-occurrence phenomena: semantic integration principle > semantic scope principle > coherence principle > prominence principle(“>” reads “overrides”).This paper is conductive to deepening the understanding of the synchronicity of Hongfeng Gelao modal particles,enriching the research of modal particles in the Tai-Kadai language family,and providing a case reference for the typological study of modal particles.