What is it about?
This study investigates the discourse-pragmatic functions of the epistemic markers haoxiang “seem” and keneng “probably” in natural conversations of Mandarin Chinese. By examining 107 cases of haoxiang and 152 cases of keneng in sequential contexts, it demonstrates that both haoxiang and keneng are hedge expressions showing the speaker’s attitude of lack of commitment to the truthfulness of their own utterance, which is often driven by an intersubjective motivation.
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Why is it important?
This study is resourceful in unraveling the full pictures of the discourse-pragmatic functions of epistemic makers. It would shed some light on epistemic stance, contribute additional evidence to the functional linguistic research on the intersubjectivity of epistemic markers by showing how similar politeness markers are used in conversations with subtle diverse foci that are derived from different semantic meanings. This study also has significant pedagogical implications to offering instructions of synonyms to L2 learners of Chinese.
Perspectives
As a native Chinese speaker who has been studying and teaching Japanese, and doing linguistic research mainly on Japanese for decades, I found it refreshing to revisit my own native language with a more open mind, broad linguistic knowledge, and creative perspective inspired by my previous research. I hope this article will be thought-provoking not only for Chinese but also for Japanese linguists.
Yan Wang
Carthage College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A discourse-pragmatic functional study of Chinese epistemic markers haoxiang “seem” and
keneng “probably”, International Journal of Chinese Linguistics, December 2022, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/ijchl.20014.wan.
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