INTRODUCTION
1.1 Defining a "pragmatic analysis"
The very usage of the word pragmatics within the realm of linguistic inquiry begs a reaction ranging from hostility to indifference. Leech's characterization of the subject's status during the 1960s as "a rag-bag into which recalcitrant data could be conveniently stuffed, and where it could be equally conveniently forgotten" (1983:1), is neither temporally nor philosophically that far removed from the present state of affairs. Indeed, it is a telling testimony to the slippery quality of the very definition of the word pragmatics that Levinson (1983) devotes some thirty pages in his attempt to describe the scope of this subfield.
But expended ink alone does not justify a discipline or subdiscipline as a line of scholarly inquiry. What does justify it is its necessity. In this regard, the present study echoes the assertion of Leech that "...grammar (the abstract formal system of language) and pragmatics (the principles of language use) are complementary domains within linguistics. We cannot understand the nature of language without studying both these domains, and the interaction between them" (1983:4). For the present purposes, the linguistic implications of a pragmatic analysis of Mandarin interrogatives are that this study is conducted in light of and in response to existing analyses of Mandarin interrogatives. Those existing analyses include not only those purportedly done under the heading of pragmatics, but also those which may be labeled as, in Leech's terminology, studies of the grammar (where "grammar" encompasses both syntax and semantics). It is proposed here that only through such an approach may we move closer toward understanding the more purely pragmatic aspects of the communicative use of language.
1.2 Topic of research
More specifically, what is to be considered here is the communicative use of two types of interrogatives in Mandarin Chinese. One is the shifei wenju (是 非 問 句, right-wrong questions), generally rendered in English as the "particle question" (Li and Thompson 1981:521), or "yes-or-no question" (Chao 1968:800), for example,[1]
(1) Ni lei ma? you tired Q "Are you tired?"The other is the zhengfan wenju (正 反 問 句, positive-negative questions), which Li and Thompson choose to lump together with what Lyu (1985) and Lin (1985) (among others) consider a separate category, namely the xuanze wenju (選 擇 問 句, choice question). The two types are exemplified in (2) and (3) below respectively:
(2) Ni he bu he jiu? you drink - NEG - drink liquor "Do you drink (liquor)?"
(3) Ni qu haishi ta lai? you go or he come "Will you go, or will he come?"Sentence (2) in fact is more precisely a zhengfan wenju. That Chinese term has been variously translated as "V-not-V question" (Chao 1968:269) and "A-not-A question" (Li and Thompson 1981:535), although the blanket term "disjunctive question" has been applied somewhat loosely (and confusingly) to zhengfan wenju as well as xuanze wenju by Li and Thompson. In contrast, by the framework of linguists including Lyu (1985), (2) and (3) represent distinct categories of zhengfan wenju and xuanze wenju respectively. The term "disjunctive question" has been used to exclusively refer to sentences such as (3) by authors in the West including Lin (1981:42) and Huang (1988:152). Huang in fact calls such interrogatives "true disjunctive questions," which more satisfactorily underlines the distinction in both syntactic and semantic terms between questions of the forms (2) and (3). That distinction shall be employed here as well, with the terms "A-not-A" or "V-not-V" interchangeably applied to interrogatives such as (2).
For purposes of this study, disjunctive interrogatives such as (3) will be excluded. Several other types of questions in Mandarin Chinese will also not be dealt with here, including those using interrogative pronouns (equivalent to WH-questions in English syntax) and "tag questions." Also excluded will be "echo questions," which do not have explicit grammatical structures and depend entirely on intonation to signal their interrogative status.[2] This is not to say that they are not worthy of detailed analysis. It is merely to restrict the scope of this research in such a way as to be most relevant to the present foci of research regarding Mandarin interrogatives. Little has been done on the pragmatics of the other types of questions, let alone any research resulting in significant controversy.
