Chapter 6
From matrix clause to turn expansion
The emergence of wo juede ‘I
feel/think’ in Mandarin conversational
interaction
One way complex clauses manifest themselves
is through a combination of a matrix clause and a
complement clause. However, matrix clauses as
represented by constructions such as I
think have been widely reported to
undergo grammaticization, whereby they become a
marker indicating the speaker’s epistemic stance.
This has also been identified for Mandarin Chinese.
In this chapter, however, we report that wo
juede ‘I feel/think’ in Mandarin has
developed a conversation interactional function that
extends turns-at-talk – a phenomenon that has not
yet received much attention in the Chinese
literature on talk in interaction. By providing an
account for the link between the
epistemic/evaluative uses and the turn-expansion
function of the erstwhile matrix clause, this paper
brings in an extended, interactional dimension to
the study of clause-combining.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Data
- 3.Subjective use of wo juede
- 3.1Evaluative use
- 3.2Epistemic use
- 4.Intersubjective use of wo
juede
- 5.Wo juede and turn
expansion
- 5.1Prosodically integrated wo juede
- 5.2Prosodically independent wo juede
- 6.Discussion
- 6.1Functional distribution
- 6.2Explaining the link between multiple
functions
- 6.3Pathways of the emergence of the extended
uses
- 7.Conclusions
-
Notes
-
References
References (60)
References
Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and
writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written
English. London: Longman.
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2018). Praat: Doing phonetics by
computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.43, retrieved 8 September,
2018 from [URL].
Bybee, J. (2001). Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The Evolution of grammar: Tense,aspect and
modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bybee, J., & Scheibman, J. (1999). The effect of usage on degrees of
constituency: The reduction of
Don’t in English. Linguistics 37 (4): 575–596.
Chafe, W. (1982). Integration and involvement in
speaking, writing, and oral
literature. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Spoken and written language: Exploring
orality and literacy (pp. 35–54). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Coates, J. (1990). Modal meaning: The semantics –
pragmatics interface. Journal of Semantics 7, 53–63.
Couper-Kuhlen, E. & Thompson, S. A. (2008). On assessing situations and events
in conversation: Extraposition and its
relatives. Discourse Studies 10(4): 443–467.
Diessel, H., & Tomasello, M. (2001). The acquisition of finite
complements clauses in English: A corpus-based
analysis. Cognitive Linguistics 12, 97–141.
Du Bois, J. W. (2007). The stance triangle. In R. Englebretson (Ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity,
evaluation, interaction (pp. 139–182). Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Du Bois, J. W., Schuetze-Coburn, S., Cumming, S., & Paolino, D. (1993). Outline of discourse
transcription. In J. A. Edwards & M. D. Lampert (Eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in
discourse research (pp. 45–89). New York/London: Psychology Press.
Duranti, A. (2010). Husserl, intersubjectivity and
anthropology. Anthropological Theory 10 (1–2), 16–35.
Endo, T. K. (2010). Expressing stance in Mandarin
conversation: Epistemic and non-epistemic uses of
wo juede. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
Fang, M. (2000). Ziran kouyu zhong ruohua lianci de huayu
biaoji gongneng. [Discourse functions of bleached
conjunctions in natural Mandarin
conversation]. Zhongguo Yuwen [
Studies of the Chinese Language
], 5, 459–470.
Gillespie, A., & Cornish, F. (2010). Intersubjectivity: Towards a
dialogical analysis. Journal for the Theory of Social
Behaviour 40 (1), 19–46.
Goodwin, C. (1996). Transparent vision. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 370–404). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. H. (1992). Assessments and the construction of
context. In C. Goodwin and A. Duranti (Eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an
interactive phenomenon (pp. 147–190). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hayashi, M. (1999). Where grammar and interaction meet:
A study of co-participant completion in Japanese
conversation. Human Studies 22 (2–4), 475–499.
Heritage, J. (2007). Intersubjectivity and progressivity
in person (and place) reference. In N. J. Enfield & T. Stivers (Eds.), Person reference in interaction:
Linguistic, cultural and social
perspectives (pp. 255–280). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holmes, J. (1982). Expressing doubt and certainty in
English. RELC Journal 13 (2), 9–28.
