Sentence-Final Particles (SFPS): A Usage-Based Constructionist Approach

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Date

2021-09-13

Authors

Zhu, Lin

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Publisher

University of Oregon

Abstract

This dissertation adopts the usage-based constructionist approach to investigate three sentence-final particles (SFPs) in Mandarin Chinese, bei, ne, and a, with the help of British corpus linguistics techniques. The study is based on data collected from the BCC corpus and the instant communication tool WeChat. The results show that their functions are best understood holistically as part of those constructions, instead of associating functions with SFPs as morphemes. This study therefore demystifies the long-held belief that SFPs are elusive.

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Keywords

construction grammar, corpus linguistics, Mandarin, pragmatics, semantic prosody, sentence-final particle

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