There are unique qualities attendant to each of the three excluded categories which further motivate their exclusion. For question-word questions, the request for specific information (who, what, where, when, etc.) distinguishes them functionally from other interrogatives. The other classes of interrogatives in essence give a choice between only two alternatives, as opposed to the potentially infinite number of alternatives implicit in a WH-word question.[3] "Tag questions," which seek confirmation of the statement immediately preceding them, are functionally differentiated from other interrogatives in their apparent rhetoricality. As for intonation questions, there is a practical motivation beyond the author's choice to focus on non-phonetic aspects in his research. While echo questions are clearly a part of the Chinese language, textbooks have generally followed grammatical patterns of explanation. Only explicit grammatical expressions of interrogation are introduced in pedagogical works. Consequently, to attempt to compare patterns in more natural speech with those in textbooks, as will be done in this study, would be impossible for echo questions. What remains then are the particle question and A-not-A question, which Li and Thompson have asserted to be similar in functional terms in seeking an answer either confirming or denying the proposition contained within the question (1981: 548).
1.3 Research strategies
1.3.1 Conceptual overview: functionalism, discourse analysis, and conversational analysis
In the broadest sense, a pragmatic analysis may be considered a functionalist analysis. This sense of functionalism is consistent with the recent cognition-based functional grammar of Chinese proposed by James H-Y Tai (1989). Tai's approach is functional in that its focus is on how linguistic representations of reality are utilized in a communicative function. It is crucial to note that such a functionalist analysis is also consistent with the characterization of pragmatics by Leech already cited, wherein pragmatics is complementary to the study of the abstract, formal system of a language's grammar. Put quite simply, the methodology here centers upon an analysis of language in use, as opposed to language as an internalized system in the mind.
It is also important to note the characterization provided by Tomlin (1990:5), whereby a functional analysis deals with how linguistic knowledge is implemented in interactive discourse. Such an interactive discourse stands in contrast to the sentential-level orientation of traditional syntactic and semantic (and ironically enough, even pragmatic) analyses. Thus, when dealing with interrogatives as employed in spoken standard Mandarin Chinese, attention will be paid not only to the person asking the question, but also to the person or persons who would potentially be answering the question.
Narrowing the scope of the description of methodological pragmatics as employed here, the spirit of analysis, if not the analytical framework in toto, is that of conversational analysis. Distinction must first be made between conversational and discourse analysis. Levinson (1983:286-87) provides a fairly clear characterization of this distinction:
Discourse analysis (or DA) employs both the methodology and the kind of theoretical principles and primitive concepts (e.g. rule, well-formed formula) typical of linguistics. It is essentially a series of attempts to extend the techniques so successful in linguistics, beyond the unit of the sentence. ...There is typically an appeal to intuitions, about, for example, what is and what is not a coherent or well-formed discourse....In contrast, conversation analysis (or CA)...is a rigorously empirical approach which avoids prematuretheory construction...The methods are essentially inductive; search is made for recurring patterns across many records of naturally occurring conversations,...in contrast to DA, there is as little appeal as possible to intuitive judgements...
One must be careful to note, as does Levinson, that for the most part, conversation analysts pay little attention to the nature of context that might be theoretically conceived within sociolinguistics or social psychology; namely, matters of relationship, social groups, formal/informal distinction, and so on. Most fundamental remains the employment of a unique methodology distinct from that associated with discourse analysis and by extension, with sentence-level grammatical analyses, in particular with regard to the emphasis on induction over intuition.
However, it must be emphasized that the employment of a framework of conversational analysis here is more for its overall methodological approach rather than the specifics of that approach. To be sure, criteria for judging the acceptability of a proposed conversation analysis, such as those outlined by Wootton and cited by Luke (1988:64), remain paramount. Those criteria include paying attention to both context-specific and decontextualized properties of the data fragments, and do not rely solely on frequency considerations (that is, descriptive statistical data) as a basis for conclusions. Accordingly, inferential statistical analysis in the form of the Chi-square test will be applied wherever possible and appropriate.
In summary, the conceptual approach in the present study is functionalist. An element of discourse analytical methodology is incorporated in the usage of categories of contextual correlates, to be described below. However, by not automatically resorting to intuition, and in conducting the research free from premature theory construction, this study also embodies the analytical spirit of conversation analysis.
1.3.2 Analytical framework: The question posing/asking scale
The central issue in pragmatic-oriented discussions of Mandarin interrogatives up until this time has been the question of neutrality of context. The term refers to the presence of speaker assumptions concerning the proposition that is being questioned. Questions posed in a neutral context would thus be those in which the speaker had no presumptions concerning the proposition under consideration. Conversely, a question asked in a non-neutral context would be one in which the speaker had some sort of presupposition. A more detailed discussion, with particular attention to the inherent difficulty of ascertaining speaker assumptions, will be presented in Chapter Two.