Holmes, J. (1984). Modifying illocutionary
force. Journal of Pragmatics 8, 345–365.
Huang, S. (2003). Doubts about complementation: A
functionalist analysis. Language and Linguistics 4 (2), 429–455.
Hunston, S., & Sinclair, J. (2000). A local grammar of
evaluation. In S. Hunston & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and
the construction of discourse (pp. 74–101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kärkkäinen, E. (2012).
I thought it was very
interesting: Conversational formats for
taking a stance. Journal of Pragmatics 44 (15), 2194–2210.
Laury, R. H. & Helasvuo, M-L., 2016. Disclaiming epistemic access with
‘know’ and
‘remember’ in
Finnish. Journal of Pragmatics 106, 80–96.
Lerner, G. H. (1996). On the ‘semi-permeable’ character
of grammatical units in conversation: Conditional
entry into the turn space of another
speaker. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 238–276). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lim, N. E. (2009). Stance-taking with wo
juede in conversational
Chinese. In Proceedings of the 21st North American
Conference on Chinese Linguistics, (pp. 323–340). Columbus: Ohio State University online publications.
Lim, N. E. (2011). From subjectivity to
intersubjectivity: Epistemic marker wo
juede in Chinese. In Y. Xiao, L. Tao & H. L. Soh (Eds.), Current issues in Chinese
linguistics (pp. 265–300). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Press.
Lindström, J., Maschler, Y., & Pekarek Doehler, S. (2016). A cross-linguistic perspective on
grammar and negative epistemics in
talk-in-interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 106, 72–79.
Lü, S., Li, L., Liu, J., Fan, J., Shi, Y., Fan, F., Meng, C., Ma, S., Li, Z., Chen, J., Zhan, K., Zheng, H., & Tao, B. (Eds.). (1980). Xiandai hanyu babaici [Modern Chinese 800
words]. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.
Mori, J., & Hayashi, M. (2006). The achievement of
intersubjectivity through embodied completions: A
study of interactions between first and second
language speakers. Applied Linguistics 27 (2), 195–219.
Palmer, F. R. (1986). Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with
assessments: Some features of
preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social interaction: Studies
in conversation analysis (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J., & Crystal, D. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English
language. London/New York: Longman.
Schegloff, E. A. (1992). Repair after next turn: The last
structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity
in conversation. American Journal of Sociology 97 (5), 1295–1345.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction: A
primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scheibman, J. (2000).
I dunno: A usage-based account of
the phonological reduction of
don’t in American English
conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 32 (1), 105–124.
Stivers, T. (2008). Stance, alignment, and affiliation
during story telling: When nodding is a token of
preliminary affiliation. Research on Language in Social
Interaction 41 (1):31–57.
Tao, H. (2001). Discovering the usual with corpora:
The case of
remember. In R. Simpson & J. Swales (Eds.), Corpus linguistics in North America:
Selections from the 1999 symposium (pp. 116–144). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Tao, H. (2003a). Phonological, grammatical, and
discourse evidence for the emergence of
zhidao [know]
constructions. [in Chinese] Chinese Language 4, 291–302.
Tao, H. (2007). A corpus-based investigation of
absolutely and related phenomena
in spoken American English. Journal of English Linguistics 35 (1), 1–25.
Tao, L. (2006). Classifier loss and frozen tone in
spoken Beijing Mandarin: The
yi+ge
phonosyntactic conspiracy. Linguistics 44, 91–133.
Thompson, G. & Hunston, S. (2000). Evaluation: An
introduction. In S. Hunston & G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and
the construction of discourse (pp. 1–27). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thompson, S. A., & Mulac, A. (1991b). The discourse conditions for the
use of the complementizer that in
conversational English. Journal of Pragmatics 15 (3), 237–251.
Wang, W. (2017). Prosody and functions of discourse markers
in Mandarin Chinese conversation: The cases of
ranhou, wo juede, and meiyou. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Yu, Guodong, Yaxin Wu, Paul Drew & Chase Wesley Raymond
Floyd, Simeon
2021.
Conversation and Culture.
Annual Review of Anthropology 50:1
► pp. 219 ff.
XIAO–DESAI, YANG
2021.
Stance‐Taking in Heritage Language Writing.
The Modern Language Journal 105:3
► pp. 679 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.