What will be suggested as an alternative is that we approach the problem of neutrality in a spirit consistent with the distinction between posing a question and asking a question, a distinction first proposed by Lyons (1977:754-55). The basic difference between the two interrogative types centers upon whether the speaker is merely externalizing his doubt, or whether the speaker expects the listener to respond. If it is simply a case of externalizing doubt, it is question posing. Otherwise, it is question asking. The present study expands the concept in setting up a question posing/asking scale, with various degrees of question posing. Three contextual correlates which potentially reflect the use of interrogatives for question posing will be identified. Questions will be further analyzed with respect to certain linguistic elements (such as positive/negative verb form and the use of copular verbs) and sociolinguistic elements (specifically the gender of the speaker). The result will be a characterization of discourse organization which may reflect the presence (or absence) of speaker assumption in a statistically-verified manner different from the previous intuitively-based treatises.
1.4 Data base
The data base employed is that of modern Taiwan drama, specifically a group of four plays produced by the Performance Workshop (Chinese biaoyan gongzuo fang 表 演 工 作 坊) of Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China) between the years 1985 and 1989. The plays are:
(1) Huitou shi bi'an 回 頭 是 彼 岸 (The Island and the Other Shore), 1989 (2) Yuanhuan wuyu 圓 環 物 語 (Tales from the Traffic Circle [4]), 1987 (3) Anlian taohuayuan 暗 戀 桃 花 源 (The Secret Love/Peach Blossom Fount), 1986 (4) Nayiye, women shuo xiangsheng 那 一 夜 我 們 說 相 聲 (The Other Night We Put on a Show of Xiangsheng), 1985What distinguishes these plays as both dramatic literature and linguistic data is that they have been improvised by the company members. The creative process of "script writing" is in fact not writing in the traditional sense of having come from the pen of a single individual. Each play was improvised by the company members, consisting of a group of young actors and actresses, age range of 25 to 40, all of whom had been born and raised in Taiwan. All of the performers have a high school diploma and have completed some college-level study. As a matter of fact, for the most recent production, Huitou shi bi'an, half of the actors and actresses hold either a bachelor's or master's degree. As such, they are typical of the educated middle class who have spent their entire life in Taiwan, and thus are good case studies of that unique linguistic hybrid, guoyu (國 語), the standard Chinese, highly Min-dialect affected cousin to the mainland putonghua (普 通 話) in grammar and in vocabulary.
1.5 Pedagogical justification
The motivation for this study derives from a pragmatic necessity far greater than any theoretical linguistic controversy; namely, the need to better instruct our students in the usage of interrogatives in their study of Mandarin Chinese. Consider the following explication of assumptions concerning the use of ma-particle interrogatives. It is encountered in the first-year Chinese textbook used at The Ohio State University (Walker 1983:2-38):
When you ask this question: GAO XIANSHENG SHI YINGGUOREN MA? the assumption is that the answer will be negative: BU-SHI, TA BU-SHI YINGGUOREN. "No, he isn't an Englishman." A MA-question is asked when the questioner assumes that the information given in the question is not correct.Clearly the authors have espoused an assumption-conditioned usage of the ma-particle interrogative. This textbook explication of the pragmatic conditions surrounding the usage of particle questions is a strongly-stated step beyond the analyses of linguists such as Chao (1968) and Tang (1986), as will be discussed in the next chapter.
However, in far many more parts of the United States, students are learning from the Practical Chinese Reader, produced by the well-respected Beijing Language Institute, and reported in a recent survey by George Wang (1989:103) to be the second most widely-used beginning Chinese textbook in the United States. In those schools, students learn that for the same type of construction, "...[a question] formed with ma is the most extensively used to ask about something about which the speaker has no foreknowledge and for which he expects neither an affirmative nor negative answer" (1981:379 -- emphasis mine). Lest the question of dialectal variation be considered a factor, it should be noted that the majority of the text development team at Ohio State University, as well as the authors of Practical Chinese Reader, were in fact employees of the same academic institution, namely the Beijing Language Institute. Nor is it a matter of date of authorship. The Practical Chinese Reader was published in 1981, while the Ohio State materials were first produced in 1983. And once again, there is justification for the stance taken in Practical Chinese Reader (e.g., Li and Thompson, 1981), as will be discussed in the next chapter.
However, if this dichotomy strikes one as disconcerting, it must be pointed out that the most commonly used textbook in the United States (Wang 1989:103), John DeFrancis' Beginning Chinese (1976), provides no explication as to the prescribed assumptions in the mind of the particle question asker. A survey of other elementary Chinese textbooks reveals a similar range of opinions and nothing even approaching a consensus. Given that our students are generally exposed to particle interrogatives within the very first week of language study regardless of the textbook utilized, and to A-not-A questions sometime during either the first or second quarter of first-year study, it is imperative that we seek to understand the pragmatics of the two question forms. Yet such a choice is all that we are left with in both the theoretical and pedagogical spheres.
This study will attempt to serve as a first step in clarifying pragmatic patterns in Mandarin interrogative usage. The results obtained from the analysis of the Performance Workshop play texts will be compared with statistics for three Chinese textbooks, two elementary level (the previously mentioned Beginning Chinese and Practical Chinese Reader) and one advanced level (Talks on Chinese Culture). Through such a comparison, we may better understand what our students are being exposed to in the classroom, what they may expect to be exposed to in real life, and how we may better serve to bridge the gap between the two.
1.6 Organization
This initial chapter has served to provide an overview of the pragmatic considerations of this study in a variety of areas, all of which hopefully have combined to provide both justification for and explication of the basic approach.
Chapter Two is essentially a review of the literature concerning ma-particle interrogatives in general and pragmatics in particular, with further explication of the question-posing/question-asking distinction.
Chapter Three briefly reviews the literature regarding A-not-A questions in Mandarin Chinese. Based upon some of the data within that literature, it offers an alternative pragmatic account for the formation of A-not-A interrogatives.
Chapter Four provides a thorough introduction to the data base and methodology, followed by an analysis of the pragmatics of ma-particle interrogatives.
Chapter Five repeats the analytical process for A-not-A questions in the same body of plays from the Performance Workshop of Taiwan.
Chapter Six compares the results in Chapters Four and Five to provide a synthesis regarding the pragmatics of Mandarin interrogatives.
Chapter Seven applies the same conversation analytical model to the dialogues contained within the three Chinese language texts previously mentioned, with comparisons made to the Performance Workshop data base.
Chapter Eight serves as a conclusion, suggesting pedagogical as well as theoretical and methodological implications.
NOTES 1. Note that the ma being discussed here is 嗎, and not 嘛. Chao has called the latter a "pause particle with hesitation," (1968:801) while Lyu specifies that it either: (1) "expresses that the matter (referred to in the sentence) is as it should be, or its reason (for existence) is obvious"; (2) "expresses hope, or advising not to do something;" or, (3) as in Chao's description, serves as a pause marker, "alerting the listener to pay attention to what follows." (my translation of Lyu --1980:337-38) See also Fincher (1989) for a more recent discussion of what she calls the rhetorical, "patronizing" use of this homophone ma.
2. The use of the terms "echo question" or "intonation question" here is equivalent to the term "unmarked question," as used by Shen in her 1989 study of the prosody of Mandarin Chinese. Such interrogatives follow what Shen calls Tune II (identical to the tune pattern for ma-particle questions), in which the sentence intonation pattern starts with a mid-high key, moves upward to a high key at the highest peak, and finally drops to a point ending in the high or mid-high register (Shen 1989:17ff, Chan (forthcoming)).
3. See Lin (1985:93) for argumentation that the answer to an interrogative is only a supplementary and not a primary means of distinguishing question categories.
4. The translation for this play's title is my own, as there have been no translations given in English articles on Lai's work. An alternative might be Rotary Romance, as the term yuanhuan refers to a traffic circle where three or more roads come together, much like what is called a rotary in New England. Wuyu is in fact a term not Chinese in origin, but borrowed from the Japanese language. The characters, pronounced monogatari in Japanese, are generally translated as a romantic story or tale.
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McGinnis, Scott G. 1990 A Pragmatic Analysis of Mandarin Interrogatives: Data from Modern Taiwan Drama. Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University. (Excerpt: Chapter 1, pages 1-15.)
<http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/chan9/ling/mcginnis/chapter1.htm> [Accessed DATE]
Prepared by M. Chan on 9 October 1999.
Copyright (c) 1999 Scott G. McGinnis. All rights reserved.
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